Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 330– August 30, 2017

stories / GET OUT! MAGAZINE >> GETOUTMAG.COM
BY IAN-MICHAEL BERGERON
@ianmichaelinwonderland
When it comes to friends
with benefits, one of two things
typically seems to happen:
You become straight-up fuck
buddies, only calling each other
for a booty call, or one of you
falls in love.
I was pretty certain I didn’t see
M in a romantic way, but I’d
never really thought about it
before. He’d never asked me
on a date, and when we fooled
around I was the one who came
onto him.
Surprisingly, our friendship
seemed to stay the course.
We’d get food, go out to bars,
get drunk—and, occasionally,
return to his apartment
afterward and fool around.
But friendships, just like
anything else, do change with
time. After a year or so, I got
a new job that changed up my
schedule, and M moved into
deep Brooklyn. We stayed in
touch, of course, but our weekly
nights of debauchery mostly
came to an end.
PART THREE
Friends with Benefits
Three years after we first met,
we went out to the Ritz for
our tri-yearly night of drinking.
“Seeing anyone?” I asked, four
(or five?) drinks in.
“Just ended something,
actually,” he shrugged. “I
made it clear that I didn’t want
a relationship, but he stuck it
out for five months, hoping I’d
change my mind.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Eh, I’m not ready for a
boyfriend now anyway.”
“Even me?” I teased, poking
him in the rib.
“You’re a special case for me,”
he said seriously, not making
eye contact.
I choked on my drink. “What?”
“I never let down my emotional
guard for him, I guess. With
you, I did right away.”
Baffled, I leaned back against
the wall. I didn’t expect that,
and if I were expecting it, I
wouldn’t have had so much to
drink.
“You asked,” he went on. “I
can’t lie to you.”
“Are you saying you have
feelings for me? Like, real
feelings?”
“I always have.”
“But you never said anything to
me. For three years you never
said anything.”
“For two and a half of those
years you kept getting back
together with The Ex Fiancé,”
he said evenly, not allowing
himself to get upset. Not to
mention, he wasn’t wrong.
“Maybe I dodged the issue all
those years. The timing was
never right, I guess.”
“But you never let on. At all.
Not a bit. Not even a hint.”
“I guess I thought that I did.”
We stood there in silence for
a while, then paid our tab.
He walked me to the subway,
nodded goodbye, and hopped
into a cab.
Maybe it’s possible to be friends
with benefits, but for M and me,
that was not the case.
We never talked about it again.
PHOTO BY STEVE BRENNAN
WARDROBE: NATHAN AYON