Was It Friendship or Something More with Him?

Was I in love with him? Did we have the deepest friendship, or was it actually something more? This is for the lot of us who have gone from strangers to friends to kin to nothing . . .

A few years back I started living in New York City, a long awaited prayer finally answered. I had already gone from living with one sketchy roommate to moving out and subletting a one-bedroom apartment all to myself. As the sublet came to a close, I made plans to return home out of state for a few weeks.My new prayer started to sound like this: "Oh Lord, thank you for six months in New York City. But now I'm asking you to make a way. Please open the door for me to live there longterm."

Just like that, not one, not two, but three potential roommates became available and interested. I wanted to be choosy about who I'd sign a yearlong lease with, especially since all these men were strangers. So, I asked to hear their testimonies while I shared mine over one-on-one FaceTime calls.

I explained my sexuality with each man, that I had been attracted both to men and women since puberty and that I had never been in a same-sex relationship. I was committed to the belief that a homosexual relationship (whether romantic or sexual) was sinful, and I was not interested in deviating from this.

Then.

To my surprise.

Two of those three potential roommates admitted the same . . . exact . . . thing.

One of those guys, two years older than me, explained how he had moved to NYC a few years ago as God pulled him out of a same-sex relationship. He wanted to keep Christ at the center and use his theater-making ideas to further the Gospel. The other guy was a few months younger than me and talked about how the pandemic had grown his faith and convictions deeper and stronger.

Two men, both theater guys, both same-sex attracted (SSA), both at my fingertips.Were these two going to be the best friends my parents had been praying for all my life?

Deep conversations, prayer times, movie nights, movie mornings even, pancakes all the time, laughter all the rest of the time, shared struggles, and sometimes shared prayer requests; shared birthday parties, shared commutes to church, and shared jobs. Everything became one in our home.

Just a year prior, I never would have imagined finding other men who were walking similar faiths and sexualities, let alone living with them.

It was perfect.It was better than perfect.

A few months into living together having already shared many moments together, I wanted to dive even deeper. I kept getting this uneasy feeling that not everything was being said, that certain cards remained unveiled. Maybe our roommate status would have been deemed normal for someone with more chill, but I am anything but chill.

I pushed back and poked my roommates, asking them, "Are you sure you're doing okay? How did you feel after today's sermon? What are you going to carry with you into the rest of the week?"

I grew scared I'd lose these men whom I'd already grown to care for so much in such a short amount of time.

I could tell my younger roommate appreciated all my deeper questions, but the older one seemingly did not. Eventually, we all sat down for an intervention and hashed out the issue: I didn't trust the older roommate for not telling me everything that was on his mind, and he didn't feel the need to say anything more because he didn't want or need to.I didn't get it.

Why didn't he want to rip himself open and velcro his heart to mine? To each other?

I was really grateful the younger roommate had initiated this intervention. He had even opened and closed with Scripture and prayer.

Maybe this was the roommate I was supposed to be closer with. Maybe I had overlooked a deeper friendship with him because I was so focused on the other.

I started investing more time into my younger roommate, Evan.

Evan and I shared many common interests. He wrote music and was an excellent tap dancer. I sang on our church's worship team with him. We both loved Studio Ghibli movies. He loved Sufjan Stevens and sad, sappy acoustic jams, so I bought him a Fleet Foxes vinyl.

He told me how he wished he had a deeper friendship with our other roommate, and how he wished people would better respect his time and not be such flakes.I listened to him.I could be the solution, I thought.He broke down in Chick-fil-A once. I don't remember why. But I just reached out and held his hand. Squeezed tight. Time and time again I reminded him, "I'm not going anywhere."

The truth is neither of us really felt man enough. We both struggled to find our "place" in the creative scene. But we had each other.

One time, he invited both of us roommates into his bedroom where he sang us a song he'd written, playing it on his guitar. It was flowered with glittering imagery, rustic and warm, a song of brotherhood – a song about the three of us.

I wept.

Another time I fearfully cried out once again with my incessant need to dive deeper and attain something more, require everyone's everything, my hot and sweaty body fully embodied and held in Evan's embrace. This wasn't just another instance of "bro cuddling" written about on YOB; this was more like John Lennon's famed fetal positioning around Yoko Ono's body.

We truly had something. I'm not sure what it was . . . but it was something.That summer, I flew out Evan to meet my family. "I can't wait to meet yours some time too," I remember saying. It was a sweet time. We went shopping downtown. We even skinny-dipped in the lake at night.

And although I thought I was curating the perfect platonic friend I'd always wanted, I also couldn't shake the feeling that I was showcasing something more to my family.

My parents have always known about my same-sex attraction. I've always been open about SSA with them. They also knew about my roommates and how much they meant to me. I made the mistake of joking with them, "It looks like Noah brought home his boyfriend to meet the family!"

But they didn't see through the joke. "Do you have feelings for him, Noah?"

Did I?

To be continued . . .

Have you experienced a close, intimate, yet romantically confusing friendship with another man? How did you balance this platonic intimacy in your friendship, or did things fall apart?