Agree & Commit.

Negotiations take time. Trust is not built in a day, a week, or even a month. Sometimes it takes nine months; nine long months to prepare yourself for the most important verbal agreement you’ve ever made in your relational life. Or at least it seems that important due to the intense complications that have accompanied the relationship from its conception.

Let’s go back almost 11 months to Thanksgiving 2007. Mercury was in retrograde and I was in for a huge surprise. Most people had escaped for the long weekend, but I had stayed behind to spend some much-needed quality time with the City. Thanksgiving night found me at Splash, meeting up with friends for a fun-filled night of holiday mayhem. I found myself leaning up against the bar. A gentleman with dark features walked confidently across the empty dance floor in a red leather jacket, apparently a guest of my friend JMS. I didn’t think much of the guy due to his guest status, and apparent unavailability.

The night (and the group’s need for adventure) led us to Escuelita, the gay club in Manhattan catering to the Latino (read: ethnic) set. JMS & I were so busy being our drunk selves and trying to pawn his roommate off on the “new guy” that I didn’t realize what a doll this guy really was until weeks later.

The next 9 months are a blur of drinking, debauchery and random hookups with the “new guy” that became less random and more perpetual as time went on. I, being the hard ass/heart guy that I am, thought very little into the emotional relationship that was forming between me and the guy that I was originally introduced to as having a 5-day internship with Conde Nast (before securing a permanent position at a children’s publishing company). Before either of us knew it, we were the best of friends and spending insane amounts of time together, especially considering our status as (geographic) New Yorkers.

Perhaps our geographic location was the factor working most in our favor. After living across the Hudson with his ex-boyfriend for the first several months of his tenure in the big city, he found a nice little studio in the heart of the LES (a 5 to 10 minute walk from my place). After securing his new digs in late January, a question came to my mind – where relationships are concerned, how does geographic proximity relate to the level of emotional closeness (and remoteness)? I was seeing MJ at least two or three times a week, a gluttonous amount by even suburban standards.

Many of my previous big city relationships have come to an end over (not much more than) me not wanting to take the same subway ride on a regular basis. Public transportation and relationships are not a good mix, at least not in my experience. So MJ and I had the close proximity, the great small talk and the stellar sex (yes I’m leaving those details out for now), so what was standing in our way from having something official?

Well, sometimes greatness needs a nudge. The same goes for great relationships. Unfortunately, the nudge that I needed didn’t come until it was almost too late.

Mine and MJ’s friendship was going really well when I met RC in April. I obviously felt the need to separate the friendship MJ & I were developing from the sexual life I was trying to maintain away from my friends. The RC romance started with a Manhunt one-night stand and ended up lasting 2 short months (my all-too-familiar one-month-in-one-month-out routine).

Then the summer happened. Pride happened. Montreal happened. The family vacation happened. A lot of things and nothing at all happened from June to August. I was still a content resident of Singles World at the end of summer, and MJ was seemingly still struggling with our friends-with-benefits status. I decided to forego a planned (plane ticket purchased) late-August trip to Chicago in order to give our rocky relationship time to breathe. He went alone and I was left alone to figure out my shit.

Meanwhile all the veiled drama was going on between the two of us, MJ was courageously trying to start a new love/lust endeavor with a younger guy named V. Brooklyn V was young and sweet, while at the same time being edgy and intriguing. He commanded attention, and had MJ’s (divided as it might have been). Things were going so well between the two of them, that going into Chicago I thought MJ had move on, or at least was ready to. I was left thinking –

“I had my chance. I made my choice. I’m apparently no longer so damn irresistible! I said no. He moved on. As he should have.”

I was feeling like MJ had stolen my mojo, but he was actually only holding on to it for me until I knew what to do with it. And it’s probably more fair to say I gave it to him in the first place.

Skip to post-Chicago, and I’m suddenly ready to take the plunge. What changed? Why the change of heart? I’m not sure at what point it clicked, but it did, and with that click came a peace of mind and confidence that cannot be explained.

On September 9 it became official. I have a boyfriend. The ball and chain is on, but for some reason I don’t mind. Maybe because it doesn’t feel like a weight at all. And if there is a chain, it’s light and loose enough to allow my skin to breath.

Here’s what I’ve concluded so far. I prefer camaraderie to commitment. Always have. But somehow the mix of camaraderie and commitment works with MJ and me, probably because the camaraderie was strong first, and then the commitment followed. Fortunately the commitment doesn’t feel like obligation and the camaraderie has always been slightly outside of the box. Our relationship allows us to be our own people and respect each other’s time, space and personalities. It requires an open line of communication and doesn’t accept the bullshit that so often creeps in on relationships. And let’s be honest, it’s easy to stay faithful when the thought of hurting the other person is unbearable.

Semper Fidelis.

That’s Latin for “always faithful”. The Marines use it and so do I. It helps me remember that this relationship is bigger than me, and it’s bigger than us. There’s a bigger picture, and I’m glad MJ and I are part of the same one.