In November, my wife asked me to move out.

It was a surprise – an unwelcome one, for sure – but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Our relationship had been on unstable ground for several years. For now I’ll spare you the deep dive into the many factors leading up to this development. I won’t even talk about who’s responsible for it. (Spoiler: We both are, perhaps equally.) For now I’ll give you the absolute basics, with the promise of future posts that will examine the path my life has taken, the various factors that have led me to this point, and what exactly “this point” is.

You’ve read the title of this post. Perhaps you are aware that The Obsolete Man is a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone starring Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver. One of several effective exposes of fascism broadcast during the show’s five-year run, the episode depicts a totalitarian society whose members are executed when the state determines they no longer serve a purpose.

At the risk of coming across as melodramatic or emotionally manipulative, lately “obsolete” describes my feelings about myself. Or, more accurately, it describes the way I believe I am perceived by others, specifically those who know me well. In the long stretch between moments of clarity, it feels as though I was discarded once my purpose was fulfilled. Like Burgess Meredith’s librarian in a society that has outlawed books, I was deemed obsolete. And I may not have been sentenced to death, but there are times when it feels like I might as well have been. Again, I’m not trying to be melodramatic here.

However, sometimes I feel this way during moments of clarity, and that’s really unsettling. To be clear, I do believe I still have value, though I can’t begin to imagine what that value actually is; for years, the only tangible purpose I feel I’ve had has been to be a husband to my wife and a father to my daughter. That’s it. (This will be expounded upon in an upcoming post.)

I’m sure I can still serve a purpose, though I don’t believe I am serving much of one at the moment. I will gloss over the fact that no human being should feel obligated to identify their purpose to another human being or otherwise justify their existence; my difficulty in accepting that I am allowed to simply exist without self-recrimination is something I’ll probably address in the future as well.

My life isn’t great at the moment. In fact, this is probably the worst it’s ever been, and while I’d love to say with confidence that it won’t get any worse than this, I can’t do that. But I’ve got hope.

For now, I’m going to leave it at this. But there’s more to come.

-Jack

We first participated in Sinful Sunday on January 8, 2012 with a cheeky photo of Jill getting into the shower. We weren’t new to the practice of sharing sexy pictures on the internet, or even on our blog; however, that initial post was a significant one for us. We’d been blogging for several years at that point, but it really wasn’t until we started publishing Sinful Sunday posts regularly that we finally felt like we were part of a community.

Over the years, we shared 226 Sinful Sunday posts. Sometimes it was me showing off. Sometimes it was Jill. Other times it was both of us. There were tasteful nudes and semi-nudes, and once in awhile more explicit shots. We appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to take a look at what we’ve shared over the years, and we will always be grateful to Molly not only for the opportunity, but for the introduction to this community.

See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!

Tomorrow is Christmas. I can clearly picture the Christmas mornings of my childhood, when I would get out of bed and creep down the hallway toward the living room. I’d take one look at what had been left under our Christmas tree, my heart aflutter with excitement over the revelation that Santa Claus had been there. That I had been sufficiently well-behaved to make the “nice” list, and that in an hour or less I would know which of my hoped-for gifts he had given me. Then I’d run to my parents’ bedroom and make such noise that they couldn’t possibly sleep any longer and we’d soon be opening presents. But somehow, the excitement of unwrapping my present at age forty-seven eclipses even my youthful anticipation. I wonder why.

See who else is being sinful at Molly’s Daily Kiss!

[Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

It can be hard to admit that someone we thought we knew well had concealed their true nature and fooled us. Though I understand that being deceitful is something in which most abusers are highly skilled and I shouldn’t take it personally, I tend to blame myself for acting counter to my instincts and letting Glenn in, so to speak. He was somebody I trusted, whose character I considered above reproach. I’d barbcued with this man. I’d cooked for him and his family. I’d been vulnerable in his presence. As I said in an earlier post, his balls touched mine on occasion. This isn’t a privilege I would grant just anybody; at the time I had determined that he wasn’t a threat, and I had been wrong. At this point it’s impossible for me to not view Glenn as a narcissist or even a sociopath.

