The one that got away.
I've been thinking a lot about my best friend in college. We'll call him Sam. We were inseparable for three whole years, from my sophomore to my senior year, and those years also coincided with the first three years of my medical transition. By year two, I was in love with him. Then I resigned myself to just being friends, but my feelings never completely went away. The thing is, I can't think about my transition without thinking about him.
When we met, I had just received the letter from my therapist green-lighting me to start testosterone. He was one of three other roommates in my dorm suite of two rooms separated by a communal kitchen and living area. It was co-ed, and there were three of us gay guys and one queer woman. Living like that is what made me think queers just don't do the dishes, but I digress. He was very tall (almost 6"5), very hairy (Greek), with a square jaw and cheekbones that could do some serious damage. He had thick, curly black hair, full lips, and big, dark eyes framed by the longest lashes. And he was also an anxious dweeb who cracked sarcastic jokes a mile a minute and always curled himself up on the couch to make himself as small as possible.
Our first meeting was inauspicious. He misgendered me accidentally, and when I pointed it out, he was so mortified, he shrunk in on himself a little. Even though I was a bitter, defensive little shit back then, I overlooked it and kept choosing to spend all my time with him. Guys, we did *everything* together. We ate every meal together. We watched hours upon hours of bad 80s TV together late at night in our shared room. We went to the one queer club in town together, even though I had to drag him there kicking and screaming. We were catty and snarky together in the student lounge late at night when everyone else had gone to sleep.
I started T. I got more and more masculine. I built myself up, putting on muscle. Our dynamic didn't change, but there were little things, like... When I bullied him into squeezing my shoulder muscle and he turned all red and curled up on the couch, stuttering a little. When we hit the sex shop together, and I coached him into being brave enough to buy the enormous dildo he wanted so he could ream himself whenever I wasn't in the room. Fuck, I wanted to be that toy so badly.
And then there were all the times I comforted him through his panic attacks. His manic depressive episodes. Times when he confessed how he hated being big and tall and hairy. How all he wanted was to be small and soft and taken care of. How he wanted to be the kind of boy he often dated, the boys who liked him for all the traits he disliked about himself, the boys he topped when all he really wanted was to bottom. In a way, it mirrored my own struggle. I was muscular but short and early in my transition. All I wanted was to be a dominant top, when the boys I attracted wanted to feminize me. We were mirror images of each other.
We kept in touch up until a few years ago. The chemistry is still there, even though we've obviously grown apart. We live on different continents, and I don't think he would actually be comfortable dating a trans man. I'm okay with all that. But I like to reminisce about him from time to time, and I wanted to share. Who among us hasn't been in love with a best friend, right?