In England, you soon learn that certain questions do not require a real answer.
“You alright, mate?”
The correct response is something like:
“Yeah, you?”
End of conversation.
It is a greeting. Not an invitation to tell your life story.
Once, I made the mistake of answering honestly.
“Not great, to be honest.”
I had not asked for money. I had not asked for a kidney. I had simply answered.
And yet you could immediately feel that I had broken something.
Since then, I have often thought that How are you? works perfectly well as long as nobody expects it to mean what it says.
Some friendships work the same way.
As long as everything is fine
We call each other mate, darling, love.
After two drinks, even family can make an appearance, which is quite something when we still do not know each other’s surname.
Then an ordinary day comes along.
A Tuesday, for example.
And something is wrong.
You need to talk.
Or you simply say: that hurt me.
And that is when you discover how much weight that word can really bear: friendship.
Tuesday is an excellent test of Saturday-night friendships.
No drama, please
The phrase often arrives in an almost elegant tone.
“No drama, please.”
It is convenient.
Because it can turn something very simple — “that hurt me” — into your problem.
First, something happens.
Then, if you talk about it, you are being dramatic.
Perfect.
Of course, some people turn a message left on read into an eight-part Netflix series.
But not everything is drama.
Sometimes it is simply a consequence.
If a choice I make hurts someone, my reluctance to discuss it does not erase what happened.
Friendship and desire
Among gay men, friendship and desire can easily overlap.
You can fancy a friend.
He can fancy you.
He can fancy your partner. You can fancy his.
We have barely reached coffee and already have enough material for an international summit.
Over the years, I have developed a theory with absolutely no scientific value.
Two tops and a bottom?
Cooperation.
Two bottoms and a top?
Cold War.
I am joking.
Mostly.
The point is that once desire, insecurity and the need for approval enter the picture, people can change places very quickly.
A friend becomes competition.
A person becomes a possibility.
And someone, inevitably, gets left out.
The right not to be easy all the time
For years, I thought that to be loved I had to be easy to have around.
Cheerful.
Available.
Understanding.
The one who never causes problems.
The one who, when pushed aside, understands why and perhaps even says thank you.
Eventually, I grew tired of it.
I do not want relationships in which I can bring only the most convenient version of myself.
I want to be able to say:
that hurt me.
And perhaps the other person will disagree.
That is fine.
But I do not want to be told that saying it was the problem.
Saying that something hurt us does not mean we are always right. It simply means we have the right to talk about it.
Who stays
These days, I use the word friendship a little more carefully.
A friend is not the person who goes out with you every Saturday.
Not the one who knows the most details.
Not even the one who tells you at four in the morning that you are family.
It is the person in front of whom you do not always have to sparkle.
You can be tired.
Boring.
Fragile.
You can even give the wrong answer.
“You alright, mate?”
“Not great, to be honest.”
And this time, nothing spectacular happens.
Nobody runs away.
Nobody says no drama.
They stay.