Maybe he’s still relatively progressive in his values. Maybe he’s still got the socialist leanings he had when we were friends. Maybe he’s not a racist or a homophobe. And with a non-binary child I’m certain he doesn’t oppose trans rights. But regardless of how he might treat other women including his current partner, the way he treated his wife means he’s a misogynist. That he is capable of inflicting the harm that he has inflicted negates all else. My focus on the good things I experienced through his friendship, and his expert ability to hide the person that he really was undoubtedly clouded my vision and that’s at least partially on me.

Maybe my physical desire for Alexandra, and my genuine want of a relationship with her, put Jill in a bad position with Glenn. Maybe I risked my wife’s emotions. Maybe I even risked physical harm befalling her. (Though in the beginning, when things between Jill and Glenn were good, she didn’t have any complaints and in fact encouraged our initial meeting and the extramarital relationship I subsequently formed.) Was I truly blind to his faults? I don’t know, but I do know that I tend to see the good in people before I see the bad. For someone as introverted and antisocial as I am capable of being, maybe that says something good about me.

Between his liberal politics, geeky tendencies, and sexy wife, I had ample reason to not see who Glenn really was. To the extent that he was displaying red flags, perhaps on a subconscious level I made the choice not to see. While I have no tangible evidence that he’s a sociopath nor the qualifications to make a diagnosis, his behavior – according to Alexandra’s account – does line up with some of the common traits of one. Another reason why I couldn’t see who he really was is that he was very good at being deceitful. Sociopaths lie.

So where does that leave me? Honestly I’m not sure. Though the revelations about my former friend and metamour were nothing short of cataclysmic, I don’t think much if anything has changed with regard to how I perceive men as potential friends. Since at this point in my life I don’t easily connect with men, the shock of finding out what kind of a person Glenn really was probably didn’t make it worse. However, I’m relatively certain that it didn’t help, either.

That being said, this past weekend while at a friend’s birthday party Jill and I struck up a conversation with another couple. The guy – the boyfriend? Husband? I have no idea – was especially loquacious and outgoing, and over the course of the afternoon it occurred to me that he reminded me a bit of Glenn in his extroversion, personality, and mannerisms. Though he was at least a head shorter, the party guest even bore a passing resemblance to him in his build and facial features. We had sociopolitical views in common, too.

Overall, I enjoyed the conversation, as well as the possibility of running into this guy and his – wife? Girlfriend? I have no idea – at a future party. And even though part of my brain kept reminding me that Glenn impressed me similarly when we first met only to disappoint years later, I had to remind myself that this guy probably isn’t a predatory, abusive monster. I hope I’m right.

[Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.]

What Happened: Wherein I finally share what killed the friendship, then lie down and make snow angels in my empathy, anxiety and (probably unjustified) guilt.

cw: intimate partner abuse.

The last time I saw Glenn or Alexandra was October of 2019, when I traveled to their city to spend a weekend with Alexandra in a moderately-priced hotel room. Soon after, COVID intervened, our relationship stalled, and in spring of 2021, about a month after suggesting I come see her once we were both vaccinated, she changed her mind and said she didn’t want to do weekend getaways anymore.

I had been expecting this; soon after our time together in late 2019 the emotional and sexual intimacy in our relationship began to wane, and while we remained friendly, it was evident that things were changing. It didn’t feel like we were simply in a holding pattern waiting for the pandemic to blow over; the pull-back that occurred over the course of eighteen months wasn’t something I’d ever experienced during all the time I’d known her.

Jill suggested the possibility that Glenn had forcd her to break it off with me. To this day, I don’t know whether that’s true; I have no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to suggest either way, and it doesnn’t matter. Whatever the reason, after five years we segued into a different phase of our relationship. We remained close friends and confidants, but just that and nothing more. We continued to talk (via online messaging) every single day until November 2021 – more than five and a half years since our relationship began – and after that, while the conversation continued, it wasn’t necessarily on a daily basis.

The first time we skipped a day, I wondered if Alexandra had outlived her need for my friendship. After all, once our relationship went platonic we continued to talk daily for months. But she still needed my friendship and whatever comfort it provided her, and I wouldn’t know why or how seriously for almost another year.

