Secrets and Lies....

CONTINUATION…

Now this phone call was not entirely unexpected. Even before Stefan and Katrin left, there were promises made concerning the sharing of photos that had been taken during their stay with us and some of our day trips around Puget Sound. I believe we all felt the easiest way to share our pictures was through Facebook, since we would most likely be posting most or all of the photos there anyway. I know that Stefan and Kevin were friends on Facebook and I think Stefan asked me to send him an invite, so we could share our photos as well. I have never ‘friended’ Kevin on Facebook and with reason. I don’t want to be censored. That is the same reason he has never read this blog. Kevin is fully aware of the blog and the subject matter. I am very comfortable saying that there is very little, if anything, written here that has not been said to Kevin first. Writing to you just helps me process and sort through things to gain a little more clarity and distance from situations. So then you may ask why not let Kevin read it. Because it is MINE, and just as I am not privy to Kevin’s conversations or letters to his friends, I choose to keep “Dear Tallulah” unedited by a biased voice. I’m going to leave it at that. Anyway, I didn’t mention it at the time, but Stefan had called me at home several weeks ago. Actually he had called for Kevin but he and I ended up talking for awhile and he reminded me to send him a friend invite on Facebook, so he could share his photos with me and vice-versa. I knew that once Stefan had access to my profile on Facebook, he would also have access to “Dear Tallulah”…and I did stop and ask myself, “Would I take the time to look at a blog written in another language, because it belonged to someone I knew?” I would, even if only to look at the pictures. Now Kevin thought it was a little odd that Stefan and I would have had a whole conversation on the phone, after all he was Kevin's friend, but I reminded him that Stefan stayed in my house too, and we were also friends now, but I understood where Kevin was coming from…it’s that awkward moment when you realize that two previously separated parts to yourself are suddenly colliding and there is that split second, for most of us, when we quickly try to fetter out what inconsistencies about ourselves might be brought to the surface. For most of us, it’s a split second. For Kevin it must be an eternity. The Kevin that Stefan knows and the Kevin that I know are two different people. During our first conversation, the first time Stefan called, I not only had to be the person I was when he visited, “the straight roommate”, I also had to uphold Kevin’s persona; the person that Kevin had created for his friends and family. It was all getting very complicated for me…in-fact, I felt my end of the deal on this whole “Straight” thing was getting far more involved than Kevin’s end. And I don’t lie, especially to my friends. As for Kevin, I think he had been lying about his sexuality for so long that he no longer even viewed it as deception…it had just become par for the course, especially having been in the military for 20 years.

“You know,” I said casually to Kevin as we drove somewhere several weeks ago, “Once I ‘friend’ Stefan on Facebook, I imagine he’ll find out about us.” I turned to look at his face. The sunlight filtering through the trees that were rushing past the car flashed blotches of light and shadow on his face. I imagined Mother Nature holding a disco ball above the Pssat as we drove and smirked at the silly image I had conjured up.

Kevin looked at me quickly and caught my smirk and misinterpreted it. His eyes narrowed briefly as he tried to understand my amusement and he quickly asked, “Why?”

“Because I don’t censor myself on Facebook and it has the link to my blog.”

“I want to read your blog.” He stated.

“You can’t.” I replied. There’s nothing there that you don’t know about, Kevin. My blog is my release valve and it’s an easy way to communicate with my friends all at once. Besides, you know that if you read it, you’d be trying to edit what I write and I’m not going to play that game with you.”

“Is it all about me?”

“You’d love that wouldn’t you?…Why would MY blog be about you?  I write about you, sometimes, but it’s my blog, about ME and my reactions to the world around me.", I stated firmly, leaving no room for discussion about how I would conduct myself on MY blog.

And that was that. Honestly. I knew at the time that he was not putting two and two together for some reason, or was he? Maybe Kevin, on a subconscious level, thought this would be a great way to come out! Every instinct inside me said “No” to that thought, but it still left a nagging voice in the back of my head…what if he really wanted to come out, but just didn’t want to do it himself? Maybe he didn’t even realize he wanted to come out. And these weren’t really whole thought out conversations I was having in my head, they were more like passing notions…quick, ‘what ifs’. I sent the friend request to Stefan on Facebook and couple of days later he accepted. I was anxious to see his pictures but they never came. Kevin offered to show me the photos Stefan had on his Facebook wall and I AGAIN said to him, “I imagine that Stefan knows about us by now.” Kevin said nothing. Was I missing something? All this bitching and moaning and kvetching for five years about keeping him in the closet and it did not make sense that he wasn’t picking up on this. So I again thought that perhaps he must really want certain people to know. I admit I did not push the issue either. I knew I could, but I felt like there was a reason that Kevin was acting like this, subconscious or not. On one hand I couldn’t quite believe it or understand it, and on the other, I wanted to see how this hand played out.

