The Time Between Us

 I was 38 years old when Jonathan introduced himself to me at the Javitz Center. He didn't necessarily want to meet me. I was at the Gay Life Expo and had wandered over to the Here TV booth to say hello to my friend Terry, who was working there. Jonathan was standing next to Terry, both in matching black logo shirts and Terry immediately turned his attention to me, and his back to Jonathan. After suffering through not more than a minute of us engaged in a conversation that didn't include him, Jonathan stepped out from behind Terry and aggressively jutted out his hand for me to shake. "I'm Jonathan," he declared forcefully.  And that was definitely Jonathan. 

A favorite because we both loved to flip off cameras

After the Expo, we decamped with Terry and Jimmy to Arriba Arriba for Mexican food and the kind of deep pop culture dive that would mark all of our time knowing each other. Within days he had convinced me to finally read the SCOTUS book Nine and join Facebook where he routinely trounced me at Scrabulous and a barrage of text messages began that would consume my world. I never intended to fall in love with him, but our minds were so instantly in sync (vertically integrated is how I described it at the time), that I fell for him harder than I have ever fallen in my life. After a particularly good text from me he responded with "Marry Me," Maeby's classic line from Arrested Development and my heart swelled, my romantic longings fueled, but despite our obvious and immediate deep connection, those feelings were not returned in kind in the way I wanted.

Jonathan was young, fresh out of college, in the big city, at the start of a promising career in entertainment. I was already established, a dull homeowner in the quiet suburbs. He wanted to carve his own path, not be a shadow in mine. I was upset but we were so alike, I understood. If the roles had been reversed, I knew in my heart, I would have done the same. What I was offering made sense to me in my 30s but made no sense to him in his 20s. I realized even then that it would probably take a decade at least for him to come around to me. He wanted to be friends and not boyfriends and we tried to do that but we quickly fell into a will they or won't they pattern that is somehow so charming in sitcoms yet so exhausting in real life. 

Here You Come Again- Together in 2008
Dolly Parton at Radio City Music Hall

The combination of my intense romantic feelings and his attention demands were a heady yet toxic mix. I was adamant that we should be together, wailing pathetically to him and anyone who would listen. I became that awful friend who never stopped bringing up their relationship but refused to listen to reason about it. Jonathan was no better. He wanted my closeness and non-stop fun but not the full intimacy, so he engaged in his own dangerous push/pull tease of my emotions. Drunkenly drawing me in to make out with him and then shoving me away, declaring, "See! I don't feel anything!" A late night text after one of our many fights that he wanted to go home with me and would join me at the station for the last train of the night, but when he arrived too late and found me waiting on the empty platform, he threw his phone down on the marble floor of Grand Central Terminal in a fury. "You should have left me!" his anger bouncing off the walls as his phone lay in pieces all around us. 

In these times I was frequently just as shattered. But for all the drama and ricocheting intensity, it was relentlessly fun. Even when I was sad about us romantically, the rest of what we had was so joyous I couldn't bear the thought of being without him. It hurt to be together but it hurt more to be apart. The in-jokes, movie references, and puns blasted out like a firehose, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. We laughed and ate and even auditioned for the Amazing Race in Central Park! And at night, we watched movies. 

For all his talk of just friends, too many nights ended with us curled up in bed in front of an old movie. A personal favorite for us both was Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks' hidden gem about the afterlife. Jonathan rarely stayed awake until the end, so we watched it a lot, him eternally hopeful he would make it past the Past Lives Pavilion. Our dynamic in so many ways had the "effortless" quality of the movie's characters with me as the Meryl Streep confident in her fire scene and Jonathan in the Brooks role, just trying to make it work. Until he could be confident we were going to the same place, he couldn't commit to what we had.  

"You've already got me."

The days of drama dragged into weeks of anguish into years of rollercoaster emotions. The antics between us continued but I stopped talking to anyone about it. No one wanted to hear it, not even me. We would go through bouts of me cutting off contact with him, the emotional toll just too high, but we always found a way back to each other. Even when we didn't speak, rarely a day would pass that I wouldn't think about him. 

In early 2009, his therapist suggested we go away for the weekend together to sort out his feelings for me. We went to Hershey Park and the literal highs and lows of the thrill rides was an apt metaphor for our relationship. But mixed signals later that night at a bar ended with a completely silent long drive back to the city the next morning. When he started talking about moving to LA to advance his career, I welcomed and encouraged it. It was all too much and maybe the distance would be just what we would need. By that summer he was gone. 

A photo of us together at his birthday party in 2008, 
He gifted this to me in a frame the night he left
for LA. Leaving, but not wanting to be forgotten.

After his move to Los Angeles, we kept in some contact but I didn't encourage it. The distance was healing for me but he was never out of my mind. I visited him out in LA. He had a fabulous apartment in the heart of everything. Things were going well for him but I found his attempts to patch things up between us forced and insincere. He was playing the part of Jonathan, not being Jonathan. I wasn't interested in that. And I had written a book about my life mostly culled from this blog and the portrayal of him while accurate wasn't flattering. More fights more distance. Facebook friendships ended. Phone numbers blocked. Another period of no contact.

In the summer of 2012, Terry was getting married and he asked me to be in the wedding party and give a speech. I agreed before realizing Jonathan would also be in the wedding party. I stressed about it for weeks and when I saw him, it was nice but also awkward. We clearly wanted to be in each others lives but couldn't make it work. Bittersweet. I gave a wedding toast that brought down the house but when I looked over, Jonathan wasn't there. He had missed it! Amid the plaudits from others, I was wrecked inside. I only cared about the approval of one person who wasn't there for me. It felt like a pattern and we rolled back into our old pattern, and the next year when my birthday rolled around, we went back to no contact. And then in 2017, Terry died. 

