***
Two months ago I kicked out of my house the man I believed to be my best friend of years. It was, I see this now, the last crumbling of a structure that had been slowly eroding for decades.
I met Z in Secundaria, the equivalent of Junior High, somewhere in the mid-90’s, through a common friend. Back then, and for quite a while later, it was hard for me to make any friends at all. Perhaps that is why I was surprised when he called me and invited me to the movies. The first friend I actually saw outside of school.
Sometimes we’d hang out with a couple other friends of his; other times, it was just the two of us. He was nice and a bit strange, just like I felt I was. I am left-handed, tall for the Mexican standard, I use hearing aids and back then I wore glasses. I am also gay, and at the time I was definitely not out of the closet.
He simply had hobbies that were unusual in our somewhat religious school. He liked Trova music and frequented left-wing political circles.
Even then he had two peculiar habits: One, he often came to my house and into my room, but I was rarely allowed into his house (the first times he made me wait in a corner while he went inside for money or other things) and he never once showed me his room. And two, he was always late for everything, always with an excuse placing the blame on somebody else.
We remained friends after Junior High, after High School, after College… We followed different majors (him, Biology; myself, Philosophy, then Literature); in all our years in the same school we were never in the same classroom. Yet we kept in touch. We had so much in common. We liked the same movies and tv shows, for instance. And he was the one who encouraged me to start attending concerts and other mass events.
I came out of the closet around 23 or 24 years of age. Z was, I think the third person I told. Supposedly he took it well, but the very next day he told me that he was so shocked he had told his family and that mis mother forbade him from seeing me again. This, of course, made me furious at her for years. Though now I question his story.
Before me, there was a mutual friend who also came out of the closet. And another, now that I remember. Both times, Z said he was open-minded and that he supported them… but he panicked every time he remembered them. He was convinced they both “had the hots for him”.
…right now, I had to stop writing because as I remembered, it came to me that it wasn’t just one friend. Or two. There were so many friends and acquaintances who turned out to be gay! And every single time, Z said he was comfortable with them, that he was so open-minded…
He was convinced that every single one of them wanted to fuck him.
He believed this about a girl who happened to be friends with another girl he had the hots for. “I bet she’s a lesbian and wants to fuck her,” he told me so many times.
Only now do I realize just how far his pettiness went.
***
About four years ago, I started seeing a therapist. As is often the case, lots of resentments and grudges came out, so many more than I expected. At some point I realized that I, quite simply, was sick of Z.
But I always found it hard to say no to him. Funny, I told myself over and over, why just him? Because of affection?
I know now that wasn’t it. It’s just that the man was very skilled at manipulating and over the years he had made so that none of his friends could say no to him. If we did, he argued thousand of times, invented stuff, insisted, would not let go of what he wanted. And he was so clever, we all thought, “he’s not the problem, I’m just too soft.”
Thus, about two years ago, I went to see Z with the intention of telling him we were done —just like he wanted when I came out to him. I found him all weepy. He told me they were kicking him out of his house and could I take him in?
His living situation was peculiar, so he thought. Actually, it was a very common situation in Mexico and in so many parts of the world. He lived with his mother, an aunt and a cousin who back then he called his sister since they had grown together. When his mother died, the cousin, who by then had moved out, came back with her husband and daughters in tow. Z claimed they were kicking him out because there was no place for him anymore. I believed it was because he had finished his studies over ten years ago and still could not finish his Thesis and get his title, nor a job. Neither was the real reason, I would find out much later.
That night, I agreed to let him move in. I was living in an apartment and the time and had a lodger, who graciously agreed to let this guest crash in the couch.
Being fair, this was a nice situation for a while. So many movie and tv nights, long talks about this and that…
But it was the last happy time with Z. And it hurt me in a lot of ways, which I am only beginning to understand now.
He screwed up my diet and schedules. As he had no job and did not study, he went to sleep very late at night, sometimes at the crack of dawn. Spent most of the night watching TV. He insisted I joined him. He also managed to nudge me into feeding him, and into us drinking alcohol practically everyday. In very little time he polished off a lot of bottles I kept for a special occasion and just by insisting he managed to make me buy a cake every week, which usually was gone in a couple days.
My diet and schedules were messed up and I was in a foul mood most of the time. And I didn’t even notice why.
In all the time he lived in my house, Z never paid a single bill, even if I gave him the money for it. He would not check the mail, inventing any excuse for it. He couldn’t even open the door to let in the plumber, the electrician… nothing. All he agreed to do to help around the house was to wash the dishes. And that, only if I played music to entertain him. How many times I came home in the evening or at night and found him with the drapes closed, watching cartoons in his pijamas! Most days he wouldn’t bathe or get dressed. Unless he was going to see some girl. He would not get his title, having finished his studies over thirteen years ago now. A mutual friend got him a job as a high-school tutor. He dropped it shortly with the excuse that he had to spend that time with his girlfriend.