“Really, Kevin?” I asked. “No response to that?”

“What can I say? If it’s already happened or it’s already done?”

Very odd, I thought. My guess is that Kevin didn’t really believe anything would come of it. What else could I think? I had been almost a week or two since Stefan accepted my friend request and I still had not heard anything further from him. I realize now he was no doubt reading and digesting “Dear Tallulah”….and now I was on the phone with him.

I was pacing the kitchen floor and listening to Stefan speak. He started out by saying that he had always known about Kevin, even when they knew each other in Germany, years before I had even met Kevin. Stefan thought everyone knew, except Kevin. When he came to visit us in Washington, he knew my place in Kevin’s life within three minutes of being here and neither he nor his girlfriend, Katrin, could understand why Kevin and I were putting on such an elaborate show. They had a nice visit with us, but he thought that it would have been much more relaxed and enjoyable if I had not been staying in a room that was very clearly never used. That made me laugh. Stefan went on to add that he had given Kevin chance after chance to open up to him, clearly saying that if Kevin was gay it meant nothing to him, but he needed to have the honesty from Kevin…the honesty was the important thing. And that is what really impressed me about the whole conversation with Stefan…he was upset because, as a friend, Kevin had not trusted him with the truth, and that had led Stefan to question the very foundation of their friendship. I agreed with him wholeheartedly on every point. And for the next 30 minutes or so, we both tried to figure Kevin out and failed. It was clear that Stefan was trying to be a good friend and it was also clear that Kevin really had a weak grasp on true friendship. If you lie to a friend, I think you are really saying that you don’t trust your friend enough to exercise their right to love you unconditionally and if you can’t do that, is it really a true friendship at all? And here is where Stefan was stuck…not wanting to lose Kevin as a friend…extending the bridge that would allow Kevin to suture the gap between superficial understanding and deeper insight..., but not knowing how to approach Kevin. If Kevin had gone to such great pains to hide everything from someone he truly believed was his friend…well, it called into question the very nature of what a friendship meant to Kevin and I understood Stefan’s confusion and hurt…when this type of betrayal (and I honestly feel Stefan felt betrayed) is played out upon you, you can’t help but question yourself too, and wonder, “What did I do to make my friend lie to me?” Dishonesty disarms a person. You can’t work with lies, but given the truth in any situation and one can either choose to adapt or remove oneself. Stefan really endeared himself to me during this conversation and I was frantically searching my brain for something to say to make him feel better, something that would ensure the chance for a continued friendship between Kevin and him. Thankfully, I was relieved of that responsibility. Stefan said he had thought about writing to Kevin, then thought about writing to me and then settled on a phone call as there was too much to say. He knew that Kevin and I were planning on visiting him in Germany next year, but now, he didn’t want us to come if Kevin was going to play these games with him…he just wanted Kevin to be honest with him and trust him to be what a any good friend would be…unconditional.

My mind was spinning. I had promised Kevin never to ‘out’ him, but I’d done just that. I was thankful it wasn’t his mother on the phone. If it was, I might as well go upstairs and pack my bags. Then it occurred to me…had I really ‘outed’ him if Stefan already knew?…I had only confirmed suspicions…but that’s just mincing words, I thought…it would make no difference to Kevin and I knew that. I told Stefan that I wasn’t really sure how Kevin would react and I asked him to please give me a couple of days to approach Kevin and gauge his reaction before Stefan spoke with him. Based on what Kevin had said so far about ‘not being able to undo what was already done’, my gut told me that it would be alright that Stefan knew about Kevin and I, but Kevin would NEVER want to talk about it. But that didn’t feel quite right to me either, the truth was, I really didn’t know what Kevin was going to say, or how he would react. By the time Stefan and I got off the phone, I knew that he and I were in many ways closer to each other than he and Kevin had ever been. I knew that bothered Stefan but I wondered if it would bother Kevin…would it even occur to Kevin? I let go of that and quickly focused on the real task at hand. Kevin was due home in a few hours, and there was no way I could carry this around silently for a couple of days…it was going to come out tonight.

TO BE CONTINUED…