may 16, 2007

the rebecca connection

normally i try not to fiddle with the truth but i had to change names of the people involved in this story due to certain unresolved issues in their lives where a positive conclusion requires that they remain anonymous.  it is not out of shame or self-loathing but because of legal repercussions that could detrimentally affect the lives of innocent by-standers.  wow! sounds like drama already and i haven’t even written much…

okay so i did a really crap synopsis of my relationship with rebecca on my last post “…coming out of the woodworks…”  but like i said, then, this will be quite long.  we do have 32 years of knowing each other that can’t just be explained away in a paragraph or two.  god, that would be horrible if we did have a 32 year friendship that had no depth and was explained away in a paragraph or two.  well, ours is not this case.  so i shall begin…

it was the first day of school.  the first day of real school.   the summer was over and i was going to be starting the first grade that year, leaving behind all the immaturity of kindergarten and thinking myself to be quite grown-up.  yet around 7:30 in the morning my grandmother was in charge of walking with me the eight suburban blocks to the nearest school bus stop.  when we arrived, i was so excited to see all the other kids; some my age and quite a few older.  so there we stood mixed in with the older kids and with the other ‘parent’ figures holding the hands of their young charges, all of us waiting for the bus to come along.

it was probably just a matter of five minutes when the bus finally appeared from around the corner.  i was even more excited now.  this was going to be my first trip on a bus by myself.  well, not by myself exactly, but you know what i mean.  no parents.  just me and the other school kids.   so we patiently waited as the bus pulled in front of us and stopped by the curb.  when the doors opened the driver only let on about five kids.  the rest of us would have to wait for the next bus.  i was disappointed.  i hung my head down as if in shame for not having arrived earlier to be first in line.  then, i stared up at the bus wondering what it would finally be like once i got on.  i started to scan the windows while counting to myself the number of rows.  i was counting my way back from the front to the back when suddenly i saw her.  the girl i would one day become friends with and know as becca. 

i recall this day so vividly because i sensed a sadness about her just from that first glance.  little did i know then about the turmoil she was dealing with at home.  when we were older and understood concepts like divorce, only then did it all make sense to me.  i only knew then that she was a sad little girl and somehow i had to help her.  i didn’t know how.  i was only six, but i was going to do it somehow.   as luck would have it, we didn’t have the same class together but we would meet at least once during recess.  for some reason, though, she didn’t yet realize how important i would be in her future.  maybe she just had too much to deal with at that point in her life.  as fate would have it, we wouldn’t be able to discuss it until years later.  within months of starting our first school year together, her parents divorced and she moved to a different school.   we didn’t see each other until we were 12 and met up again in junior high school.

most of my junior high memories are kinda fuzzy to me because socially, this was an incredibly active time for me.  i was a bit of a social butterfly and was in a gazillion directions with commitments to the marching band and numerous different clubs not to mention all the new friends i was making from the other school district as we were all now joined together in junior high school.  i have even more recollections of those days that i will one day have to put down on paper.  for now i will stick with the rebecca connection…

so here it was, a new beginning. time to get reacquainted.  i don’t remember the specific instance of where or when we exactly began our renewed friendship.  the important thing was that we did.  we weren’t very close at first.  it had been six years since the last time we had even seen each other and we had obviously forged other friendships along the way. so it took some time, but i remember it being very comfortable and easy.  like it was always meant to be.  like it is always going to be.  we didn’t need a lot of ‘fluff’ time between us.  i mean we had different social circles and every once in a while they would intersect and it would be like it always was.  simply friendly.   we didn’t have to be stuck together 24/7 to know that we were friends.   she could always call me anytime and i would always listen.  and i knew that  i could always do the same.  we didn’t really take advantage of this aspect of our friendship until we got into high school; after we started to figure out which friendships were really going to last.  

so throughout high school we hung out more and more.  i think i was the only boy in her life that she confided in.  actually i’m sure i was the only one.  she would tell me everything.  i knew of the guys she was dating which was major news because she never did date anyone from our school.  (well except for matt.  my matt from 'lucy has some 'splainen to do...' post.  it was because of rebecca that matt and i became friends).  i was the only one at school that knew the ins and outs and the ups and downs of her relationships.   the only girl she trusted with this same information was her almost step-sister jennifer, but  even she went to a different school as well.  so i was the only one becca saw on a daily basis that knew what was going on in her life.  it was all very private; just between her and i.  at the end of the day, i was the duckie to her andie.  it was all very pretty in pink.  john hughes really had captured the reality of our lives in that film. and all these years later she still confides in me only those most intimate of  things that she knows i will guard away and discuss with no one other than her.

so, anyway,  i was always there for her through all the joys of dating and especially through all the heartache of the breakups.   the weird thing about rebecca and her relationships was that she operated on a three month cycle.  no one lasted more than three months.  it just didn’t happen.  well almost.  once in high school she did fall madly in love with a guy named nestor and that lasted something like 8 months.  that was really something special given her track record.  and then later, it would be me, when we would get together after graduating high school.  we had a romantic relationship that would last a little over a year before we realized our lives were not meant to be bound by marriage.  i miss those days sometimes.  just the idea that we could have had kids together makes me wish that maybe we should have tried but there’s no way to say that we wouldn’t have screwed that up completely.  we were both children of divorce and didn’t want to risk putting a kid through that experience.  and as it turned out anyway, we were still too young and looking for something entirely different in our lives. 