My beloved friend Terry, who I had known in LA before we both moved to New York. Terry who introduced me to Jonathan, our first real connection, was inexplicably gone. I hadn't been in contact with Jonathan for most of the previous four years but I knew he shouldn't hear about this from anyone but me. I tracked him down through a mutual friend. He was as devastated by the news as I was and asked me to come see him in LA. I already had a planned trip a few days later for a cruise to Mexico so I agreed to visit him down in Long Beach where he was staying before I left. 

When we met, sitting outside for hours at a Starbucks near his apartment, it was all different. Jonathan was humbled, raw, sincere. It had been so long I no longer harbored those blindingly intense romantic notions between us. Maybe now finally we could just be old friends. Facebook friend requests made. Phones unblocked. The old flow of constant text messages was back on and better than ever. Terry who brought us together the first time, brought us back together again. What could be more perfect? 

Sharing an Apple Music account in Dec 2017
because as Jonathan wrote "we are family now" 

But this time, the roles reversed. It was Jonathan who started talking about us finally really being a couple. Now in his 30s, he had, as predicted, come around to my way of thinking, just when I had moved on. I didn't say no to this new romantic ardor but I also couldn't let myself get too caught up. It had been so bad for me before and while I believed Jonathan was sincere, I also knew Jonathan. For every proffer of love he made there was a tinge of panic on his part. "Where will we live," he shouted, "You hate LA and I'm not moving to New York!" These pronouncements were frequently made as loudly as possible. "I have problems!" he would jokingly scream as if the sheer volume alone would convey how ludicrous it was to state something so plainly obvious. 

I planned to come out to LA in May 2018 for the premiere of Hurricane Bianca, a movie I had written. Jonathan demanded to be my date, but the day before he called and said he couldn't go with me after all. It would be too much for him. I was in a rage. This was the biggest day of my life. Just like with my wedding toast, when I was in the spotlight, he refused to be there. 

While he adamantly denied a pattern it was clear to me. Nearly every year I knew him, he would miss my birthday. In our modern digital age, this is a near impossibility. But somehow he would conveniently not log into Facebook for the entirety of October 28th, despite posting on there a dozen times the day before and day after. He insisted it wasn't intentional but as the years went by, most of the times I cut off contact with him it was because of this exact slight. The feeling was I always had to be there for him but he wasn't there for me, but truly he just couldn't exist in a shadow. 

My former boss Fred Siebert, who is the kind of person never short on sage advice once told me, "In Hollywood, never believe anything until the check clears." So while I didn't end contact with Jonathan over the movie premiere drama as I had so many times before, I also couldn't invest my heart fully in his romantic overtures. Jonathan wanted to be the successful one, the center of attention and I was more than happy to give that to him, but I was also the person who owned a house and had a radio show and wrote a movie! I couldn't escape who I was anymore than he could escape it or himself. In the ways I had what he wanted, he didn't want what I already had. 

Sent to him when his birthday was a category

Everyone who knew Jonathan knew he was a Leo. He never didn't bring it up. A lion's pride. His golden mane. The legendary roar, loud and harmless, followed immediately by his quiet calm of reluctant acceptance. As much as he wanted or felt he should be with me, I was a cage. Even when he knew being with me was the right thing for him, the freedom he craved was often overwhelming. No proud lion can ever be tamed. Like any cat, he wanted you to love him, but not too much, and to bask in rays of attention, like so much sunlight through a window on a lazy afternoon.

Happy. A rare smiling photo. 2020.

Our friend Ross, who Jonathan lived with last year, said, "He always told me he was going to marry you one day, or should." It was the should that always got in our way and I knew it. Being apart, we were virtual boyfriends and he took to calling me "The Good Husband" during our binge of The Good Wife. He got mad at me when I would use the word "if" on my radio show when talking about us: "if I have a boyfriend" or "if we get married" but I just couldn't shake the uncertainty of our future. As Tennessee Williams wrote, "When a marriage goes on the rocks. The rocks are there. Right there." I knew where our rocks were and we couldn't stop wrecking ourselves on them, year after year. I knew we could work through it. I just thought we would have more time. 

Despite the stress of the pandemic, he was happy, successful at work, and we were in such a good place. He got me a book for my birthday(!) that he wanted me to read and then send back to him so he could read it next. My heart sank yesterday when I saw it in my room. Since he moved away in 2009, I've kept the photo of us he gave me locked in my safe, wrapped in the same blue tissue paper it came in. Today I took it out, and now the book is under that framed photo on my nightstand.

We were supposed to do a cruise to Mexico together in October and he had wanted me to come see him in Palm Springs over the summer and join him in Vegas in December but the coronavirus surges kept getting in the way. But like always, we made do with tons of phone calls and text messages, now with Arrested Development GIFs instead of quotes. And with the vaccines rolling out and the new year dawning, I was feeling optimistic that we could finally, truly be together. 

Jonathan was 38 years old when he left us this week in Los Angeles. For these 13 years, almost exactly the age difference between us, he was the center of my center, and now I feel like an egg without a yolk. The hard shell still intact but what's supposed to be inside is gone. As we did nearly every night before and during the pandemic, we watched TV together, the same show or movie, in sync, 3000 miles apart. In this case, the Flight Attendant. His last text to me was "Night handsome! And fuck off" followed by "lol" a reference to a line one of the characters from the show had said to the person they just murdered. He was shocked by how late the Oscars had moved this year and wanted to keep talking about it but it was 3am and I was tired and wanted to go to bed. "Fine! Leave me with my mind blown." he texted. "Don't I always." I replied. We ended as we began, always connected and forever saying good bye.

"I don't want to keep returning to this place with you, but I have to admit it is a far more interesting place than with anybody else I have ever met!" - Jonathan Groce. Feb 8, 2008