When my lodger left, things got even worse. Z took over the spare room, but not to sleep in it. He used it to store all the stuff that until now he had distributed through several friends’ homes. It’s hard to paint a picture so extreme it sounds unreal: The man did not own a single piece of furniture, but he was never able to get rid of a single item of clothing, book and mementos. Such as empty bottles in remembrance of a party. The room was filled literally to the brim: It was impossible to open the door or the window. It could not be used to sleep in, nor for anything. Soon it stunk, and became filled with flies.
Two and a half years. All that time in an increasingly worse situation that I had wanted to end in the first place. There was no reasoning with him: If you lectured him, he either blamed others, spun endless speeches and ultimately cried (it’s hard to describe a thirty-something man bawling like a child) and swore he’d fix the situation. He worked enthusiastically on it for one or two days, then lost interest.
It all ended with a long, long conversation we had in September of the year 2019. I had the whole day off, so I sat down to him for an important talk. I pointed out five different things he had done and how he blamed somebody else for each one. That it was always somebody else’s fault, never his own. What is remarkable is that I actually thought we were doing well, that I had finally made him see things clearly. Late at night one last subject came up: That of late he wasn’t just late for all social meetings. He did not arrive at all. He said he would, but he simply did not, without notice or reason.
He said he had just reconciled with a girlfriend and that we might as well never invite him to anything because from now on he would spend every minute he had with her. His answer shocked me so much I told him that if he was going to be this irresponsible, he could not stay in my house. Not for the end of the year nor for the end of the month. That he had to leave immediately.
He said: “Admit you think I’m gay and you want to fuck me!”
Something broke inside of me.
The next day he was unusually cuddly: He hugged me all the time, telling me that I was his best friend and what would he do without me. I realized that years ago, such a thing would have been endearing. Of late, it would have been gross, because of his lack of higiene. But now… I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
The day after that, I ordered him to give his copy of the key and to leave. That he could still come over later to get whatever he needed for the weekend and then to send somebody to get his stuff. He stayed over till two in the morning, and only because my patience ran out and I kicked him out again.
The next morning, he said he would come over with a moving truck and that he would move with some relative in another state, who would give him employment. He arrived with a taxicab and a friend. As exaggerated as this may sound, it took from five in the afternoon to five in the morning to get all of his stuff out. Without a single break.
It took me all weekend to do some deep cleaning in the room, starting with bleach.
And there was still the worst part left: Talking about what happened with our mutual friends. Once we compared notes we finally discovered the true problem: He had lied to me and to all of us for years.
Since he concluded his studies in 2005, he started several Thesis, one after the other. Every time he wound up having a fight with his advisor, and always blamed them. One he even accused of trying to seduce him.
All lies. The truth is that he was unable to finish any of those projects. Like everything in his life, he began with enthusiasm, lost interest and then invented excuses to never finish but never make a clean break, either. He made a lot of enemies at the Academy, and till the last second he was convinced it was because of his “unusual” tastes. What were those tastes? According to him, the music he liked and the Spaniard poetry he read.
He said he was kicked out of his house because his relatives were mean. I thought it was because he was so lazy. Both were incorrect.
Ever since his mother died, he took stuff from the family’s safe, where his mother and aunt kept every valuable. What did he do with all the gold, silver and other valuables? He pawned them. Z never learned another way to make money. And money for what? To live his everyday life as he always had, plain and simple. Riding around the city in a taxicab. Going to concerts. The movies. Short travels by bus. Nothing else… for years and years. By the time his relatives discovered what he had done, all the pawn tickets had expired. It was impossible to get back even a single one of their valuables. And again, all that money he spent simply in living his life the only way he knew how. He was unable to accept that his mother’s death changed his situation completely. That he was no longer a child under care of his mommy. That he could no longer do the things he was used to.
The girlfriend he said he had gotten back with was in fact the only girlfriend he ever had. He used to tell so many stories, which turned out to be false as well. All were about girls that he had only had one date with, or a one-night stand or that he simply fancied. None of them were ever a formal relationship. Every single one of those romances existed entirely in his head. He was convinced he would marry this last, real girlfriend. He never noticed that every time he said they would marry soon, she looked at him shocked and uncomfortable.
He was always a liar and manipulative. Over the years he became completely delusional.
What I cannot forgive was that last comment he made. That for years he pretended to accept me and deep down he never trusted me, just like he never trusted any of his day friends. He said he was open-minded, but he also said ridiculous things like that he himself felt like a minority because supposedly he was discriminated for… his taste in music.
Nor can I forgive the way he made me feel insecure for so many ears. How he criticized my skills, my height, my choices in life, mi sexual preference. How he convinced me that every gay person he knew was a pervert that all his straight friends were homophobic. How successfully he isolated me for years.
All of us who knew Z at one point believed him to be gay. He was always offended by that. According to him, not because of the preference, but because it offended him that people were so stupid and got him so wrong.
Where did all his insecurities come from? How can somebody be so stubborn he would rather live in a fantasy world than solve simple problems? I don’t know and in his case I don’t care anymore.
And so I am left, trying to piece my life back together. Thinking how many years I have lost trying to please a man so insecure he preferred us both to sink into mediocrity.
***
