Growing up, most relationships are based on geography. Wherever your folks planted you, those within walking distance of your house turned out to be your friends. And as a young person, that can be a pretty limited scene.

Eventually you end up in a high school which draws from a much greater area than an elementary. More people are available with whom to form relationships. But there are trade-off at this point. Many factors begin to encroach on the security we found in other people.

I was at a local high school football game. Seated a couple of rows ahead of me were two young men, probably juniors or seniors at that school. One guy was really good looking while the other was more average, but certainly not ugly. Then I noticed something else about them. Or rather, something about one of them. While the good looking guy seemed to be very popular, the other usually sat in silence only mentioning a couple of quiet words to his partner. People were constantly greeting the one, and when he would turn to respond, the more quiet one's face would lose any sign of content.

The popular guy would work his crowd a lot, but the other young man would never move from his seat. I remember him hugging his knees closely to his chest as he tried not to be seen watching his more popular buddy talk to his many other friends. Finally, when his friend would return, as he always would, it was then that the other guy's smile would return.

It was obvious what was happening and I felt sorry for the one guy. I was unsure if he conscientiosly even knew what was going on inside of him. He probably stayed up late at night thinking of this other guy, torturing himself in the morning when he realized what those thoughts involved. Why could he no longer think of this guy as just a friend? Why did he feel that way at all?

But if he's like most normal people, he'll leave high school and sever those ties with almost all of the people he grew up with. He'll find another guy to obsess over as an adult. And then, he'll be better prepared mentally to deal with such a relationship.

Of course I could have been reading the situation completely incorrectly. But so what? Watching them was more exciting than the game.

You ever just watch people? I mean, like put them in an imaginary box and just stand back and observe?

I've always found the relationships between people to be a really interesting study. I love to people watch, sometimes coming up with a story for those I see. There's a reason why a sour look came over that guy's face even as an incredibly sexy young woman walked just past him. There's a story behind something as subtle as a pat on the back or a roll in the eyes. I am a very observant person; I absorb my world in a very visual manner. But, just like with my eyes themselves, I can be far-sighted. I'm awful at reading people when they're so close.

There was this sweet young lady I used to go to college with. She was a simple country girl with beautiful smile and personality. And, as a student, she had my ass kicked.

We were both psych majors so we saw quite a bit of each other. We took many different classes together and studied a lot on campus. But the brick walls of the University of Montevallo were where our relationship ended.

She smiled every time she saw me and I would simply smile back. We had gotten fairly close, too close for me to see what was going on. She started opening up to me. She was telling me about her boyfriend and how he never treated her the way she needed to be treated. Then she told me about their breaking up. I held her then.

I do have to admit, sometimes I can be such a good listener that people don't realize how one-sided our conversations are. She opened up her world to me, while I kept the door pretty much shut on mine. While I knew about her parents, her boyfriend and her dog, she hadn't heard anything about me. Most importantly, my boyfriend with whom I was living.

It was close to finals and we had been studying all day together in the library. My car was being troublesome, so I had my boyfriend come to pick me up and take me home. She and I were in the main lobby when my boyfriend walked in. I smiled at him, went to him immediately, and gave him a big hug (Montevallo is a very liberal campus.)

I turned to look at her with my arm still around my boyfrind's shoulders. The smile was completely gone from her face, and what remained wasn't a look of scorn or disgust, but why? Why did you not tell me? Why did you let me fall...

I saw her maybe once or twice after that. I left Montevallo after that semester. I still think of her and I hope she never got too upset. Lord knows, I'm not worth it.

But isn't it amazing how two people can watch the exact same cirumstances unfold, yet one sees a totally different situation from the other? And I have to admit that more than twice I've been the one with the shocked look on my face.

I fancy myself a good reader of people, but fairly often I do find myself to be totally wrong. Like that guy I saw rebuffing the sexy young lady. He had just bitten his tongue.

Sometimes people come into your life, become more necessary and closer than anyone else, then just as quickly are gone forever. These are usually the ones you think about during random moments later in your life.

I took my seat in the back of a DC-10 bound for Dallas from Honolulu. I had a seven hour flight ahead of me and had no idea how I would spend that time. That was when she approached me, saying that she was at the window seat. I obliged her and we settled in for the long trip.

We never really spoke until we were in the air, and at that point it seemed there weren't enough things that we could say to each other. I was going home to Alabama, she was on her way to Albuquerque. Our conversation about ourselves started out with simple, almost petty items. We talked incessantly until our meals were served, the lights were turned off, and the movie played.

As we flew over the mainland, we came ever closer to our destination. With a deck of playing cards between us, and during those moments when we weren't laughing during heated matches of crazy eights, the conversation grew increasingly deeper. She started revealing her hopes and dreams. I told her mine as well. It was amazing. We had known each other for just a few hours, but she knew more about me than most people I had shared years of my life with.

Maybe it was easier opening up to her while knowing in the back of my mind that we would soon be separating forever. But I like to think of her as more than just a sound board. For those few hours in the sky we were each other's best friend.

We said good-bye to each other after a cup of coffee in the terminal, where she told me about the problems between her and her boyfriend. I'd like to know if they ended up making it work because it sounded like she really loved the guy. I walked through my gate while looking toward her just one more time. Her back was turned and I never saw her beautiful face again.

