I always mark the real beginning of our friendship at his fourth birthday party. I remember going to that. I know that's where our parents met and discovered that they lived close to one another and had sons who were the same age. Tom and I both have brothers who are three years older than we are. My brother is named Dave and his brother is Jeff.
My mom said the reason we all started hanging out was because my mom (who's a teacher) had off during the summer and was home. This meant that Tom and Jeff could come over and she could watch them while their parents were working. It was during that time that we paired off into best friends. We would also always be at each others houses. We would hang at ones family's house, sleep over, then go over to the other family's house during the day and sleep over then our family's would force us to return to our rightful houses for a night. We would just start the process over the next day. Spending a lot of time at each other's houses meant that we became close with the other's family. We did this basically until we were around ten or a little older.
As Tom and I grew up, we would see less of one each other. Part of it was school. During summer we would see each other pretty much every day, but during school we only had time on weekends. Then school became more and more demanding, and we had even less time during the weekend. Our social scenes also pulled us apart. We both had our circles at school and the other was accepted within those circles, but we weren't necessarily included in the other's circles. We would still see one another, but we weren't as close as we once were. We had other friends who we would spend more time with.
It wasn't until we started having sleep overs again that we really reconnected. That was when we discovered we both had an interest in sex. We would stay up until all hours of the night talking about what we wanted to try and what we liked about girls and how far we had gone. We designed this whole world based solely around the idea of us getting laid. As a tween, it would have been amazing to live in that world. This became the basis for our friendship. We would talk about other things besides sex, but that was the main part. We also started mixing our social circles. I started going over when he had friends over, he started coming to movie nights I'd host for my friends. We started courting the other's female friends. We were closer than we had ever been.
Sometime between eigth and tenth grades, we both went through periods of depression. Neither of us knew about the other at the time. It was only after we were both feeling happier that we told the other. We realized that we were each safe havens. We felt happier in each others company. The sadness and bad feelings in our lives went away when we were with each other. It was an escape.
Where to go from here is hard for me. There are little things like competing for girls, learning about the pure mechanics of sex, figuring out school and life in general as teenagers. We were each other's sounding boards and confidants. We would have nice conversations with each other's families. It was during this time that I came to consider Tom's family as my second family. Had something ever happened to my parents, I was supposed to go and live with my one of my mom's sisters and their families either Connecticut or D.C. I wouldn't have wanted to go. I would have asked to stay with Brendan's family until I was at least 18.
Tom is more to me than a friend. I'm taking a page out of Kevin Smith's book when I say this, but he's my hetero life-mate. He is the one person in the world I would do anything for. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't met him or if he died and I don't like it. Life doesn't seem as bright without him in it. This really doesn't capture my friendship with him. There'll be more stories.
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