Happy Endings

I have this bitchy gay best friend named Kevin. Think Jack on Will & Grace but with a million times more dignity and a helluva lot less tact and you may begin to get a picture.

He can be the most infuriating, offensive asshole on the planet. Sometimes, I just want to grab him by the collar, slap him across the face several hundreds of thousands of time and just scream at him until he's covered in spittle and, depending upon how many spirits I've imbibed, bile. He gets under my skin that much.

But by G-d, when he speaks, he speaks the truth--even if it's a truth I don't particularly want to hear. At first, anyway.

A week or so ago, I went on a rant--albeit an extremely drunken rant--about how sad I still felt and blah, blah, blah about the demise of my relationship with The Girl. Thank goodness Kevin's tolerance for alcohol is higher than mine, because what followed really knocked a lot of sense into me. He just looked at me and just started yelling at me. Really yelling at me!! Big time!! He basically said, "Hal! Do you think you're the only one who goes through this shit?! Everyone goes through this!! Why do you think you're so fucking special?! Fuckin' MAN UP!!"

Wow! "Man up!" I never thought I'd ever hear those words come out of, of all people, his mouth. No, I don't mean that as an offensive and stereotyping commentary about gay men not being Real Men (In my experience, the gay men that I've known have actually been better men than many of the straight ones!!). It was just so not a Kevin thing to say. Hell, even he laughed a little in disbelief after he said it!!

And then he got onto the topic of my cooking. He was like, "Who are you kidding?! It's obvious that you're doing this to maintain some sort of connection with The Girl!!" I then asked him why he was getting so mad at me and why he was yelling at me and he finally answered: "I'm yelling at you because you think you're this amazing person because you're cooking and the truth is...you could and should have been doing this all along!! It has always been inside you!! I've always known you could do it!!"

I hate, hate, HATE admitting when he's right. But hey...when you're right, you're right.

As you know, I've been doing a lot of cooking, this last month. And I love it. I can honestly say that watching people eat and enjoy my food--not to mention eating it myself--has been better than any marijuana high I ever had (Okay..there WAS that one time when I watched "Apocalypse Now" absolutely blazed. Now THAT was crazy!!). And yet, I started my culinary adventures for the completely wrong reasons. In fact, a lot of the cool things I've been doing lately (cooking, grocery shopping, the whole cutting of the parental umbilical cord, etc.) started for the wrong reasons. Mainly, it was to get The Girl back. I figured, if I worked on myself as a person, maybe I could win her back.

I know, lame, right? Yeah, it is lame. Lame, but--sorry to say--true. In a way, it kind of reminds me of a great line that Albert Brooks had in the film, "Broadcast News": "Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"

But now that some time has passed and the dust has settled, here I am. I've come to terms with the fact that, other than friendship, there will be no Happy Ending with The Girl. While the end of a romantic relationship is hard on anyone, people like myself tend to forget that life around them keeps moving, And yeah, like Kevin said, it happens to everyone. I'm starting to learn that, once you have experienced the ordeal that is heartbreak, what you take away from it and how gracefully you bounce back...that's what counts.

Admittedly, for the first few weeks, I was neither bouncing nor graceful.

And now, look at me: I'm cooking for my friends and family, I'm visiting my parents' house (read: leeching) less and less. I'm finally--FINALLY!!--starting to live my life!! And I'm loving every minute of it!!! Does it matter that my original reasons for starting this life-changing journey were the "wrong" ones? Ya know, I really don't think so. In the end, it's whatever works, whatever pushes you in the more positive direction, right? I may not have the Happy Ending I originally imagined or desired, but this one really ain't so bad. In fact, I'm enjoying my life more now than I previously had in a very, very long time.

As for Kevin, well, he's still a bitch. Always has been...always will be. But I love him and I'm grateful to have him as a friend. Sometimes, tough love is the only way to break through the madness of self-doubt, regret and insecurity. As far as the whole manning up thing goes...I just don't know about that. By nature, I'm an emotional, high-strung guy. I always have been and I suppose I always will be. Then again, always is a really long time.

Growing up, on the other hand, well...that's completely doable.