A decade later, I can still remember the smallest details of my time with her. The way we joked about the Flow-Bee or ravenously ate our peanuts. But, you know what? I can't remember her name. Maybe because for those few hours it was just she and I. No one else existed, so there was no reason to know her name.

Sometimes, these are the people in my life that I really miss.

There was a girl. She was our neighbor while I was in junior high school. I can still remember when I first saw her. I was twelve and she was the same. She had a cute young face, flowing brown hair, with a smile that tied it all together.

I loved her from afar, although I never told her how I felt. We hung out a lot, but only as friends. As we grew older together, she’d tell me about the new guy she was seeing. I never told her about me, however. I always wanted her to think I was available should she ever take a second look at me.

We moved away from her when I was fifteen. But I still believed that I felt what I had always felt for her. Then, one quiet night when I was seventeen, my father sat me down after having just gotten off of the phone with Michelle’s parents. He had some bad news, he said. Was she hurt? Was she in trouble? No. It was even worse. She was pregnant.

I don’t know how long I cried after getting the news. I’m still not sure why I cried at all. Was I in love? Or was a door shut in my life that I knew I would never be able to open again?

There was a guy. We met in college and ran around with the same group. I still remember when my eyes first saw him. He was blonde, stocky and seemed so out of place in that small southern college. His face was sculpted and his personality was everything I desired in another man.

As the days passed, it was less of the group and more of just him and me. We spent almost every waking moment together, even after we left that small college. During this time, I fell in love. During this time, I watched as he fell in love. But it wasn’t with me. It was with this great woman.

Eventually I met someone else and we drifted apart from each other. I had heard that he moved to the west coast and I had pretty much resigned myself never to seeing him again.

Then, a night not too long ago, we ran into each other at a local restaurant. I introduced him to my friends and he introduced me to his girlfriend. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together. I called him once, I think. But I realize that in the years apart we have become two different people. I am no longer the insecure guy who needed him. And he is no longer the clueless and scared young man that I was in love with.

What is it in us that moves our feelings from the benign, uncomplicated realm of friendship to the unyielding, torturous confines of love? When does I’ll see you tomorrow turn into I’ll pine over you all night? Why in the hell do we even put ourselves through all this shit?

The girl was a great person, pretty to look at and a wonderful friend. Looking back, I think that I cried because she was my last chance at a "normal" life. I could see a future with her, and I knew that as I got older I would probably never see another woman in the same way. I was growing and realizing new things.

I was angry at God for the situation with the guy. Here, she had sent me this perfect match. He was gorgeous, funny, intelligent and a man. He used to say that if he were gay he’d be with me. But he wasn’t. And, until recently, I was unsure that I would ever see another man in the same way.

I once heard a quote that rings so true. "You can choose who you don’t fall in love with, but you can’t choose who you do." I’ve given this quote a lot of thought and I finally think I realize what it means. Love can really suck.

Friendship, in my view, is not a concrete relationship but a very fluid concept. I've had many friends throughout the years, but most are no longer around. When you grow up in the military and are uprooted so many times from familiar places and comforting faces, it becomes harder to form tight bonds with people. And it becomes increasingly easier to let them go.

There was Joey, my best friend while in elementary school. Also there was Mikey, the kid my age who failed kindergarten for coloring outside of the lines. I remember walking home with him and his older brothers (they were in the third grade!) and learning many new and exciting cuss words.

There were Alan, Terry, and Mike, three brothers who lived just down the street. We spent hours doing nothing with those guys. We fought a lot, but we were kids. So if we didn't come home with at least one appendage bleeding, something was wrong.

In Virginia during junior high school, I remember the times with Ronnie. Jeez, he must've spent an entire summer at my house. There were our next door neighbors, the Perez's, Omar and Edwin, with Michelle on the other side. I remember carousing the neighborhood at night throwing rocks at people's houses and causing all around terror wherever we went.

In high school, there was my drinking buddy Michael who recently ran for congress, although I haven't even seen him in years. Unfortunately, he lost in the primaries on a platform that indicated to me that he hadn't changed much since high school. There was Holly who began a very long relationship with my brother a few years ago. She's the only one that I still talk to from high school, although very sporadically. I remember Josie and Mark who I ran into at a Huntsville Pride festival a few years ago. Imagine my surprise.

There was John when I first started college. He was the first person I ever came out to, although he was pretty decidedly against my being with who I wanted to be with. There were those like Christina who stood by me in those inital days, which were very rough for me.

There was Kostya, my Russian pot smoking buddy at college in Minnesota. My world revolved around Todd at school in Martin, although Ted, Matt, and Joseph were important fixtures as well.

In college and as an adult, I've formed the strongest of relationships. There was a long friendship with Casey, who now lives in Las Vegas with his partner of eight years. Rebecca was, and still is, a great person. That is, when she makes time for me between her mind alternating activities and girlfriends. Amy and Gabe are a close couple whose relationship I've been lucky to have for years. Clayton, an introverted trekker when I first met him, is now a well-adjusted, openly gay man living it up in Nashville. And, there's Ricky. His and my relationship has evolved from partners of three years to lifelong good friends, and it seems like a perfect fit.