This thread has been dead for some time I know....but felt compelled to add to it today. I have an african friend (from an island called Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania) staying with me at the moment, he is married to a friend of mine, which is how I know him, they have had some marital troubles, and my friend asked if her husband (Omar) could stay with me a while, so they can both get some breathing space. Omar is a very masculine guy, yet like a child in many ways, breathtakingly honest, smiling, and actually a very beautiful man to look at.
I have known him now for 5 years, but never really got to know who he really is. This time we have had has been amazing, I have discovered myself again, and now can see that for some time before he moved in, I was actually suffering from a deep depression, and that takes a lot for me to reveal. We have both discovered happiness in each other, having that male company with no obligations, no undercurrents, no guilty secrets or words left long unspoken. In essence, I guess Omar makes me feel like a child again.
Omar struggles with the concept of homosexuality, and although he is by nature very tactile...(he often comes behind me and puts his arms around me, holds me), I have on occasion become aroused...which he finds amusing but at the same time he will make sure to tell me that he is not gay. I tell him that I know this, but sometimes nature just takes hold, which he understands.
It's so strange the love we have, he kisses me often on the lips, so tenderly, and strokes my hair, sits with me cuddling me. If I was a younger man, I know that this situation would become untenable, but with 36 years of life behind me, I deal with it, and see the love, not the sex, that is there, however strange this may seem.
Tonight we watched Brokeback Mountain, he picked up the DVD and asked to watch it, so we did. Watching this movie again...it is just so powerful, surely this must become one of the all time celluloid classics....after the film ended, and the credits rolled, Omar looked at me, tears in his eyes, and said..'slavery, the holocaust, all terrible things, but you gay people, you have been persecuted for the longest time! More than anyone else!' I had never thought about this, and it was a relevation to hear it coming from Omy. Maybe we have, maybe we have not, yet this story/film had/has so much power within it, to be able to affect so many different people from so many different walks of life...and this is what makes it such an awesome piece of art.
I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes we lose ourselves, lose sight of what is real and immerse ourselves in loneliness and fear, and for me, to find the love of a true male friendship, one that is pure, with or without sex, is an incredible thing, it has removed the cloud that has followed me these last few months. It does get harder to make new friends as one gets older, and the ones I have kept from my youth, now all live in far places. My partner has been away for 3 months, so I have felt a bit washed up, I guess I forgot who I was for a while. I stopped knowing myself. And all it took, was the love of a brother, to make it all better.
I hope this makes sense, it was hard for me to write it down.