Noom, my bar boy friend and current love of my life, is not a happy camper. In fact, right now he is a bit disgruntled with me. Which doesn’t bode well for my upcoming trip to Thailand. But I think he’ll get over it before then. Maybe when I land in Bangkok I’ll find his feelings have healed by the anodyne of time and faded to a mild irritation. Which, I suspect, is not an uncommon state when we’re together anyway.

It’s been a good – long – year since I’ve updated y’all on my current love life, or as I like to refer to it: the on-going train wreck my love life has become. Oh wait. It’s only been a month. My how time flies. If I’d been smart, I woulda taken this long to update Noom too. Or waited until I hit Bangkok. But that would have meant ignoring his emails, his text messages, and his phone calls. Which there have been lots of. Noom has been earnestly and persistently attempting to inculcate virtue in my soul from a distance, and none too pleased to suddenly find he’s dealing with a recalcitrant who in the past always appeared to be willing to be swayed by whatever breeze he sent my way. He would have had better luck if he’d told me his buffalo had died.

It’s not that we haven’t had the occasional disagreement before, nor that something I did didn’t quite sit right with him. And vice versa. But being guys we usually ignore those disagreements, or razz each other unmercifully over whatever faux pas one of us committed. No relationship functions or survives under the burden of total honesty, and we’ve both adopted a policy of lying through omission to keep ours free from turmoil. It doesn’t hurt that Noom, being Thai, tends to avoid confrontation wherever possible, obviating the necessity for untruths. It does, however, at times make holding a conversation less than productive.

“I tink Phil better for you.”

“You’re probably right. But I love Dave. With Phil I was still working up to that.”

“I lie Phil.”

“I know. I like Phil too. He’s a great guy. But you like Dave too, don’t you?”

“How you mom?”

Friends who know both Dave and Phil, some who know one and have only met the other, have all weighed in on who I should be with. If I were a politician who takes his cues from Harris polls, I’d be in bed with Phil right now. But none of those opinions have been exactly unbiased. Even Ann, whom I usually listen to both because she’s sharp and quickly gets to the heart of any matter and because I’m afraid she’ll bitch slap me silly if I fail to heed her advice, offered a reading on the situation stemming solely from her disenchantment with Dave – spanning decades – over remaining closeted, even to himself, when the brass ring (that’d be me) has always been within his grasp. She weighed in on Team Phil’s side too, even though she only met Phil once and for a very brief period of time at that. But her opinion was about revenge rather than forgiveness. Which being from Texas makes perfect sense. If there’s one thing Texans do well, it’s revenge.

I hadn’t expected there to be many fans of Dave; with Dave you always get Dave, unapologetically, warts and all. He’s a black and white kind of guy. You always know where you stand with him, and where he stands too. There’s a basic honesty about how he lives his life, which is one of the things I’ve always admired about him. As difficult as that may be for some, at times, to take. But I hadn’t expected so many of my gay friends to be willing to nail him to a cross over his late blooming openness about his sexuality either. We all come out to our friends, family, and to ourselves at our own speed. That process is something the majority of gay people share. So I expected a bit more compassion and understanding from those who’d gone through that rite of passage themselves.

The general feeling, however, was that Dave had been surreptitious about his sexuality all of these years, that he had not been the man he’d pretended to be. I know a lot of that resentment from my friends is about those wasted years – because they’ve said so – although the logic is a bit off: Dave should have come out years ago so that the two of you would have been together, so we think you should stick with Phil. Huh. They’re also flummoxed over why I’m not mourning the years we could have been together and weren’t too. But in truth, I believe Dave himself did not know the identity of the man who lived inside him. That may have been denial, but knowing Dave as I do it’s just as likely, if not more so, that being gay was just not something that registered with him. That never gelled with the vision he had of himself, of the man he felt he was. Or expected himself to be. And I don’t think that is unique to Dave either. Coming out to ourselves is often the first hurdle gay people deal with. It just took him a lot longer than most.

