You know, one of the funny parts of being a gay man in just about any city in America is that, eventually, you'll probably swap boyfriends with somebody you know. It's sort of like how on "Dawson's Creek" or "Friends" or "Felicity" (or just about any other sitcom, drama, or WB production) where there are only a limited number of cast members who must find new and interesting ways to mix up who's having sex with whom. Same rules apply to the gay dating world (apparently).
A year ago I was very close friends with L, a girl I worked with, and her gay friend, N. Just a few months earlier I had broken up with my boyfriend, B, whom I had been with for three years (from age seventeen to twenty, spanning the end of high school and the beginning of college) and I was spending quite a bit of time with Josh K., L, and N.
Over the course of the next year I started to lose touch with L and N, not because anything was wrong, but just because we were all extraordinarily busy with school and our own lives.
Last week, however, one of my friends informed me that she'd seen L and N, my two good friends with whom I'd started to lose touch, out on the town with my long-term ex-boyfriend, B.
To make a long story short, not only were L, N, and B hanging out, but L and B had become regular drinking buddies and--here's the clincher--N and B have now been dating for a month.
I laughed and laughed when I found out. They're the most unlikely pair. Imagining N and B having sex is difficult to do and, mostly, just inspires immature giggling. But I found it even weirder that my two friends were hanging out with my ex-boyfriend and that my ex was now dating one of them.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that a few months after B and I broke up that he was asking me if Josh K. was single and available for dating?
That's right. Mr. Three Year Boyfriend wanted to date my best friend, right after we'd broken up. Classy, hmmm? I told him, with careful and kind words, that he could go fuck himself.
But I guess if you can't nail my best friend you've got to at least start going through my outer ring of friends, right? ;)
No, seriously, maybe that sounds venomous, but it's not really a big deal. Mostly I just find it funny. But my friend V finds the whole situation "trashy" and "scandalous." "The gay world is not that small," she said to me on the phone. "Can't N find anybody else?"
But maybe the gay world is that small after all.
Anyhow, I went out and had a drink with all of them on Saturday night at Red Dragon and Rudolph's on Lyndale Avenue. It was totally fine. The weirdest part was realizing that I was a complete stranger with B, this guy who'd been one of the most important people in my life for years. But on Saturday I realized that, if I had been meeting him for the first time that night, we probably wouldn't even have been friends or had anything to talk about. I think that's the most troubling part of the whole thing--how former lovers can become perfect strangers.
