Good Christian Sex by Bromleigh McCleneghan

Author:Bromleigh McCleneghan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

We Might Be Strangers

A Theology of Intimacy

Once upon a time, I had a friend. We spent a lot of time together one summer, left for different schools again in the fall, saw each other over the holidays. At some point in the heat of mini-golf excursions and trips for ice cream and conversation, I began to hope that we might be more than friends. And by that, I mean that I started listening even more obsessively than normal to Ani DiFranco (So many sheep I quit counting / sleepless and embarrassed about the way that I feel1), listening to my Walkman in bed on those hot summer nights, pining away and vehemently denying it when my parents asked if there was something going on between us.

Perhaps because the narrative in my family told of my parents’ long-standing friendship that precipitated and undergirded their romance, perhaps because I’d memorized When Harry Met Sally, I never had a hard time believing that friends could get together; in fact, I was pretty convinced friendship was a critical part of romance. If you didn’t like the other person, how could you like like them?

But “I only like you as a friend” was a common enough rejection in our circles. Long before men complained on the Internet about the treachery of the “friend zone,” I inhabited it. Couldn’t he see that we had something more? Couldn’t he see that I wanted him to take my hand? He wrote me letters that fall—was this a sign? Or just a throwback habit for aspiring writers?

We went to a party one night over winter break. Not one night—New Year’s Eve. We drank, but did not drive. As we were walking to a cab, emboldened by intoxication, I stopped him. Listen. If we weren’t friends, would you be attracted to me? Sure, he said.

Well. Do you think that even though we’re friends, you could kiss me? Because it’s New Year’s, and I haven’t been kissed yet.

He backed me up against a wall and kissed me. It was hot. Definitely maybe something he’d been thinking about doing for a while.

We said good night. He went back to school before we saw each other again.

A few months later I took the Greyhound to his school for the weekend. Just a friend visiting a friend. No subtext or anything. We ice-skated. We must have eaten, though I have absolutely no memory of that. We went to a party. We played beer pong, as you do. We went back to his apartment, sat on the couch in thick silence. And went to bed. I slept on a borrowed mattress, by myself.

He hugged me when I got on the bus to go back to Boston, but that was that.

At some point later, I asked him why nothing happened that weekend, why he’d never kissed me again, especially not over those days with so much opportunity. “We’d been drinking. I didn’t think anything should happen if we weren’t sober.”

As it happened, we were not in the same city again for almost a year, by which time we’d both started to date others.

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