When He Came Over to Spend the Night

Have you ever had a friend you don’t remember meeting? 

It happens to me all the time. I go: Hmm, I know we met at church, but I don’t recall our first interaction at all…

Of course, there are those childhood friends I also don’t remember meeting, but we all met when we were just three years old. This sort of misty meeting was exactly the case with my friend, Declan.

I don’t remember meeting him our freshman year of high school. All I know is that our friendship formed very quickly, very easily. I do remember noticing that his sea-green eyes were starting to pop up more and more in my day, but I wasn’t complaining. When we were together, we goofed around and laughed a lot at each other’s jokes. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him. 

Connecting so seamlessly with another boy felt good. It felt right.

One Friday, having a few months of friendship under our belt, Declan came over to my house after school to hang out. I remember being particularly excited about the fact that he wasn’t just coming over for a bit — he came to stay the night! We would be able to spend so much time together, and I couldn’t imagine any version of that scenario that wouldn’t appeal to me.

That is until, of course, something went wrong.

After arriving at my house, Declan plopped all his stuff by the front door, and I gave him a house tour. I also showed him around my neighborhood, which, by the way, was one of the coolest places a kid could grow up. More on that another time. 

That evening, we hung out for a while, slipping into that seamless ease that defined our friendship. At one point, we passed by the front door, and I noticed that Declan’s stuff was still plopped there. I grabbed his duffle bag and started up the stairs to my bedroom with Declan behind me. Halfway up the stairs, Declan started to get emotional, saying, “Keegan. Keegan!”

I reached the top of the stairs and turned around, sensing the strain in his voice. He choked out the words, “I’m really sorry. I — I’m sorry, I just — I wanna go home,” and he began to cry. Even though I was confused, I was moved by the fact that my friend was apparently stressed out and crying in front of me. I stepped down a couple stairs, telling him it was okay and not to worry about it. 

I pulled him into my chest for a few long seconds while he calmed down. I held him, and he held me back, and I liked it.

He pulled out his little flip phone and called his mom to come pick him up; next thing I knew, he was gone. As you can imagine, I was pretty disappointed. At the time, however, I couldn’t figure out why. I just knew I had wanted Declan to stay over my house, and now he was gone.

I crawled into bed that night and chalked it up to a botched weekend, but there was actually something much deeper happening in my heart.

That much deeper “something” was my same-sex attraction (SSA). By the time I’d met Declan my freshman year, I’d already known that I experienced some SSA, but I also knew that I was attracted to girls. I wasn’t sure what to do with these two seemingly conflicting pieces of information, because the main message I heard growing up was that you’re either straight or you’re gay; there was no other option.

And since the “be gay” option was definitely not presented by my Catholic church, family members, middle school classmates, or society at large as the “good” option, you can understand why I effortlessly chose the “be straight” option.

Moving forward, I remained friends with Declan, but after this interaction we always seemed to have an invisible and impassible wall between us. The wall wasn’t very thick, and it might’ve existed more in my head than his, but I doubted that I’d ever have the bravery to try to blast through that wall.

And so, I never did. Declan switched high schools after sophomore year.

At the time, I didn’t know whether Declan was gay or not. Hey, I didn’t even know if I was either! I just knew that spending time with him was easy and that I wanted to know him more. I was drawn to draw closer, if you will. On a deeper level, I think this is what I really wanted that one weekend: I wanted him to stay.

I wanted to talk with him all night. I wanted him to hold my hand. I wanted him to say he was gay, so that I would have had the confidence to say that I was gay, too (maybe?). I wanted so desperately to know there was another boy who also felt the things that I felt inside and wouldn’t hate me for them. I wanted intimacy. I wanted freedom.

Declan did come out as gay some years later. When I heard about it, I wondered about that one Friday night, if maybe he’d had a crush on me as well. I wondered if maybe he wanted to stay, if maybe he wanted to talk all night, if maybe he was waiting for me to say that I experienced SSA so that he would have had the confidence to say he did, too. 

But maybe, like a lot of us who’ve grown up queer, he was crushed by fear. Intimacy and freedom are rather scary, wouldn’t you agree? He wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. We both weren’t feeling quite safe enough to break down that wall. 

If that were the case, I don’t blame us. Instead, I’m filled with this sad sort of retro-longing. I wish, for both our sakes, that we could have taken down even one brick from that wall. I wish we’d have peeked through just long enough to catch a glimpse of the shared secret inside ourselves. I wish that by doing so we would have helped ourselves break out of our queer shame and loneliness.

I wish we’d had an adolescence full of intimacy and freedom.

Coincidentally, I also happened to come to Christ when I was 14 years old. Oh, how little I knew about the intimacy and freedom that awaited me. But I suppose this is enough for one blog.

And I guess you’ll just have to wait to hear what happened after college when I inevitably reconnected with Declan…

Do any childhood experiences or lack thereof with other kids of the same gender give you “retro-longing”? How did you process your sexuality, if at all, during your adolescent years?