In summer 2022, I went an entire month without hearing from her. By this point the Twitter account she shared with Glenn was long deactivated, and she was inactive on other social media. I’m not one to pester somebody with repeated messages; if I send a message and I receive no response, I tend to assume the other person doesn’t want to write back and I leave it at that. All I could do was hope she was okay.

In August, Alexandra replied to the message I’d sent her, and she had a lot of news. She and Glenn had separated and would be getting a divorce. This was a shock, though not much of one, as prior to her monthlong disappearance, she mentioned that things had been difficult between them, but they were trying to work it out. They’d always had a volatile relationship and to hear her tell it, in its early days her relationship with Glenn was abusive in both directions. But now, with their relationship in the past she told me that it was all him.

I understand the instinct to lie for the benefit of a toxic partner one does not intend to leave or cannot leave. With the understanding that leaving an abusive relationship can be difficult and even dangerous, remaining in one makes a person look weak or foolish, or more accurately makes the abused party worry about being perceived as such. On the other hand, if the abuse is equal on both sides it becomes more understandable that they would stay. The abused party goes from being a victim to being a complicated person who’s presumably managed to overcome their demons.

Obviously the revelation was huge and tumultuous. As I adjusted to the news I had to determine how I could best be of support to her. The first thing I intended to do was cut off all contact with Glenn, as remaining friendly with your friend’s abuser means you’re not actually a friend of your friend. However, I was somewhat pleased to find that he disconnected from me on social media before I could.

One day soon after Alexandra’s return, I was out shopping when she sent me a very long message. I’m talking about a message of the kind of length most people would send as an email. This wasn’t unusual; sometimes when Alexandra had something deeply personal to get off of her chest she would test out a rough draft of a social media post by sending it to me to get my thoughts before sharing it publicly with a limited audience. In the message, she described in great detail the abuse she had suffered over the course of her relationship with Glenn. While I am not aware of any physical abuse, what she endured ran the gamut from emotional and mental abuse including gaslighting to sexual abuse often in the form of coercion and manipulation. She described him saying that it didn’t matter if she wasn’t in the mood for sex and that as her spouse, he was owed it.

I read her message with interest, but also with great apprehension. Of course I didn’t want to imagine my friend and former partner going through what she went through. I didn’t want to feel the fear, the pain, and the sorrow she undoubtedly felt. And as I read, I felt my heart racing. Anxiety gave way to panic, and I found myself struggling to breathe. I fought back nausea as I leaned against a shelf and tried desperately to ground myself before I passed out, or worse.

Yes, I was angry for all that she had suffered, but that wasn’t the main cause of my panic attack. I thought back to Glenn playing matchmaker between his wife and I almost a decade earlier. I thought of his maneuvering to get the two of us together. Had I unknowingly been a perpetrator of the sexual abuse she had suffered? He loved to watch; did he make her have sex with me for his pleasure? What had Glenn made me a party to?

In the moment, Alexandra always seemed into it, and we’d spent all those weekends in hotels, just the two of us, with Glenn nowhere to be found. It didn’t seem like she was there for any other reason than because she wanted to be. Had he forced her to go along with it, to put on a happy face and pretend that she was choosing to hole up with me for a couple days, performing for me sexually against her will just as she had for him? What would that make me, exactly? Without intending to, or even realizing it, I would still be a sexual abuser. Without any malice on my part, I would still have had sex with someone who didn’t want it. How could I possibly live with what I’d done?

When I asked her point-blank whether that was the case, she quickly indemnified me. She assured me that she wouldn’t have entered into and maintained our relationship if it wasn’t what she wanted. Although I could see clearly that the man I considered a friend was in actuality the worst sort of villain, Glenn hadn’t put her up to it, and Alexandra and I never had sex at a time when she didn’t want to. Her assurance provided me a measure of relief, though I was still furious over what she’d gone through. I remain furious, in fact.

To be concluded.

[Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]

The Incident: Wherein I reflect on an unpleasant episode from the past and realize I should have known then, if not before.

cw: Jealousy, possessiveness, controlling behavior, and possible intimate partner abuse.

