Friday, June 22, 2001

…hard to do

When The Actor and Craig split up about a month ago, I was devastated. It was like Hope and Michael, the thirtysomething poster couple had decided to call it quits, or maybe Bo and Hope from Days of Our Lives. I don't know, something to do with hope. Maybe the wounding of it.

After all, even if I hadn't been the one to bring them together I had, at least, nurtured their coupling, encouraging them individually to bring the best of themselves to it and hoping that, through them, I could divine something of the secret to maintaining romance and all the other more practical considerations of being a mid-30s/early-20s pair. When they'd begun to get serious, after all, I was still smarting from the hash of things I'd made with Jason. If I treated them like the control group in the sociological experiment my social life had become, I would like to be forgiven for having only the best intentions.

And that's not to say, of course, that I did anything untoward or unnecessarily interventionist to give love a little nudge; they were doing swimmingly on their own. They set up joint housekeeping in September and began to more deeply explore each other's respective worlds. The Actor schooled Craig in the capricious ways of the circuit; Craig gave his elder partner master classes in pragmatism and, if not responsibility then, at least, decorum.

Naturally, our group took to Craig instantly, and I adopted a big brother posture, inexplicably paternal in my desire not to see him absorbed by the party blob that The Actor and The Twins and their ilk comprise. I don't want to give the impression I'm anti-circuit -- far from it -- but it can be a little overwhelming to a foundling protofag, just dipping his toe into the roiling waves of flesh, pharmaceuticals and fashion.

I needn't have worried. Craig took what he liked and left the rest, and he had a much needed moderating effect on The Actor. They became, for a short while, a rarity: The sane circuit couple, pretty men, devoted, head over heels (and vice versa) for each other, buying into the party scene but sensible enough not to go for the second mortgage with points for the Black Party.

They adopted a golden retriever. They shopped together in the Michael Graves section at Target. They had (by The Actor's reports -- Craig was characteristically circumspect on this matter) fantastic sex. The Actor's mother adored Craig and even more importantly, so did his chosen family. The Giant Queen pronounced them a "smart fit."

I meddled a little, yes, but only benignly, warning The Actor over brunch not to fuck it up with this darling boy, cautioning Craig on what became our Thursday night Will & Grace tradition not to take any of The Actor's smelly, posturing macho guy guff. I was pleased to be constantly reassured by The Actor that he had found "the one," and by Craig that they were happy together, carelessly discarded socks, insipid puns and all.

Three weeks ago, two months to the day after the party where I'd given the boy a Donald Duck cookie jar to mark his 22nd birthday, Craig moved out, The Actor moved on, and the rest of us were left to muddle out who, in this to-all-appearances amicable and no-fault divorce, gets custody of the friends.

There is a vague tension floating over our little family right now, unknowable but palpably real. There is a story here, and no one is ready to tell it. But it involves, I think, the wounding of hope, and only time will tell if it has been given a glancing blow or a mortal injury.