F is for….

F is for Friends and Family.
Makes sense.One you choose to live with, the other you live with through no choice of your own.  Kinda like that big F over there…..one’s the family on the inside, one’s your friends, but they, your friends can feel more like family too.
Family….it’s funny when you think about it, it’s a group of people who through no fault of your own, you’re attached to your entire life.Most times they’re people that you don’t really have any connection to other than your genetic makeup.At least that seems to be the case with me and my family.I have three brothers, an older brother, a twin brother and a younger brother.They all have red hair, and none of them are like me in the least.My twin brother and my younger brother look the most alike, though they’re not really that similar now.Used to my little brother looked just like my twin.It was kinda freaky.My father….hmmm.I look like him, for the most part, at least I got his blue eyes and brown hair.He’s quiet, very reserved, or so that’s how he comes across.He’s very introverted.I get that from him too.The rest of my brothers take after my mother.At least physical appearance-wise.I was always odd man out where that was concerned but I’d much rather be blue eyed and dark haired,I guess.It’s funny growing up, I always thought about having my own family, I thought about what my kids were going to be like, what I was going to name them and all the rest.I had this girlfriend, if that’s what you want to call her, Her name was Ann Marie Kingston.There was this walkway bridge over the freeway where we lived and we would go there and sit and talk about what we were going to name our kids and so forth like that.Granted we were only in the 4^th grade but still, I was looking ahead, making plans.lol Of course, I should have known then that I was different from everybody else.Not that you’re supposed to be all about sex in the 4^th grade, but I remember one time, my twin and I were with her, and kissing came up and so I went in the bathroom and kissed her, and I still don’t remember what it felt like or anything even thinking about it right now.And then my brother went into the bathroom with her and I guess kissing wasn’t exactly on his mind, he wanted to see her naked.My brother is the evil twin by the way.He claims he kissed her too, though not on the lips….I’ll just leave the rest to your imagination.Needless to say she didn’t stay my girlfriend.LOL.I don’t know.I’m not like any of them, never have been.Night and day.And I get to be day.My mother always preferred my oldest and youngest brother.My twin being the evil twin that he was, was always a trouble maker, always doing things he shouldn’t have been doing.So whenever he got into trouble, I seemed to get lumped into it, merely because I was his twin.Plus being the middle child, especially a middle child where you had to share the position with another darker half, middle child syndrome all the way.
Friends on the other hand.I never really had that many friends, at least not growing up.I really didn’t try that hard to form attachments, for the reason that every year we moved to another place since my father was in the military.It wasn’t until high school, when my dad retired and joined the sheriff’s department that I seemed to have a concrete place to land.And by then I had a whole lifetime of living a completely different way that it was all new to me.Again, my brothers didn’t seem to have that problem at all.Whenever I made new friends, I had in the back of my mind the notion that they already had friends, friends that they’d had all their life, and I was like dropped in from out of the blue.It wasn’t the most wonderful of feelings, leaving me wishing that I had grown up in one place all my life and that I had that confidant and best friend that I could tell anything to, share anything with.Ican’t say that I’m completely over that whole feeling.