Our summer 2017 road trip was the first time we visited Glenn and Alexandra after Glenn semi-broke it off with Jill. I use the prefix “semi” because Glenn was still willing to have sex with her; it was only the emotional content that he couldn’t provide. It wasn’t really a breakup per se. Knowing how important Alexandra was to me, Jill was willing to spend a sizable chunk of her summer break encouraging our relationship rather than in Disneyland, Vegas, Honolulu, or any of a number of other places that would have been more fun for her.

The first day of our visit, Jill and Glenn stayed at the house with the kids while Alexandra and I went out. What we were doing isn’t important, and in any case, I don’t remember. We had probably taken a drive; it had been months since we’d seen each other, and with three kids about – our one and their two – it wasn’t feasible to find an unoccupied corner of the house for a quick makeout session. Again, I don’t remember the details, but after so much time apart, the sexual tension that came with finally being in the same physical space grew too great to bear and we detoured spontaneously to the empty hotel room where my family and I were staying.

While taking a breather in the midst of some very exciting and long-awaited sex, Alexandra stopped to check her phone and found a text from her husband. I don’t know whether it was something they’d agreed upon beforehand or if Glenn had decided out of the blue, but she was forbidden to go back to the hotel with me. I, of course, was not privy to this; I have to assume that if she knew about it when we left the house she would have told me when I made the suggestion. Anxiety overwhelmed me as we got dressed and, like two teenagers who’d stayed out beyond their curfew, hurried back to the house to face the music.

When we arrived, Glenn wasn’t violent or even loud. While I’m sure he was one to raise his voice if not necessarily his hand in anger, I never saw that side of him. Still, it was apparent that he was angry about what had transpired. Not at me; he quickly made that clear. He was angry at Alexandra, and decisively pulled rank, ordering her into the shower with him in the middle of the afternoon, and for what, exactly, I wasn’t about to ask.

His behavior was shocking even if I didn’t acknowledge it as such at the time. In the moment, I was too busy processing my own guilt with regard to this incident. I blamed myself for getting my partner in trouble with her husband even though I should have placed the blame elsewhere. Depending on whether the prohibition of sex was agreed-upon beforehand or spontaneous, I suppose the blame could have been laid upon Alexandra or Glenn, respectively for the lack of clear communication. Regardless of which possibility is the correct one, much if not all of the blame belongs to Glenn for his inability to handle what he essentially set in motion between Alexandra and I.

Why did this happen? Why had Glenn set such an inexplicable, negligibly-expressed boundary, and then lost control so spectacularly when it was violated? He’d always been supportive of Alexandra’s and my relationship, and it’s not as though they’d closed their marriage since we saw them last. I never got an answer of any kind, though it likely had something to do with the fact that since having her hopes of a similar relationship with Glenn dashed the year before, Jill had moved on. She had no intention of having sex with him during our trip, and warned him of this in advance. If he wasn’t going to get laid, why should his wife and I be allowed to?

This episode is what Jill cites when demonstrating Glenn’s true nature. Publicly he was charming, gregarious, caring, radically left, and feminist, an ally whose progressivism didn’t seem to be merely performative. However, rather than being a one-time lapse, his jealous, controlling behavior was him showing who he really was. It wasn’t the first time he exhibited what I might describe as unusual behavior, though it was the first time I saw anything that I’d consider problematic. The red flags were there, but I didn’t want to acknowledge them.

I am reminded of filmmaker Joss Whedon, whose public persona – and physical appearance – was not unlike Glenn’s. Raised as a radical feminist, Whedon told stories of female characters who are stronger than the male characters with whom they share the screen in television series such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Dollhouse”, “Firefly”, and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The feminist themes in his works inspired an academic field of study, and countless articles and books have been written on gender studies with regard to Joss Whedon’s filmography. For many years, it seemed to fans that a more fiercely feminist male voice in the entertainment industry would never be heard.

Of course, Whedon’s feminist cred turned out to be a shield for antisocial behavior including but not limited to misogyny, racism, and general cruelty inflicted against his cast, crew, and family. In 2017, his ex-wife Kai Cole wrote a blog post in which she exposed him as a serial cheater. Since then, accounts of Whedon’s abuse circulated on social media and in interviews; Charisma Carpenter and Amber Benson told of his toxic behavior during the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while Ray Fisher and Gal Gadot told similar stories about their experience making the Whedon-helmed films Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League.

