While one half of my social circle has disappeared into relationships, kids and suburbs, the other has struggled through isolation and anxiety, hard drugs and risky sex. Christian went to a party store, rented a helium tank, started inhaling it, then texted his ex and told him to come over, to make sure he’d find the body.įor years I’ve noticed the divergence between my straight friends and my gay friends. And there was Christian, the second guy I ever kissed, who killed himself at 32, two weeks after his boyfriend broke up with him. There’s Jared, whose depression and body dysmorphia have steadily shrunk his social life down to me, the gym and Internet hookups. There’s Malcolm, who barely leaves the house except for work because his anxiety is so bad. Jeremy is not my only gay friend who’s struggling. Only a few of the names of the gay men in this article are real.
NO THATS GAY MEME MOVIE
It was either that or watch a movie by myself.”ġ. “I used to come home from work exhausted on a Friday night and it’s like, ‘Now what?’ So I would dial out to get some meth delivered and check the Internet to see if there were any parties happening. “The drugs were a combination of boredom and loneliness,” he says. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-Fi, he’s way behind on work emails. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the kind of guy who wears a work shirt no matter what day of the week it is. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. Jeremy is not the friend I was expecting to have this conversation with. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here. Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.” When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would stay up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then feel like shit until Wednesday. “When you have it,” he says, “you have to keep using it.
“I used to get so excited when the meth was all gone.”