So Noom’s opinion mattered both because he’s not gay and would hopefully not be swayed by displeasure over some other gay dude’s timing for coming out, and because he’s the only friend who has spent time naked in bed with both Phil and Dave. Even without sex, there is a level of intimacy in that act that tends to strip a lot of pretensions away. I was also counting on his lack of ulterior motives or preconceived notions, and that it would be my best interests that ruled the day. Besides, Noom and Dave had already established whose dick was bigger, and had agreed on a pecking order.

“When you come see me in Bangkok?”

“In a few weeks.”

“You come wit Phil?”

“No, maybe I come with Dave.”

“Oh. I tink better you come wit Phil.”

“That wouldn’t work well. I think I’m gonna be with Dave.”

“You not listen what I tell you.”

“No, I did. I do. But Dave is who makes my heart soar.”

“Oh. Why he hurt you heart?”

“No, soar . . . means happy.”

“Oh. Dave gay.”

“Yeah, he is now.”

“Dave ever gay.”

“Yeah, I know. You told me. All things considered though, that works well.”

“I tink Phil lie Chiang Mai.”

“I’m sure he would, but Dave will too.”

“Okay. You come wit Phil.”

Time isn’t always innocuous in its passage. When Noom and I met he decided, immediately and deeply, I was someone who belonged in his life. At some early point in our relationship, unknown to me, I’d performed some act that he viewed as being both kind and strong; Noom believed I was someone special, probably because I was older, better educated, and wise in the ways of the world, someone both confident and reassuring who seemed capable of dismissing or solving problems in a magical fashion. When he reminisces about those days, he waxes poetically. But as with Homeric epic, it’s not good to examine one’s heroes too closely. I don’t think it’s so much about familiarity breeding contempt as it is that once a while, even the slowest of us has an epiphany, a brief glimpse through the scrim when we see the verities reduced to a simple equation. There was a time Noom would never have the temerity to question my decisions. But he’s come to realize the simple truth that I’m just human too. And while his inveterate kindness still always shines through, he’s become more willing to correct me when he thinks I’m wrong. Or tries to.

“How Phil?”

“Phil’s fine.”

“You satay wit Phil now?”

“No Noom, I’m with Dave now.”

“Oh. I tell you better you satay with Phil.”

“I know. But I’m with Dave.”

“I lie Dave.”

“Good. I know Dave likes you too.”

“I lie Phil better.”

“I call Phil now.”

“That would be good. I’m sure Phil would love to hear from you.”

“I ask Phil come see me in Bangkok wit you.”

“Okay. Then you pay for Phil’s plane ticket.”

“Okay. You sent me money.”

“Noom, seriously, Phil is not coming to Bangkok. Dave is.”

“Better you come wit Phil.”

“That’s not happening, Noom.”

“Okay. Dave lub you. It okay.”

Dave and I just got back from Hawaii, a trip I dubbed his coming out tour of the islands. He wasn’t obligated to actually come out to any of his, mine, or our friends. Or to tell anyone we’d officially become a couple. Just being together promised to be enough. But when we hooked up with Rick, a close friend of Dave’s since they’d been in college together, it took Rick about five seconds to laugh and say, “It’s about time the two of you got together.”

That’s pretty much how the entire week went. Dave had been worrying over whether or not he should or would tell anyone, and instead everyone did it for him. I think, like with most of us, he found that most of his friends already knew or suspected he was gay. And all of them were just happy that he’d finally come to that conclusion too. Or as his friend Chris put it, “Bra, all we been hearing is Rush this, Rush that – you been fawning over the dude for years. At least now we don’t have to hear you acting like a little girl with a crush no mo’.”

I think I like Dave’s friends more than my own.

But the real test will be in a few weeks when we land in Bangkok. Dave was worried about being accepted in Hawaii, he’s stressing out over facing Noom. And while I don’t hold his prolonged acceptance of himself against him, I do get a bit of joy out of the fact that thanks to that he now gets to deal with a bar boy in Thailand who may not be quite so willing to welcome him with open arms. And I haven’t even yet mentioned to Dave what our sleeping arrangement might be when we arrive in the kingdom.

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