Couldn’t sleep last night. And I don’t sleep much at night anymore since crossing over into the world of freelancing. A mix of too many things on my mind and too many concerns about what the future will hold and how life will be.
But last night there was one fundamental reason: my best friend.
We used to call each other “my heterosexual life partner” because ever since our first year of college up in North Jersey, that’s how it was. As we progressed through college we both found ourselves knee deep in the political science department, both admiring similar professors and strategically ending up in the same classes. It used to be my task to bring candy just in case the man needed a little boost during class. And as those years progressed, we always lived somewhere near each other.. on campus, off campus, never a dull moment with my boy D.
As college came to end we both went to europe for a semester. Him, interestingly enough to Amsterdam, and myself down in Aix-en-Provence. Naturally we visited each other and took turns showing our respective international student worlds. Not soon after we both finished our student life in New Jersey and the man ended up working for a very prominent human rights organization in DC. Myself I worked as a waiter in NYC, with aspirations of either being a freelancer for the then-still-alternative Voice or flat out taking off to live in Portugal. Portugal won that contest.
It was around that time, 2001/2002 that I launched this here blog. It was a place for my opinions on current events, as well as for telling personal stories… like this one. And underneath it all, it was the perfect way to continue the daily conversations and debates that D and I always had have. In a time when no one had heard of a blog and certainly not this one, he was there commenting… sometimes the only one.. and in my eyes the most important one anyway. Years went by.. and this blog changed.. I changed.. moved to Amsterdam.. and he also made big changes.. climbing the DC non governmental ladder (or thats how I saw it). Every year I’d go back to Jersey…. and he’d offer to pay my ticket for me to come down to DC and spend some days with him. And so it has been.. year after year.
But last night threw me off.. tho perhaps I should have been more aware of things. As lately I’ve been attacking those that celebrate the results of the recent US elections. I try very hard to stick to very strict expectations for the country of my birth, obviously you’ve noticed that I hate stopping to celebrate anything when in my eyes.. things are so disappointingly far behind where they could and should be. Somewhere in there I forgot some things.. most importantly my buddy who has been working very hard on a campaign in Virginia. Yesterday it was finally announced the candidate for which he had worked so hard for had won. And here I was, making my heavy statements, denouncing the entire outcome… I hadn’t (and should have) considered that in doing so I was insulting his hard work. It’s easy to insult strangers in vague sweeping statements, and I certainly do it, but last night I got to thinking about D and what Id been saying lately. Nevermind arguements and values and words… I was utterly depressed to read the angry and condemning words of the man I still think of as my partner in this life.
So here I sit in Brussels. Took the long train ride to come see family and feel loved… because I was hoping to find answers or at least clear my head. But I couldn’t NOT write these thoughts and these feelings. If you read the comments yesterday than you’ll see the statement that he won’t be reading this anymore. I don’t know if its a coincidence but he hasn’t responded to any emails either. While I can picture him yelling at me for writing this and being so dramatic… I’m willing to take that risk just to have this out there and stated.
Having already said too much Ill stop here. The point of this is not to make someone like me more than him, or justify anything Ive done. The point is for me to write how sad I am because I may have just alienated one of my oldest friends and a constant source of inspiration.