In the sixth grade, my twin and I became friends with another set of twins.Danny and Donny.They were more like us that I knew at the time of our first acquaintance.We moved after the 6^th grade but then we moved back to the area in the 9^th grade and our friendship started back up again.Danny was James’ best friend and Donny was mine.We were a lot alike, he and I, just as Danny and James were as well.All through high school we were friends.Donny was very unique and eccentric.He was an artist, an extremely good artist who would have probably been famous.But he committed suicide shortly after high school.He was gay and his family wasn’t exactly the uhm….what….I don’t know, they didn’t accept it.I suppose.This is all just conjecture on my part, but that was how I understood things.At the time, I was so far in the back of the closet I didn’t know it was a closet I was in.I didn’t think I was gay, though I do remember finding guys very distracting.JBut I would never have ever said anything about it.This was 20 years ago or more and he was the only gay person I knew, and he wasn’t out in high school, though he was “suspect”Still, I can’t help but wonder what made him do what he did.How alone he felt.The thing of it was, he was the life of the party.Everyone loved Donny.He was a character, extroverted and funny and charming and on the inside he was apparently so unhappy.It bothers me to think about the fact that even though I didn’t know it at the time that I was gay and that he was gay, that we were or at least would be going through the same things.I don’t know.Thinking about it.I remember this one time, Danny and my brother had gone out drinking and all this stuff and came back and James was just sloshed off his ass and he grabbed Donny and kissed him really hard….and just remembering, I remember how I was repulsed by the whole idea.Because that was “gay.”Silly to think about it now.It wasn’t a gay kiss, my brother was drunk and still he just kissed him.For the longest time I was so turned off by the whole notion of guys kissing.Really.I remember watching In and Out and when Tom Sellick and ….oh…what’s his name….when they kiss it just sent creepy shivers down my spine.That tells you the depths of my denial…..And I seem to have gotten off track with the F entry….ha
My Friends now though, enough of memory lane, except to say that Kevin, who I had a crush on, I can admit that freely now, it wasn’t the whole Derek crush that I had, because really just wanted to be friends with Kevin, but I thought he was cute.He was straight to so that made it a bit easier.
Anyway…..my friends now, are nothing like the friends I made when I was younger.The majority of them are gay or female….I’m having dinner with one of my oldest friends tonight…mmmm….Macaroni Grill and a movie.It’s a standing date she and I have.
And then there’s Melissa, who we were once madly in love with each other….thats like how deep the denial was really buried, and the thing of it was I really truly did love her
….my friend Carolyn who used to be in love with me.
My other friend Jennifer, who when I first met referred to her as the talker, she likes to talk, that Jennifer….and then there’s Jenni who I think had I not met her, I would not have remet Wade who practically pried me out of the closet.
And Derek, who I fell madly, obsessively, completely head over heels in love with.Just goes to show what love is worth sometimes.Apparently I didn’t make the cut as a friend of his, when funnily enough, when it came to friendship,I thought I did a great deal in that area.But then I remember this scene from ….oh what is it….Everwood….where Ephram is talking to Amy and he’s just come back from his trip to Europe and he wants to go back to being friends with Amy and she says, we can’t go back and he asks her why and she says we were never friends and I think about that and I think how true that was.I wanted so much to be friends with Derek, but at the same time I was in love with him.I don’t know which it was more.Still.I would have done anything for him and thought that I had been a good friend to him.But all of that is clouded by the extra emotional feeling that I felt for him as well.So I don’t know if we were friends.So maybe I didn’t need to make the cut.It’s hard to say.
Wade and I are friends, sometimes against a lot of peoples better judgment.But I think because of Wade, I am who I am, I’ve come so far into who I am.I think everyone who knows Wade is so ready to jump to his flaws and show them to the world.I’m probably as guilty of that as anyone….well not anyone, but anyone who truly knows Wade also knows what a good person he can be, how selfless he can be, how generous he can be.We’ve had our issues with one another, we’ve had our run ins and lol….we’ve even messed around on occasion.It’s funny we are always telling each other we don’t like each other.And a lot of times that’s true.We don’t trust each other, but the thing about friendship is, that no matter what, we’re still friends.No matter how difficult it is and it can be difficult….still we are friends.There’s a thing about friendships, you take the good with the bad, because you pretty much know them both by the time you become friends.
Then there’s Zach.I’d like to call him my friend, but the thing of it is, is that I like Zach.I don’t think Zach likes me.At least that’s how he acts.So am I just going around in circles again a la Derek?Is the friendship just based on the other feelings that I have for him?Fortunately, I’ve been through the whole Derek thing, so I can take it wit ha grain of salt, knowing full well that the outcome could be something along the likes of me not “making the cut.”Hell he’s already taken me off his myspace friends list.So yeah, a grain of salt.