Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

{This is a more evolved look-back at this earlier post titled ‘The Moon and the Fag’.}

The two of us – one straight guy (a young man I already considered a friend) and myself (still in the closet in my first semester at Brandeis) – made our way back to the dorm from our usual dinner at Sherman Hall. It was a crisp November night, and the air was clear, allowing for a stupendous showing by the moon, who rose overhead and elicited my notice mostly due to my having been studying her all semester in an Astronomy course. I pointed her out to my friend, who slowed to a stop and eyed me with a slight look of apprehension in his eyes. “Look at the moon,” I said innocently, about to dive into a scintillating explanation of its phases and how quickly they changed.

He stopped, sizing me up suspiciously in the way he did when something truly confounded him, then tilted his chin slightly higher. I’d seen the gesture in our dinner debates when I made a point that challenged everything he thought he knew. Then he said the words that would forever chill my heart: “You’re not going fag on me, are you?” It wasn’t entirely malicious, yet it wasn’t entirely a joke either. I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t kidding. And I knew myself enough to know I had to leave him behind. 

WHY DID YOU GO? WHY DID YOU TURN AWAY FROM ME?

WHEN ALL THE WORLD SEEMED TO SING, WHY… WHY DID YOU GO?

WAS IT ME? WAS IT YOU?
QUESTIONS IN A WORLD OF BLUE

In that moment, instantly and irrevocably, I shut down any opportunity of a friendship between us. My heart broke a little, the proverbial ground beneath my moral standing shifted, and the world turned a shade dimmer because I knew immediately I had lost a friend. As jarring as it was – he’d never made any derogatory remarks about gay people before – and as startled as I felt, I laughed and reassured him, stumbling over a nervous reference to what I was studying in Astronomy. Inside, though, everything had changed.

That was a choice – and it was an internal choice mostly at first, but a definite decision, one that would eventually and definitively destroy whatever friendship there was between us. Neither of us knew that yet. We continued walking, laughing it off. Maybe I was a tad bit too defensive. Maybe he understood something not even I did at that point, and realized it as soon as the comment came out of his mouth. Maybe he wanted me to understand what would not stand in his world. There were so many maybes back then.

HOW CAN A HEART THAT’S FILLED WITH LOVE START TO CRY?

WHEN ALL THE WORLD SEEMED SO RIGHT, HOW CAN LOVE DIE?

WAS IT ME? WAS IT YOU?
QUESTIONS IN A WORLD OF BLUE 

I only knew that I couldn’t have someone like that close to me. And so the distancing began. It was unintentional and imperceptible at first. We continued going to dinner, but something was altered. In my reticence and reluctance to fully reveal any more of myself, in my pulling back and edging away from the closeness that fosters friendship, I’d already begun the irreversible slide to becoming strangers again.

It was unfortunate, as he had quickly become my closest friend at Brandeis, and at that point in my life I desperately needed a friend. I think he did too. He lived in the room next door. His roommate was a total dick, and mine was never around (I loved him for that), and so we ended up going to dinner a lot. He was staunchly Republican and conservative, and I’d been raised in a Republican, conservative household, so we held a lot of the same values. I’d not really taken any interest in politics at that time, even though I held strongly liberal views on social issues. We would make fledgling attempts at discussing the issues of the time, and I’d often take the liberal viewpoint just to be the devil’s advocate, to challenge him as much as I was challenging myself. We could agree to disagree, and somehow came out at the end of every dinner a little closer for it.

WHEN DID THE DAY WITH ALL ITS LIGHT TURN INTO NIGHT?

WHEN ALL THE WORLD SEEMED TO SING, WHY… WHY DID YOU GO?

WHY, WHY DID YOU GO?

WAS IT ME? WAS IT YOU?
QUESTIONS IN A WORLD OF BLUE
QUESTIONS IN A WORLD OF BLUE

For the remainder of that fall semester we acted as friends – even as I felt myself moving away from him. He obviously thought nothing of the night of the moon, and I was too insecure to bring it up again. I hadn’t even come out to myself, much less anyone else, so it didn’t much matter. Without being honest to anyone, it was impossible for me to get truly close to people. Still, someone who could so easily roll the word ‘fag’ off his tongue and tinge it with slight derision and warning was not someone I wanted in my friendship circle, whether or not I turned out to be gay.

When we left for Thanksgiving break, something was already broken, and in the few weeks before winter break, I let the cracks deepen and widen, moving us further apart even as he was largely unaware of the seismic shift. I went home for the holidays and didn’t think much of him. When we returned for the spring semester, we met only sporadically for dinner, and when our Freshman year was done, I don’t even remember saying goodbye to him.

A couple of years later, after I had come out and become comfortable with that part of myself, I saw him briefly as we passed each other near the commuter rail. It was an anticlimactic reunion, rushed on both sides. He eyed my leopard-print velvet scarf with that same suspicious glint in his eyes, and told me it was… interesting. There was a lot said in that, and more in the deliberate pause that came before it – at least I attributed a lot to it – but looking back there may not have been anything. It was a meeting that lasted a few seconds. We said farewell and I never looked back.

MOVING NEAR THE EDGE AT NIGHT
DUST IS DANCING IN THE SPACE
A DOG AND BIRD ARE FAR AWAY
THE SUN COMES UP AND DOWN EACH DAY
LIGHT AND SHADOW CHANGE THE WALLS
HALLEY’S COMET’S COME AND GONE
THE THINGS I TOUCH ARE MADE OF STONE
FALLING THROUGH THIS NIGHT ALONE

If there is a main regret of my college years, and I’m ok with admitting a few now, it was that I shut down so substantially that I didn’t give us – and our friendship – another chance. I wish I had reached out to forge a bridge and talk about it, rather than burning the bridge and burying what bothered us before talking it out. The failing was mostly on me. His comment, in hindsight, may not have been the homophobic accusation it felt like at the time. Maybe it was just guy talk in the mid 90’s, which was a long time ago, in a decidedly different world. I may have given up too soon.

LOVE, DON’T GO AWAY
COME BACK THIS WAY
COME BACK AND STAY
FOREVER AND EVER

PLEASE STAY

That brings us to this moment, when division between people is at an all-time high. Rather than pausing to seek out understanding in what separates us, we instantly take a side, and we dig in and hold tight to our positions even when they are brought down by fact and reason, even when we might know we are wrong. For many years, I stood by my dissolution of our friendship. And to be fair, I understood myself enough to know that I was not evolved enough to offer forgiveness or understanding, nor did I have the knowledge or strength or will to work on communicating with someone who could so flippantly let the word ‘fag’ fall effortlessly out of his mouth. But that’s not fair to him.

I wish I had been more open to that. I wish I had not been so quick to judge and condemn. I had killed it. One-sided friendships simply don’t work, especially if there is subterfuge and resentment bubbling beneath the surface. In my own closet of fear and shame, I’d shut the door to any meaningful connections, most regrettably to a potential friend, as different as we might have been to each other. That was a failure on my part, and I may have lost out on an enriching relationship, on a connection that might have made both of us into better people.

DUST IS DANCING IN THE SPACE
A DOG AND BIRD ARE FAR AWAY
THE SUN COMES UP AND DOWN EACH DAY
THE RIVER FLOWS OUT TO THE SEA

LOVE, DON’T GO AWAY
COME BACK THIS WAY
COME BACK AND STAY
FOREVER AND EVER

THE WORLD SPINS.