FREDDY
I met Adam at theatre school. He had the thickest head of hair the colour of glistening honey
When I was a kid, every Sunday my family went to church. The service would begin with all the families together. A few hymns were sung, and before the Minister began his oration, he would call on the children from the congregation to come join him in the front. All the kids would sit around him at the steps in front of the alter, slightly prettified and intimidated. He would say a few words directly to us and when he was done, someone would come to take us down to the nursery for Sunday School.
Most of the time we would just play different games and run around till the adults were done upstairs, but sometimes someone would read to us, mostly stories from the Bible: Eve eating the fruit of knowledge, Noah’s Ark etc. A children's book that would often be read was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It was about a little boy who befriends a tree who loves him with all his heart. As the boy grows up, the tree continues to love him as best he can because it makes him happy. When the boy is a teenager and falls in love with a girl, he tree lets the boy carve a heart into his trunk with their initials, when the boy needs to build a house for his family, the tree lets him cut down his branches to build a house. There comes a time when the tree barely sees the boy anymore because he’s raising his family. The trees has become nothing more than a stump. But one day the boy comes back to the tree as a very old man. His wife is gone and his kids are grown. He’s tired and lonely, but the tree has nothing left of himself to give. He invites the boy to sit on him and rest. The story ends with the tree feeling happy again, reunited with the boy as an old man.
*****
I met Adam at theatre school. He had the thickest head of hair the colour of glistening honey. I harboured a secret jealousy toward him. His symmetrical face, unblemished pink skin (slightly tanned by days in the sun) and perfectly straight teeth that he continually flashed every time he smiled made everyone instantly smitten. I was certain his pretty-privilege would land him the biggest roles at the end of year productions, which of course, it did.
Because he was new, everyone was wondering if he was gay or not. My classmates kept asking me if I could tell because I came out the year before. When I came out, my parents didn’t talk with me for three months. It was a fucked up, lonely time, but it got better. I couldn’t tell if Adam was gay but since he hadn’t made any obvious indications that he was, I assumed he was straight. That was until I saw him outside the theatre one day before school, smoking a cigarette. I don’t know what changed that day but before entering the school, we locked eyes and he grinned and gave me a wink. For the next few weeks, any time I saw him smoking out front he would wink at me and I would wink back. Sometimes there would be a nod. Eventually we just started saying hello. One day Adam asked me if I smoked weed and I said that I did. He had all this shit weed that he got from his older brother and wondered if I wanted to hang out, maybe go over some lines or practice some monologues. Trying not to sound too excited, I said sure. I started to wonder, was he gay after all?
That night he did end up coming out to me. Maybe there was something about me that made him feel safe to be himself. He had never told anyone before and it was something so scary to admit that he started to cry. I really felt for the guy. I knew how difficult it was to come out and I was touched that he felt comfortable enough to tell me. I told him it would get easier. That this was the first step. Before I left, he hugged me tightly and kissed me on the neck. All night I laid awake in bed wondering if the kiss could have led to something more.
We hung out steadily after that. Eventually everyone just assumed that Adam was gay because he was spending so much time with me. No official announcement was needed, it was a theatre school after all. I gave him my time, took him to the gay village for the first time and showed him my favourite coffee spot. I recommended some books I liked and gay movies he should watch. I took him to the porn shop where we looked at different DVD covers and Calendars with naked men in them to get a sense of what kind of men he was sexually attracted to. Not surprising, his type was “college frat-boy with blonde-brown hair who looked like he started the day doing a hundred push-ups”.
Within a few weeks I was taking him out clubbing where people in the scene would eye him like fresh meat. We’d often hold hands as I guided him through the crowd and dance looking into each other’s eyes, smiling every time a song we recognized would come through the speakers. Our kisses at the end of the night would be tiny pecks on the mouth, but nothing more. I was crushing hard but I also I felt like I made a true gay friend. Someone I actually started to think could be something more. Even my classmates started to take notice. “You two look good together,” Brenda said during a ten-minute break during a run-through.
I became Adam’s emotional support, his confidante, his therapist, his number one fan. Any time he wanted to hang out I would drop everything and meet up with him. If he wanted to rehearse lines I was happy to be his scene partner, when I went to the café to buy myself a latte I bought one for him as well.
Two weeks before the opening of the end of year show, Dave got mono and he was replaced by Logan, a recent graduate who already had a semi-recurring role on a television series. He was just Adam’s type. I mean let’s be honest, Logan was basically an Abercrombie model who happened to have a photogenic memory and a baritone voice built for the stage; he was everyone’s type. Even though he wasn’t gay, he loved attention and loved smoking pot and playing pool even more. Once Logan joined our cast, it was apparent that I was the stepping stone for Adam to be more comfortable in his skin and to take ownership of his identity. Once that happened, Logan became a kind of hot older brother, someone he could aspire to be. Adam had a new friend and over night I was out of the picture.
The month long run of the show was brutal for me. I shared a dressing room with five other guys in the cast, including Logan and Adam. By then they were tied at the hip, sharing inside jokes and bro hugs and always leaving together after the show. Rarely did Adam and I have any time alone in the dressing room and if we did we didn't acknowledge each other at all. I was too angry to even address him and he was too embarrassed by how he handled the end of our friendship, which was basically to pretend that it never happened in the first place.
At the closing party Adam brought a guy he was seeing, someone slightly older than us with a similar build to Logan. Any delusional ideas that he would somehow fall in love with me or that we would become friends again completely vanished. I spent most of the party crying with Brenda in the girl’s bathroom. We left the party just as I saw Adam and his date making out in the corner. She took me to Dunkin’ Donuts and we ate a dozen donuts between the two of us.
After graduation I heard that Adam got signed to Logan’s agency. He broke up with the guy he was seeing and headed to L.A. where he briefly married a famous hair stylist to one of those Reality-Star Housewives. They had a pretty public divorce after six months but the publicity put him on the map and now he’s starring in a Sci-Fi series filming in Vancouver. My career went nowhere. I had to work at Starbucks to pay the bills. Brenda met a Dutch actor and moved to Amsterdam and I went to visit her which is how I ended up in Holland.
I like Bas, I really do. But I can’t get caught up in something like Adam again. It was too hard and it hurt too much. Every time Bas and I hang out I feel my heart opening more and more. Hanging out with him feels like an amazing bike ride through the city with nothing but green lights. I can feel it going and going, all the way into the future. He hardly ever mentions Sanne but when he does it’s a reminder that they’re still together and that he’s straight. Brenda says it’s totally diabolical that I still fall for straight guys, a symptom of my internalized homophobia. I can’t seem to find a gay man that I’m attracted to and when I do, it never seems to last.
When I’m with Bas old feelings for Adam start to stir. That’s why when he asked me to spend the weekend at his parent’s place near Utrecht I said no. I can’t meet his parents! I have to keep this casual. He’s never going to love me the way I want to be loved and I refuse to be someone’s giving tree. I gave so much of my love to someone who was never going to reciprocate. I told myself never again.
Sometimes when Adam’s face pops up on my Instagram feed or in a random magazine article I think about The Giving Tree. I fucking hate that book. I refuse to be someone’s stump.