Why Can't We Be Friends?

War - Why Can't We Be Friends?

INTRO
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
La, la, la, la, la, laa
La, la, la, la, la, la

CHORUS
Why can't we be friends?
Why can't we be friends?
Why can't we be friends?
Why can't we be friends?

VERSE1
I've seen you 'round for a long, long time
I remembered you when you drank my wine

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE2
I've seen you walking down in Chinatown
I called you, but I could not look around

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE3
I paid my money to the welfare line
I see you standing in it every time.

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE4
The color of your skin don't matter to me (Ow!)
As long as we can live in harmony

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE5
I'd kind of like to be the President (Oh yeah!)
So I can show you how your money's spent, hoo!

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE6
Sometimes, I don't speak right
But yet, I know what I'm talking about

REPEAT CHORUS

VERSE 7
I know you're working for the CIA
They wouldn't have you in the MAFI-A

REPEAT CHORUS X 3

In life I've always had a challenging time making friends.   My earliest memories when I was grade school I just remembered being teased and not really connecting with anyone.   I blogged about one bully that tormented me during my younger years.

I was a socially awkward boy and that carried into my teenage years.    I did have one kid during my pre-teen and teenage years that was the closest friend I had.   We lost contact once we graduated high school.   

In college I do remember I befriended a young man named Cedric.   We had one or two classes together.   We would commiserate about life and classes.   He wound up dropping out of college after a couple semesters and that ended our friendship.

I was still socially awkward.   I joined my university chapter's National Society of Black Engineers.  That was where I made my core friends that I still occasionally keep in touch with.    My last semester in college, I met Sally for the first time (not knowing at that time we would become lifelong friends).

I made a few work acquaintances since I started my corporate career in 1995.   During that time I was trying to figure out my sexuality.   I was at the time still thinking I would meet a girl and get married.   But remember that whole social awkward thing.

I never mentioned it before but when I was getting my eyes examined, I met a young lady that was a receptionist there.  I remember she said that was a single mom with a small child.    She took a liking to me and wanted to get to know me.   I think we may have hung out once but I wasn't interested in pursuing anything further with her.    It awkwardly ended after I stopped calling her and then she realized I wasn't interested and that ended things.

My college friend Doug was responsible for introducing me to my one and only girlfriend.   We met in October 1999, broke up a few months later, and then briefly reconnected in March 2001 before we broke up for good in September 2001.   It was that relationship that made me acknowledge that I am gay.   I was in denial because it was hammered over and over again during my school years.   So in a way I had to have a girlfriend to confirm on being gay.    I know there are gay men that married women to try and deny the gay but they would sneak behind their wives back to sleep with men who they really wanted.   Even though I wanted to have kids, I couldn't be deceptive like that.

So getting back to the friends thing, realizing I was gay did not make things any easier when it came to befriending guys.   I will say that I am forever grateful that I started blogging.    That alone opened me to meeting other gay guys that was valuable to me.    I do miss that.

When it came to making friends with gays offline, that unfortunately did not pan out well.   I started thinking about some of the guys I tried building friendships with but fell to the wayside.

I was remembering my brief time with Spades back in 2006.   Like a lot of gay friendships, it started out as a date to see if it was a love or sex match.    It wound up being neither but we both saw the potential in a friendship.   The trippy thing is that we shared the same birthday.   We even went on a trip to Vegas together.    But sadly things ended over something I still don't understand.   The last time we hung out we were dancing at a club and we even discovered that we had dated the same guy.    I thought for sure we would have had a lifelong friendship.    But it wasn't meant to be.

Then there was Huey.   We chatted on A4A and then he invited me to hang out with him at a local gay bar where I lost my stripper virginity....LOL.   Huey and I hung out every so often at the bars and he introduced me to an all you can eat sushi bar on the Northside of Chicago that we went to a few times.   Huey wound up being like the big gay brother I never had.    (My friend Eugene is actually my real big gay brother but he lives out of state.)  I still have fond memories of our time hanging out at IML.  But sadly our friendship ended over a slight.   I never did talk about what happened.    

We were supposed to hang out at the bar and agreed to meet each other around 11pm.   I get to the bar around that time and look for him but he's not there.  I tried calling him but he didn't answer his phone.  I hung out by myself for another hour and after unsuccessfully trying to call again, I finally left.   When I got home I called a third time and left a scathing voicemail.

I never heard back from him again until a week later.   He wound up leaving a voicemail basically saying that he left his phone somewhere but that he didn't appreciate my attitude.    By the time he had called I had gotten over it but hearing his voicemail pissed me off and I basically didn't call him back.  The friendship pretty much ended.   

I really felt sad about it and wondered if I should've called him back to try and salvage things.   I was mad because he didn't apologize for not meeting me.   If I were a more socially adaptive person, I could've made the best of the situation and maybe had my own fun.   But it's hard when you're out and about and everyone else is in their own clicks.    I did see Huey online on another social site many years later and we were cool but I knew we couldn't go back.

Then there was Jose who I met sometime in 2010.   We wound up having a sex date but he liked me enough that he thought we'd be better as friends.   Jose was very worldly and he was responsible for getting me to travel outside of the U.S.    He was one of my longer lasting friendships though that sadly fell apart due to as one of my old blogger friends Harold Gibson said, my not respecting my own boundaries.

There was another guy named Edwin that I met in his hometown of Portage, MI.   Edwin and I first chatted on a site called Silverdaddies.   I clocked from our conversations that we were having more of a friendship vibe.   That actually was pretty cool since I started chatting with him a few months into dating Dom.

I believe the first time I met him was in the summer of 2015 when I was traveling to Detroit.   We met at a local restaurant for brunch.  I will admit Edwin was definitely my type.    He had a dad bod that was bearish minus the hair.   I loved his voice, it had a nerdy but deep quality to it that drew my attention.   But if Edwin had any interest in me, he didn't show it.    

We would meet a few more times throughout the years, usually when I was traveling to and from Detroit.   Throughout that time Edwin never invited me to hang out beyond lunch.   Last Christmas I reached out to him to see if he wanted to hang out again.   But he made it feel like an imposition so I decided to back off.   I kind of realized that our friendship was mostly one-sided.   If I didn't message him I wouldn't hear back.   

There was another guy I'll just call Muscles that I chatted with on A4A in 2019.   Muscles and I had great conversation and we both shared that we had partners.    In our chat we thought it would be cool if the four of us hung out sometime.   I was thinking that would be so cool since I didn't really have gay friends and having another couple to hang out with would've been great.  I even told Dom about him.  We made plans to meet for an evening of bowling.

But the weekend we were supposed to meet, I had forgotten that I needed to have a tooth pulled on Friday.   This was in January 2020.   I mentioned to him the night before that we wouldn't be able to hang out because I was recovering from having oral surgery.   I believe he thought I was lying.   Then COVID started to hit and pretty much it was curtains for Muscles and I.

So you see friendships are not easy for me.   Thankfully I have Sally and Eugene still and a few acquaintances here and there.   Maybe someday, though, I can still find someone I can be friends with.  I guess Anthony and I have a kind of a friends with benefits thing going.   I need to try and develop that friendship more and get him to meet Dom as well.