With the truth about Whedon revealed, former fans began to re-examine his career with knowledge of his true nature in mind. His works were seen to feature sexist tropes and racist stereotypes, trivialize LGBTQ characters, and oversexualize their female characters to appeal to the male gaze. Why had so many of Whedon’s fans failed to find fault with or even notice these elements of his TV series and films until he was revealed to be a misogynist hiding his true nature behind fake feminism? Presumably it was because without the knowledge of this nature, most fans – who had made an enormous emotional investment in those works – simply took the man at face value.

Following Glenn’s tantrum, the rest of the time we spent with him and his family was pleasant. We had dinners out, took a day trip to the beach, and engaged in other fun family activities. Alexandra and I even had a dinner date one night, though no sex was had. Perhaps feeling guilty about his outburst, or alternatively having exerted the necessary control over his wife, Glenn okayed it. But knowing her husband’s duplicitous and jealous nature, and having paid the consequence for disobedience just days earlier, there was no way Alexandra was going to take the risk. Still, it was a fun evening, and given all that I know now, I’m sure she needed it even more than I did.

In the next post, I’ll bring you up to speed. I’ll reveal when, how, and why the friendship ended. I’ll discuss the state of my relationship with Alexandra as well, and perhaps most importantly I will consider the possibility that I was unwittingly a party to the awfulness I didn’t even realize was occurring. The next one’s going to be dark, but I’ll lead with a content warning.

Continued in Part 5.

[Read Part 1 and Part 2.]

Glenn: Wherein I assess the titular friendship, in particular its humble beginnings and its evolution into something that was temporarily very gratifying.

My friendship with Glenn (that’s what I’m calling him; it’s not his actual name) began on Twitter, where my wife and I encountered him for the first time a decade ago or longer. He and his wife shared an account, though she seldom used it; for a very long time whenever we would interact, it would be with him rather than with her or with both of them.

Glenn and his wife – Susie? Samantha? Shannon? I use a lot of “S” names to refer to women I cannot actually identify due to privacy issues, so I think I’ll call her Alexandra. Anyway, Glenn and Alexandra were swingers. They didn’t identify as polyamorous; it was very clear that they were fans of sport-fucking without any pesky emotions. And for years, Glenn was a big proponent of the four of us hooking up. Yes, he was attracted to my wife – why wouldn’t he be? – but it was pretty clear that his priority was watching me fuck his.

As Glenn and Alexandra weren’t local, I thought little of his overtures. He’d shown me a couple pictures of his wife and I found her attractive, but as I hadn’t interacted with her at that point, and in fact had no idea whether she was even aware of his machinations, she held little tangible appeal for me. Though I’m not and never have been demisexual, I do prefer to know what somebody is about before I have sex with them, or at least to talk to them a bit and get a sense of whether they are even into me.

A year or two later, I interacted with his wife for the first time. I noticed her commenting on my sexy tweets with enthusiasm, and eventually we took the conversation private via Twitter DM. Our interactions were often intensely erotic in nature. I found her sweet and sexy, though reserved. I looked forward to occasional communication with her – her reservations lessened the more we talked – and I felt excited by the prospect of getting to know her and maybe even meeting. Time passed, and by 2015 a meeting between the four of us seemed a foregone conclusion.

The first meeting of many occurred in 2016. While passing through their city on the way home following a week-long road trip, the four of us met for a very enjoyable breakfast loaded with fun and flirty conversation, genuine excitement, and surprising feelings of connection. When we left the restaurant after four hours, Glenn and Alexandra invited us back to their place for a four-way. It was our first time doing same-room full-swap, and a great time was had by all. By the time Jill and I left their house and continued on our way, we were about nine hours behind schedule, but neither of us had cause to complain.

My wife was very interested in Glenn, and the feeling was mutual. Before we left their house that evening, they indicated they’d be open to seeing us again; we saw them three more times in 2016 alone. We swapped, of course, and even paired off and spent the night together in separate locations (Alexandra and I at our hotel, Glenn and Jill at Glenn and Alexandra’s house). We took day trips and did fun family-friendly stuff. Our kids became friends. Between visits, we stayed in touch, often sending flirty messages and sexy pictures.

