"No way you can stop me Bro," he grinned and went into the office. I stayed on the sidewalk and seethed.
It wasn't that I was entirely opposed to Joe as a roommate. In fact if I was honest about it, he was the only person I knew that I'd even consider moving in with. But even as the thought entered my head, I knew it would never work.
After that first Thanksgiving at school, we had remained friends. He'd continued to visit at the hospital and, when I was released, he'd drop down the hall to see me and get away as he said, from the assholes, his pet name for the huge circle of friends who always seemed to congregate in his room. I was not part of that circle. It was an unspoken understanding between us that I did not intrude on that part of his life.
I know, that sounds like Joe was the biggest asshole of them all. But you have to understand this was just as much my choice as his. And my reasons were far more selfish. Simply put, I liked having Joe's undivided attention when we were together.
So even though at first, he'd politely tried to include me in get-togethers with his friends, we'd settled into a routine that pretty much kept our relationship exclusive, if limited. We would meet for a beer maybe once a week, in my room if Carl was out, or down at one of the local watering holes otherwise. And every Sunday afternoon we'd head to the library to study and shoot the shit with the emphasis on the shit part.
As for the fallout I'd expected from our being friends well, it just never happened. Amazing isn't it. Just when you think you've come to grips with the inequities of life, something nice happens. I'd been prepared for sneers, fights, at the very least an innuendo or two, but it never came. Instead of insults, the only response I ever got from one of his friends was an occasional clap on the back and a 'Hi Mike, how's it going dude?' Really took the wind out of my sails, I can tell you.
My Mom did actually meet him on her next visit to campus the spring of my freshman year. Like every other woman who knew him, she was utterly charmed by his boyish smile and kind eyes. He hit it off with my Dad too, and arranged for him to play a round of golf with Beau, something he still talks about to this day.
My brothers, of course, idolized him. Especially, after he took a Saturday afternoon to show them around the stadium including a trip to the team's lockers and training rooms. When he gave each of them a team football complete with autographs they were speechless for almost 15 minutes and forgot to keep up their constant bickering.
Even Sarah forgot her Ms Cool act around Joe and she giggled and chattered with an unconscious delight nobody had seen in her since she hit puberty. To this day, she has a framed picture I took of the two of them, by her bed. They're in front of our dorm, their arms wrapped around each other as they stick out their tongues at the camera. At the bottom is Joe's autograph and the picture is addressed, 'To Sarah, the little sister I always dreamed of having, Joe'.
I met his folks too, on several occasions. They would take us to dinner and his father, Bill, an older, darker version of his son, would argue about politics, telling us our liberal views would fade with time and success. Joe's mother, Alice, would roll her eyes and take our side and tease her husband until we would all be laughing so hard the other diners would stare.
Things would only get serious again when the talk came around to Josh, Joe's brother. Then Bill's face would turn somber and he'd sit there silently while Alice showed Joe his brother's letters and the pictures he would sometimes send home.
Bill didn't like it that his son was to be a priest. Joe told me when Josh had announced his decision his father had gone into a rage. When Josh had tried to make him understand that he felt God needed him, Bill's response was that he needed him too.
Bill and Alice had always planned on a big family but an ectopic pregnancy had ended those hopes and almost ended Alice's life. Bill had accepted that, but he'd only postponed the need for family.
Now it was grandchildren he craved and Josh's choice of vocation had cut his chances in half. He had struggled to come to terms with his loss and his love for his son had allowed him to do so. But he would never be able to actually take pleasure in his son's choice.
As for Josh, I never met him when we were in college. The seminary he'd picked was strict and his vacations were short and limited to brief visits to Chicago. Occasionally Joe would read me a passage out of his letters or tell me stories of them when they were kids. I only knew Josh as a rumor. A boy with the face of my friend, but a soul and an identity I couldn't begin to imagine.
But not so Joe; as the years passed, we forged a bond that would be necessary later when events would take us to the extraordinary places we'd never imagined would be our fate. I think of those first three years of our friendship as the foundation of our lives. It is thick and tough and built of words and ideas that solidified into the basis of the men we are today.
We talked about everything, covered every topic imaginable, politics, religion, the validity of big time wrestling, nothing was off limits. Well, almost nothing.
We never talked about sex. Which is amazing when you remember that we were in our late teens, early twenties, a time in life when the normal male conversation always ends up being about sex. How you liked it, where you found it, when you'd had it last, when you were going to get some more...
With Joe and I, the subject was strictly off limits. When he was still dating Betsy he'd occasionally mention her name, but Betsy, like Jenny, was now ancient history. She'd graduated our sophomore year and had moved to San Francisco to experience the whole, big city lifestyle.
But even when she was there, I didn't get involved. I saw her once in a while, on campus or around town, sometimes with Joe, sometimes not. We'd wave or make nice for a few minutes but we never recaptured the intimacy we'd known in the hospital. When she left, I thought Joe would want to talk about it, but he never offered and I never asked.
He didn't seem very broken up over it though. We only had a couple more weeks to go before the end of the semester and he seemed to enjoy his new found, freedom, celebrating with a never ending round of parties and plenty of flirting, though no one replaced Betsy as far as I could tell.
He started dating seriously again when we returned for our junior year. Joe wasn't the kind of guy who was comfortable without a girlfriend. I couldn't help but be aware of it. Shit, there was always some girl hanging all over him, and always a few more waiting in the wings playing understudy.
I'd see him with somebody at a game or at some bar afterwards and we'd acknowledge each other with a nod or maybe meet while fetching drinks. But he never introduced me, never slipped their names into a conversation, never bitched about girl problems in our weekly bull sessions.
As for me, I have to admit I was conducting my own sexual adventures. Joe had told me that Ann Arbor was a wide-open town; he had no idea how right he was. From leather to lace, gay is an established, and for the most part, accepted lifestyle in that educational Mecca. Now I fully admit, I'm a strictly vanilla kind of guy, even then. But I was young, far away from home and the disapproving eyes of my parents and very, very available.
What you expect me to say for Christ's sake! That I sat in my room every night and pined for the straight guy? Not a chance. Okay, so I loved the guy. So what. He was straight; I was gay, end of discussion.
Even in high school, I'd always thought it was stupid when a group of my gay friends would get together and start yaking about how hot some hetero was and how wonderful it would be if they could get him into bed. My contention had always been that if we were so vocal about people needing to accept us for what we were, then how could we turn around and talk about forcing our choices on somebody else.
Ironic as shit isn't it? Hoisted on my own petard, whatever the Hell that means.
So, I put my feelings for Joe into a box and shoved it to the back of my mind. I tried to never take it out except sometimes, in the dark, late at night, when my hand would reach for my cock and my fingers would curl around the wood. I'd remember and I'd imagine that it was another hand that stroked me and I'd groan silently and whisper his name and I would cum.
In the morning, I would shove the box and it's temptations away again and I would go on with the life that was reality, not wishful thinking. And when I would see Joe, I would clap him on the back and call him dude and never, not for a moment, did I ever let on that my knees had turned to water and my heart was doing somersaults while my lungs filled with the aroma that was his alone.
At first I thought I would go crazy from the deception. But as the days turned into weeks, I would take the box out less and less and my knees began to stiffen and my heartbeat slowed and one day I realized it had been months since I'd thought of Joe as anything but a friend. I was relieved but curiously empty too.
Such is the perversity of the human condition. The drive to love, to connect, is so strong that any attraction, no matter how hopeless, fills us. I had crushed my sexual love for Joe, but I hadn't found anyone to replace him.