once we realized our romantic relationship was over, we found it difficult to just go back to being friends.  it was simply too painful.  i also knew deep down that my attraction to guys was clearly becoming more evident to me.  sure, i was always attracted to guys.   i can remember back as far as the age of eight and feeling like i was drawn to boys in a way that went beyond friendship.  but what did i know of lust and love and sexuality at that age?   i wouldn’t figure it out until after i had had a romantic and sexual relationship with a woman.  in my life that meant rebecca.  from all outward appearances, we had the perfect relationship.  how could we not?  we had been the best of friends for too long.  we thought alike, dressed alike, spoke alike, but it wasn’t enough to build a fulfilling life around. so for a few years we went about our days trying to find what would truly make us happy in our respective lives.

for me, it would only take a few months before i found what i was missing in my life.  after rebecca and i broke up, i started hanging out with a new group of friends.  friends from one of my part-time jobs.  one of these friends was, marvin, someone i had known for a fair majority of my life.  he and i had lived basically four blocks away from each other but we lived on opposite sides of the school district boundaries so we never went to school together.  anyway, this was all happening a few years after high school graduation and everything was different.  he and i  were creating a new gay social circle.  he was my hero then.  he was out and proud and i was jealous.   my jealousy was short-lived as we really became good friends.  we were each others wingman at the gay bars and clubs.  he was there when i started dating guys and  when i had my first gay relationship.  i really appreciated his support.  with his help, i gained the experience and confidence that i needed to make my own way into the gay jungle know as san francisco.   and eventually it was because of him that i got introduced to my now longterm boyfriend/husband/lover/spouse, anthony, albeit inadvertently.  that’s just a whole other lengthy story that i will eventually pen as well.

from that point on, my life seemed to have found its rhythm.  i was enjoying my new reality as a gay man, but i missed the depth of friendship, that profound connection that i had had with rebecca.   no one could ever replace that, not even anthony.  i was probably about 23 when i genuinely started to search for her.  then one night anthony and i happened to be out at a well-known castro street bar.  i had my back to the dance floor when someone tapped me on my shoulder.  “ohmygod!  danny is that you?” is all i heard from behind me.  i turned around and it was rebecca.  “what are you doing here?” i asked totally dumbstruck.  never in a thousand years would i have expected to run into her here.  then she pointed to a group of girls on the dance floor and said, “i’m with some of friends.”  “what?”  i thought to myself.  “no way!”  i had no other words.  we spoke briefly and promised each other that we would get together some day soon so we could really talk about everything that had happened during the four or so years that had lapsed quietly between us.  it was way too much to try and talk about right then and there.  and actually she was on her way home when she realized it was me standing there before her eyes and decided to say hello.

a few days later anthony and i met up with her at her place.  we talked about everything like we always did.  laughing and giggling the way we used to.  apparently she got married to someone we knew from high school not too long after we broke up.  he was one of the rare boyfriends that she had dated from our school.  (and here i wrote that she never dated anyone from our high school.  sorry, i had forgotten about him until i remembered this part of the story.  now we have my version of the story corrected.)  their marriage only lasted about two years.  it was far from perfect.

for the next few years we didn’t hang out as much but we stayed in touch.  she was still going through different relationships while trying to piece her life back together.   it would be around pride 1996 when we would be introduced to her then live-in partner.  at that point the four of us became fast and steady friends.  we went out as a foursome all the time.  dinners, dancing whatever.  this lasted about a year and a half.  by then they were on the outs.   rebecca’s partner moved out.  anthony and i tried not to let it affect our friendship with either one of them.   we were still friends with both of them regardless of whether they were living together.  this was a difficult time for all of us as we had grown accustomed to being the four musketeers.  and our respective friendships lasted for about another year or so like this; where anthony and i would go out with each of them individually.   it was after this period when rebecca began to rethink her how she would proceed with her future relationships.  somehow we fell out of touch.

this was the ending of an era so to speak and the beginning of yet another period of non-contact between rebecca and i.  this time it would last until now, almost 8 years later. 

since i last talked with her, which was yesterday, she recounted the events of  the last few years.   usually i would write about the updates but because of the legal issues currently overshadowing my dear friend's situation, i have chosen not to jeopardize the lives of the innocent involved.

so here it was yesterday, my birthday, that we are again talking.  an unexpected birthday gift yet a special one welcomed wholeheartedly by me.  my becca and i picking up from where we always do, that place way back in our childhoods that lets us talk like a brother and sister, like the best of friends, like lovers, like soul mates forever connected from that very first time i saw her sitting on the bus looking sad, a little girl that i knew would be forever a part of my life.  and that has been the way our friendship has operated for the last 32 years.