During the fourth and final trip we took to see them that year, Glenn told Jill that he didn’t have the same feelings for her that his wife had for me, and vice versa. In other words, while he enjoyed having sex with her, he was unable to reciprocate her emotions. She was hurt; beyond the rejection she undoubtedly felt, there was surely a modicum of envy for the connection I had made. At the time it seemed that Glenn had let her down in the most earnest, ethical way imaginable. We all remained friends, and the eventual cessation of our annual summer road trips to their city was due only to COVID.

I enjoyed Glenn’s progressive values. Sociopolitically and socioeconomically, he leaned far left. Perhaps even farther than I did, in fact. He had a great sense of humor, and was sex positive, not obsessed with cars, and barely interested in sports if at all. This meant that I didn’t have to fake interest in football any given Sunday that we happened to be visiting. He was an unabashed geek, a die-hard fan of Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and Star Wars among countless other pop culture properties. This was someone I was fine watching fuck my wife, or for that matter having join me in fucking her. He was the first guy whose balls touched mine.

Around him I didn’t feel uncomfortable or inadequate despite his greater stature, his unwavering confidence, and frankly, his bigger cock. Above all, I didn’t worry that this man was going to turn out to be a problematic creep because it just didn’t seem possible. He supported my relationship with Alexandra, at one point gifting her a trip to California to spend a few days with me in a hotel. In retrospect his consistent encouragement may have blinded me to various red flags.

Despite my confidence to the contrary as demonstrated in the previous post, this makes me wonder if sex does motivate my friendships after all. Am I more likely to accept a guy as a friend if doing so provides me with some sort of sexual perk? Most guys I’ve known would not encourage a sexual relationship between me and their significant others, and if they did it’s unlikely that said significant others would be interested anyway. But what if they did? Would I be more likely to embrace a guy whose friendship brought with it the occasional three- or four-way?

Once again, I don’t really think that’s true. I don’t care what kind of perk you offer – free concert tickets, a twenty percent discount at Target, weekend barbecues at your rustic mountaintop home overlooking the San Francisco Bay – if you’re a MAGA hat-wearing racist who thinks women exist to breed, or for that matter a self-important corporate douchebag who excels primarily because of his privilege, kindly go fuck yourself.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to check in with oneself from time to time and re-assess. Make sure that your heart is in the right place and your motivations are as pure as they can possibly be. At the very least, I feel like really lousy people – the worst of the worst – rarely if ever bother to introspect.

In the next post I’ll explore one particular episode in our friendship that should have clued me in to the fact that all was not as healthy and functional as it first appeared. And would have clued me in if I was capable of seeing clearly, i.e. if there was sufficient blood flowing to my brain.

Continued in Part 4.

[If you’ve not yet read the intro, kindly do so.]

The Early Years: Wherein I examine (toxic) masculinity through the lens of my upbringing.

I grew up in the 1980s. In fact, I became a teenager the year the ’80s came to a close. In the United States, nine of those ten years saw a Republican President in the White House, and Republicans controlled Congress for much of the decade. Crack cocaine and AIDS were allowed – encouraged, even – to wreak havoc on the Black and LGBTQ communities, respectively. It was a time when consumerism held sway over the American people and wealth and material were highly prized.

Conservative values dominated the country, with so-called traditional gender roles the norm, and casual bigotry including misogyny and homophobia sadly allowed to thrive. Straight white male privilege was so widespread that it went generally unnoticed by straight white males. It wasn’t commonly acknowledged; it simply was. While author Tom Wolfe coined “the ‘Me’ Decade” to describe the 1970s, it seems a more fitting descriptor for the greed and apathy of the 1980s.

Growing up, I saw casual misogyny. I saw homophobia. I saw racism. I saw unnecessary male aggression toward virtually anyone or anything. When you experience something enough – whether first-hand or otherwise – it can easily become normalized, even when it’s not something you support or agree with. In other words, if you attend a school where students are often bullied, you may not like the behavior but you will probably acknowledge that that’s just the way it works at that school.

