In the years since then, I’ve also come to see my aspirations reflected in Heather’s confession. As I’ve grown more at ease owning up to my homosexuality, and particularly as I’ve undertaken to live a celibate life, I’ve recognized in myself a yawning hunger for friendships of an especially vulnerable, committed sort. I’ve looked to friends ”” particularly to friends who are fellow Christians ”” to be a kind of surrogate family for me. Lacking a spouse or children, I’ve tried to figure out how much, and how best, to rely on my friends for companionship, for the pleasure of conversation, and, not least, for an outlet for my need to make sacrifices, bear burdens, and give gifts to others.
Several years ago, when I came across a letter written by the poet W. H. Auden, himself a homosexual and an Anglican Christian, to his friend Elizabeth Mayer about his loneliness, I flinched at how eerily it seemed to mirror my hopes and fears: “There are days when the knowledge that there will never be a place which I can call home, that there will never be a person with whom I shall be one flesh, seems more than I can bear, and if it wasn’t for you, and a few ”” how few ”” like you, I don’t think I could.” Auden was fingering the wound of his singleness and alienation and, at the same time, declaring his hope that a few precious friendships could salve some of the sting. I knew precisely, down to the finest emotional tremor, what he meant.