In high school I had several crushes and one longer friendship-relationship.
Marcello
The crushes were one guy Marcello——who was White in a predominantly Latino/Black school so he stood out. he was super friendly and spent a lot of time in the gym working out so he was very handsome. I think we all had a fondness for him. He wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack I remember.
Omar
Then there was Omar, who was short, dark skinned——Jamaican I think—-and a bit of an asshole. There was an arrogance about him. One day, I knew that he took the subway back and forth form school to home, I got on the train with him, took it all the way from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and finally got off with him, where he asked was I following him—-luckily my mother worked near the stop in Manhattan so I was bale to fake out going to meet her. I think what I found attractive about him was his intelligence, he was a year ahead of me. The way he spoke up and challenged teachers and ideas. But my most distinct impression of him was that he was an asshole. I didn’t find him incredibly physically attracted, I think I liked his assertiveness as sexy.
Juan
Then there was Juan. We had a pool at my high school so about 15 of us went swimming every day. Juan looked 25 to my 15 and we changed in facing stalls that didn’t have shower curtains. I remember him taking the stall across from me constantly and changing from a Speedo to his clothes. Juan, I now believe having faked his way into high school after immigrating from some Latin American nation—-was six feet, a full six pack, a beautiful deep honey complexion and had a mustache and goatee.
He was simply beautiful.
But he didn’t speak much English (hence, why he was probably hiding out from the Sandinistas in high school.) I remember one day walking alongside him the long blocks to the train station and thinking to myself I should invite him to come home with me.
But it never occurred to me that high school, male to male, male to female, was a hotbed of sexual activity and that all was required was an invite. And that’s what he was doing constantly, slowly getting naked in the stall across from mine, making sure I was watching….teasing for an invite.
John
Then there was John, my best friend. I remember him, and answered this question because I saw an elevator technician wearing the exact sweatpants, John wore when I first met him. I was sitting on the sidelines in gym class when John came over, with a basketball and asked did I want to play? He was wearing the brightest yellow sweatpants, I’d ever seen. John was at least 6′4, full goatee (lots of facial hair at my high school), curly hair, handsome Latino with a broad smile. Neither of us played basketball but we tried, and became fast friends. It was maybe a year of us arranging to have classes together, doing things together, joining school clubs together, where I realized that I both liked and was in love with my best friend.
About John I will say that he was simply a good person. One of the best I’ve ever known. He was smart, mature, wise and yet funny and accepting in a way that I hadn’t met in other teenagers. One day i was sitting at our college extension class (that I’d wrangled him into) and I was listening to a CD, Patti LaBelle singing “If Only You Knew” and I started crying. He came over, deeply concerned for me, refusing to leave demanding answers about why I was so upset. I didn’t tell him. He was upset that I would be so upset and not share with him. It took us a few weeks to really have a conversation.
Awhile later, I started working at A&S Department store in Manhattan as a part-time sales associate. Because it was salary and commission based I started making first a couple of hundred and then as much as $1000 a week, at 17–18. Of course I shared my largesse with john. I took him to the Brooklyn store and bought him sneakers—-I knew that his family was poorer than mine, now me but he was my bestie so I got him the sneakers—-which freaked both of our mother’s out. Mine because they were like $100, and his because I had several credit cards—-Mastercard & Visa, a checking and savings account and line of credit, including the store card, and had bought something so expensive for him.
Then one day I was buying groceries after school for home, he accompanied me, and with a cart full of groceries we got on the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan——left at 3 PM and stayed out all night. We went to the movies, ate dinner, walked around and in the middle of the night, walking along the West Side—-I demanded he tell me how he felt about me…and he told me that he loved me. We clarified friendship love and romantic love, him telling me that he suspected/knew I probably wasn’t heterosexual and for awhile we worked on having a friendship-relationship. While it didn’t work out, mainly because we were both 18 and evolving, developing sexualities—-I felt supremely guilty leaving high school—-I would have been held back 1 semester for credits from NJ and not NY, not enough to graduate, if I had stayed so I got my GED (and was 4 points shy of a perfect score!)
He was working by then, at a library job making $35 a week, to keep in line with his mother’s Welfare, I remember. When we argued/broke up, at first I was suicidal and took a bunch of OTC sleep aids—-having never done drugs, felt it making me sleepy and actually rushed myself to a nearby hospital. The worst, yet most dramatic suicide attempt ever. lol
The doctor told my mother, who read my diary and understood my friendship with John then, that I needed support in my relationships/sexuality. Because I had money I could leave school and still help pay the mortgage and bills, get my GED. The deep difference between John and I, the relationship rift was he came from poverty, and I was middle class—-I see that now. For years I felt deeply guilty for having left him, a few years later I went off to college upstate. I knew that I was his—-ticket—-the one who had pulled him into school clubs where he was developing his technical and video/film skills and then to the college program I was recommended for, the next level for his camera skills—-I did the writing and directing, he did the cameras—-we were an amazing in-sync team for years doing productions. Sexuality got in the way because we deeply loved each other but didn’t know how to manage it and then how to manage boundaries and communicate.
I left him, cut him off and then let all my resources sweep me even farther away from him, a friend I cherished even more than my other best friend—-who later turned into a crazed trans person. lol
As I reflect, I realize John was the deeply healthy friendship that meandered into another romantic space but if I hadn’t of left, it had the strength to grow from there, into something truly special. I looked him up decades later—-he got married to a woman, had at least 2 children, never left the neighborhood. He’d never left Brooklyn nor his past New Jersey neighborhood, so our sojourns and his coming to college extension programs and to help with my mother’s business around the state—-was big for him, his family, in retrospect.
He was the one to have invested in, helped as I was. I was glad to share with him, it didn’t feel like control——ok, the refusal to give him carfare home until we admitted our feelings for one another that night—-total manipulation—-but we laughed and teased about it—-he was even wiser than me in how to use my new credit cards and money. He never tried to take advantage of my having so much money so young. I’m sure it hurt him when I left/cut him off and moved on, I’d moved by the time I recognized that mistake.
There is a whole other life, we both could’ve had, as friends, had we been able to negotiate the period of our romantic relationship and returned, to a deeper friendship—-we were simply too young. I guess in retrospect, thinking now about him, and a couple of others in my 20s, what has driven me to do so much work in sociology and psychology around sex and sexuality, was the confusion and confusion in communication, not understanding men and women. Yes, I’ve alleviated that, I’m much clearer on seeing people and much clearer on communicating but I wistfully think about how John and I had made one film together, music videos—-we could’ve really sailed off and done so much more.
I sailed off and yes, have continued my creative endeavors, and he didn’t—-working , support a family, eking out a living. I think, not in a hubristic way, but in a soulmate, beyond simply romantic way, that I was to get him out of the life he hated and I let my emotional confusion and selfishness get in the way.
I believe there are Life Points, where there are divergences based upon choice and he and I would’ve had more, different lives, because of the balance and enhancement we brought to the other. He was a good emotional regulator for me; while I had ambition, ideas, push and drive, his calmness girded me. So I could of course still shoot off, without him, learning how to balance myself over the decades, but he couldn’t shoot off without me. I didn’t realize what we so elegantly served the other with until years later comparing him to other friends’ silliness, immaturity.
I still miss him.
He was tall, 6′4, edging into handsome as he matured became more confident, masculine and manly but in a gentle way, thoughtful, sexy in a casual-shy way, smart, calm….the kind of teenager who could’ve become debonair in a tuxedo, a sure business partner, and close friend, and yes, to a man or woman, a great husband. Those are the things as I’ve matured that I find attractive—-pieces from the above guys, but most of the foundation, from the goodness John taught me about.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenix
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