The unnecessary aggression I describe wasn’t always directed at women, people of color, or LGBTQ individuals. I may be a straight white male, but I was short, I was frequently overweight, I was soft-spoken. I was awkward, and probably perceived as effeminate at times, no doubt the result of having a close relationship with my mother since birth. In short, I was an appealing target. Virtually all of the people who antagonized me growing up were boys or men. At the time, I didn’t know how to describe this male meanness – “bullying”, I probably would have said – but today it falls under the umbrella of toxic masculinity.

As a result of these experiences, today it is very difficult for me to have an ongoing friendship with a guy in part because it’s difficult to trust that the prospective friend has values that are at least somewhat in proximity to my own. It doesn’t have to be as overt as storming the Capitol or carrying a tiki torch through Charlottesville. It doesn’t have to be a closet full of Nazi memorabilia or having attended Klan rallies. It can be something as low-profile as harassing women under an assumed identity on social media. It can be trolling to compensate for one’s own shortcomings. It can be posting revenge porn. Hell, it can be mistreating waitstaff or otherwise refusing to care about one’s fellow human being.

Beyond all of that, it has traditionally been difficult for me to maintain friendships with guys because I don’t care much about sports or cars, and it seems like 90% of conversations I’ve had with men revolve around one of these two things. Sure, I know enough to fake it most of the time, but if we’re at a party and the men are mingling with the other men while the women are mingling with the other women – because suburban living is nothing if not conformist – chances are that my social anxiety is through the ceiling because I know I’m likely to get roped into a conversation about sports or cars.

In fact, in decades past very few of my conversations with other men involved pop culture, with the occasional exception of the most mainstream films, television shows, video games, and music. This is because up until fairly recently it wasn’t socially acceptable to be a geek and to have interests including but not limited to comic books, roleplaying games, and science fiction. In the 1990s, when I was a teenager and a young adult, bringing up any of these topics was a likely path to widespread derision.

Now, it may seem like I just wasn’t hanging out with the right people, and I can’t honestly say this wasn’t the case. But given how many people of my generation now talk openly about playing Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, or standing in long lines to buy multiple copies of Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 in 1991, it seems more likely that at least some of the guys who would have shoved someone into a trash can and rolled them down a hill for having geeky interests were probably into the same things but just couldn’t admit it. Lest they too be shoved into a trash can and rolled down a hill.

Anyway, why would I want to hang out with people who just want to talk about the same basic bullshit? And when the conversation wasn’t in the “sports and cars” realm, I still felt the need – and still do, in fact – to be on guard for casual racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Even when I’ve spent sufficient time in a man’s company to determine that he’s unlikely to express bigotry toward others, I still keep my guard up because heaven forbid I decide someone’s cool and let my guard down only to find out he voted for Trump.

(I realize that non-toxic masculinity exists and always has existed. I realize that there are other men like me who would rather not contribute to the problem. Decent, well-adjusted men are out there. But sometimes looking for male friends doesn’t feel like a worthwhile endeavor.)

Hanging out with one guy is risky enough, but with a group of guys the risk becomes exponentially higher. With one guy, there’s actually a pretty good chance that he’ll be decent. At least fifty-fifty odds, I’m thinking, though I have no statistics or other data to back that up. But let’s say you’re hanging out with a group of five guys. What are the odds that none of these five is a piece of shit? Again, I have no basis for any of this other than my own experience, but I’ve got to think that at least one of them (and probably more – maybe four) has disregarded a woman’s lack of consent, has participated in a hate crime against a member of the LGBTQ community, and/or would express umbrage over his daughter dating someone from a different race or ethnicity.

It’s for these reasons that I’ve always been closer to women and had more women friends than men. I find it easier to let my guard down with women, and even conversation comes more naturally. After all, there have been relatively few women who’ve failed to make me feel at ease around them whereas with men there have been relatively few who’ve succeeded. At times, I’ve wondered if this predilection was less altruistic: “Do I have women friends because I’m wary of toxic masculinity, or because I’m straight and women are more useful to me sexually than men are?” I try my best to always be self-aware – perhaps to my own detriment – but I’ve consistently come to the conclusion that that isn’t the reason.

