Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
THE MEANING OF A GAY FRIENDSHIP
#1
Hi Project,

at the beginning of 2017 I thought: new year old life, not only in the sense that nothing would have changed, but in the sense of a life old man style. Things have changed a bit today. Last night we exchanged a few words in chat. I'm a little younger than you, but the way is that. I have long since stopped looking for a partner. In the course of my life I've had only one, he was a good man, we were already over 50 and we got together, I don’t even know why, with the usual illusion that putting together two desperations, something good can come out. 

For a while it worked, then he started to feel bad, but not on a psychological level, he had big health problems, it was an ordeal from one hospital to another and after six months of genuine anguish he was gone, he left at age 54. After that story, I said: that’s enough. I never wanted to live situations like that again, because they are really destructive: you see that the person you love is going from bad to worse day after day and you only hope that everything ends soon, because you know very well that there aren’t other possibilities. 

Then, after it happened, a tremendous period of emptiness came to me. Fortunately I worked and I could not let myself go to the melancholy. But when I came home I felt damned alone and discouraged. I no longer have relationships with my family of origin, my parents are dead, my brother lives abroad and we no longer call each other neither for Christmas. In short, I felt desperately alone, and then I was already old and the idea of starting over again I did not have it anymore. I had no objects of my partner. He didn’t write anything, we did not exchange gifts or something, we just lived together. After it happened I gave away his things, everything, basically clothes, he had no valuables of any kind and he used an old mobile phone that he never wanted to change. 

My house is now perfect: everything is almost maniacally standardized. I made an archive with all the papers that can be useful, from those of the condominium to the medical ones. I do everything to myself: wash, iron, clean the house, which is very easy, because I use paper dishes and at most I have to wash two small pots a day. In short, the house is all well arranged but it is empty, just me, indeed it would be better to say that I live there "alone". Every now and then I read something gay, your forum but also others, and I am shocked by certain stories of the elderly man acting like young guys, that is, old people who have not yet understood that for them the ride of carousel, as Tiziano Terzani said, is almost finished. 

I don’t know what will remain of me. My partner is gone, so no one will have real memories of a bit of life really lived with me ... and I have not done anything meaningful that is worth remembering, you could say "an unimportant gay", and I feel just like that, let's say it's my stable tone of mood for years now. But, as I told you at the beginning, lately something has changed, I met, for work reasons, a thirty year old gay guy and we became friends, I underline it, only friends. We see each other very rarely, but it often happens that we talk by phone or on Skype. 

It is not a love story, he is a nice guy but I am very far from the idea of any strong involvement and he (this is really evident) has his own affective and sexual life that involves him in good or bad in a profound way. For him I'm just a friend, an older friend but just a friend. In a year, he came to my house no more than four or five times, and he always stayed shortly. He had lunch with me only once. It would all seem very trivial, but it is not at all. Now, through him, I am discovering so many things that I never imagined. 

According to my classic logic, at 60 you are depressed, but at 30 you jump of joy, this is what I thought, then I realized that being 30 years old is much more beautiful at 60 than at 30, and that guy, I will call him Lucas, has a thousand problems, some are just his own, are problems of character that it’s difficult to overcome, but many others derive from misunderstandings, and psychological games of various people he meets. 

I'm beginning to understand what the true life of a thirty year old gay guy is, which is certainly abysmally different from mine, because he still wants to fight and still believes in love, while I gave up for some time and threw in the towel without regrets. In our phone calls he talks to me about his troubles. He has the work that a little distracts him, because he works at an excellent level in the world of scientific research, but when, in the evening, he comes home he feels alone, and then he calls me and we chat a lot. 

I wondered why he decided to take me seriously, because he really takes me seriously, then maybe he does the opposite of what I would have done. He has no real gay friends, just acquaintances he hardly ever meets, with me, on the other hand, the evening phone call is now something recurrent, every day if he feels particularly bad, or every two or three days. He feels rejected by the guys who really interest him and is affected by a thousand complexes, blaming himself for everything. 

Between us there is not a real familiarity, when I speak with him I always fear to cross the limit, to use words or even affectionate tones that seem out of place. I never invite him to come to my house and I assume now that it cannot be otherwise. Our real bond is the telephone, about an hour in the evening, almost every evening. What can this guy bring in himself? He tells me that he doesn’t feel conditioned by me because he feels that I am not afraid of him, but after all it is not so true, because with him I don’t feel so free and I measure words. 

I know that unfortunately I cannot do anything useful for him, I listen, I never change the subject, I leave to him as much space as possible. It's a strange friendship, I don’t understand exactly what sense it can have but I think there's a sense that otherwise it would not go ahead. I am perfectly aware that a friendship of this kind will last until Lucas doesn’t have a boyfriend and frankly I hope that he will soon be able to find one as he wishes. When Lucas will be fine, I will feel alone once more, the ephemeral consistency of this relationship cannot empty it of its meaning. 

Not receiving Lucas phone calls would mean that he was able to rebuild his emotional world. He is not very confident that it can really happen, he has built slowly, by virtue of more or less disappointing experiences, a cuirass made of cynicism and he says that his cynicism has melted only a couple of times, when he has really believed to fall in love. Lucas is not an easy person, he is tormented inside, he is very insecure even if he is a scientist, he tends to give up immediately, to throw himself away, not to believe in himself, I think he has stopped dreaming for years, admitted and not granted that he has ever dreamed, probably, in spirit, he's older than me. 

This is my life now. At least I feel useful to someone and it’s not a little thing. Do you have any suggestions, Project? Of course you can post the email where you want, because there are no sensitive elements. Thank you for the Project, which is a really useful thing even at my age.

Barto
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)