Old Friends Die Hard

My wise, old (dead) shrink told me this: "Notice the expression on someone's face when you first meet them; what you see in the first ten minutes of knowing someone, before they are trying to impress you or seduce you, is what you eventually will get, for good."

I am thinking about this because of Anonymous, a reader of this blog who leaves comments which I delete, sparing my readers his unpleasantness. I think Anonymous is my ex-best friend Richard. Although we were the closest of friends for more than 35 years, for 20 of them he hid the fact that he was gay, not from everyone but from me, instead allowing me to feel sorry for his being alone when all the time there was a guy in the closet with him. I found out the truth when a mutual friend laughingly said, "of course he is gay!" Yes, Richard reluctantly admitted it-- but what was I thinking to remain in that relationship after such duplicity?

Last year our friendship ended abruptly following a four-day visit, during which Richard described our time together as "delicious" and saying it was "the best time he had had in years, with anyone." Then silence-- no explanation, no phone calls, no nothing. And now blog-stalking.  I am racking my brain trying to remember how he looked in those first ten minutes, but alas, 1970 is a long way back.