It’s been hard to overcome the programming to which I was exposed during childhood and adolescence. Even though I never liked what I would come to know as toxic masculinity, it seemed a fait accompli. It was all around me, seen not only in the people around me but in the entertainment and other media I consumed, and that’s what I thought I was expected to be. Supposed to be, even. I didn’t fit in with other guys, and this led to identity issues, and intense introspective analysis. “IS this what makes a man?”

Sure, I had guy friends over the years, but generally speaking I saw it as taking the bad with the good. The way I saw it, every one of them had some antisocial dysfunction I was not yet aware of. Such dysfunction was part of being a guy. The question, once I sussed out what that dysfunction was in any given one of my male friends, was could I live with it?

I know the above is a very superior and fucked-up attitude to have. If it was true that some manner of toxicity was inevitable, was part and parcel of being a guy, then surely that meant I had something wrong with me too. Alternatively, if I am fairly well-adjusted – and I’m not saying I am, but if I am – surely other boys and men are too. Still, being exposed to terrible behaviors that have been condoned and even normalized by the collective, it becomes very easy to assume the worst of others.

In the next post I’ll talk about the now-dead friendship. I’ll demonstrate why it was such a breath of fresh air when compared to other male friendships I’ve had. I’ll revisit how the friendship began, how it evolved, and the benefits I enjoyed as a result. And because it’s me, I’ll introspect. A lot. Stay tuned.

Continued in Part 3.

Intro: Wherein I give an overview.

On a global scale, 2022 was an eventful year. The world population reached eight billion. Russia invaded Ukraine. Queen Elizabeth II died at age 96. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. Conflicts in Myanmar and Ethiopia caused more than 20,000 deaths. The U.K. saw the appointment of three prime ministers in as many months. Unprecedented protests swept through Iran following the murder of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, in police custody. Russia returned WNBA player Brittney Griner to U.S. soil after the WNBA player spent more than nine months in captivity. Argentina won the FIFA World Cup.

Here in the United States, Ketanji Brown Jackson was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which less than one week prior overturned the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in search of classified material taken from the White House by outgoing president Donald Trump. The G.O.P. embarrassed itself in the U.S. midterm elections when the threatened “red wave” failed to materialize and most of the far-right Republicans running for office were defeated. Elon Musk purchased Twitter, spending approximately $43,999,999,700 more than the social media platform was worth and in the process devaluing both it and his brand. More than 267,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported in the U.S. alone. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.

Some of these events were controversial. Some were widely condemned. Some were celebrated. Many shocked the world. All of them were front-page, above-the-fold news, or would be if anyone still read newspapers. And yet in spite of all of this tumult, I was somehow more affected by a personal matter, namely the loss of a very close male friend.

Before I go any further, I must clarify that despite the ominous wording of the previous sentence, the friend in question was not lost in the sense that he has passed on from this world to whatever lies beyond. Nor did the friend marry somebody who keeps him on a tight leash – “whipped”, if you will – and won’t let him hang out with the guys anymore. We didn’t have a huge falling-out over some aspect of pop culture or another and end the friendship in an acrimonious and geeky fashion. He didn’t dis my mother. He didn’t fuck my wife.

Okay, actually that last one isn’t true. He did fuck my wife, but I was there when it happened and so was his wife. Everyone was cool with it, and it was actually a hell of a lot of fun, so it didn’t have anything to do with the breakdown. The truth is, my friendship with this person ended passively, without a final confrontation or even parting words, once I learned that the person he’d led me to believe he was didn’t actually exist, and he’d conned me for nearly a decade into believing otherwise.

It’s no secret that I don’t have many guy friends, nor do I suspect it’s a secret as to why that is. But just in case it is, over the next several posts I will examine my upbringing in the 1980s with regard to the societal values that shaped me into the man I am today. I will explain why I find male friendships so difficult to make and maintain. I will give you background on the now-defunct friendship, I will tell you why this person seemed like a near-perfect guy friend, and why the friendship was so important to me. I will describe what caused me to throw off the friendship with great force, and I will give you my current thoughts on the matter.

This won’t be as sprawling and in-depth a story as Losing Joan, but nonetheless I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. (Perhaps moreso because it’s shorter.) And if you don’t, that’s okay too because my main reason for writing all of this is to get the feelings out.

Continued in Part Two.