Part 3: The Old Bait & Switch
It was a sunny spring day in April. I'd had a couple of guys over, including Cody and my longtime friend, Jamie, and we'd been engaged in some drug-fueled sexy fun. I thought I could ramp things up by hosting an even larger group, so I set out to find more guys to add to the pile on Sniffies. Out of nowhere, I got a message from a profile I'd been flirting with for months without any reply. His name was Jaden, and his profile said he was a 6'2", 150-pound versatile top with an 8-inch circumcised dick, which was evidenced by his one and only profile picture.
He asked what was going on, and I told him I was hosting a group sex party and asked if he would like to join. Without hesitation, he said yes, but he said he was working from home and wouldn't be free for a few hours. I told him it would still be going on if he wanted to come over after work, and he enthusiastically agreed, calling me handsome and sexy and making me feel like he was looking forward to having sex with me.
The party continued, and a couple of other people came by before Jaden arrived around 1:00 PM. I greeted him and made introductions. He undressed and put his things away in one of the cubbies I'd laid out for guests to store their belongings, then he started to mingle, making a brief stop in the bedroom where I lay with Jamie and my friend, Davis. But he quickly gravitated toward Cody, who was holding court in the living room. The two of them paired off, leaving the rest of us in the bedroom to do our thing while they fucked separately. For hours they were intertwined, only stopping to briefly pop into the bedroom and join the rest of us perfunctorily lying down beside me while they resumed their fucking.
I suppose at one point Jaden became aware that I was feeling excluded, so he very charitably laid his hand on my thigh at one point while Cody rode his cock enthusiastically, and later, Cody rested his arm across my chest in a sort of weak embrace while Jaden hammered his ass from behind doggy style. That was the extent of my involvement that day or ever in the fun shared by my best friend and the guy who'd played me so well to get an invitation.
I later found out from Jamie, months later, that he had been at Jaden's place across the street before he'd come over to join in with me and Cody, and that he'd shown Jaden Cody's pictures, telling him he was coming over to my place to start a group. Jamie said that while he was here, Jaden had hit him up and asked if he could come over because he wanted to meet Cody. Jamie told him he would have to ask me and sent Jaden my profile on Sniffies. That's when Jaden hit me up pretending to be interested in me so that I would invite him to join my group. And I fell for it, hook line and sinker.
In the weeks that followed, I neither saw nor heard from Jaden again, despite several brief "Hi, how are you's?" on Sniffies. But it turns out he'd been popping in at Cody's pretty regularly without either of them telling me. Cody would say later that he never said anything because it was simply his nature to keep other people's business private, and Jaden told me he had simply been trying to make a new friend of Cody after having recently been dumped by his boyfriend, swearing that he had no interest in anything more than a simple and easy friendship with both of us. I found it curious that he though he was forming a friendship with me, considering he'd made no attempt to spend time or even talk to me since I'd unwittingly introduced him to Cody. But I took him at his word, naive as I was.
By May, Cody and I were spending less and less time together. He was fully occupied spending all his time with Jaden and Lane, with Skyler making regular appearances as well. The jealousy became unbearable, and I was honest with Cody about it, telling him how much I hated feeling that way, but feeling like less and less of a priority to him, there was no other way I knew how to feel about it. Talking about it only seemed to prompt him to pull away even more, and before long, our only interactions were fights. He grew intolerant of my emotions and my begging for his attention. By June, we'd grown estranged. He had blocked my number and maintained a permanent stonewalling campaign that lasted right up until his birthday.
I had reached out the day before his birthday waving a white flag and asking if he wanted me to make a birthday cake for him. I asked if his plans allowed any time at all for me to visit him with the cake and some gifts, and he told me he didn't know what their plans were, saying that Jaden hadn't told him what he had planned yet. Not wanting to intrude on Jaden's romantic endeavors, I asked if it would be possible to reserve a small window of Cody's time for me to give him his cake and present him with some gifts I'd made for him. He agreed, but in his usual non-committal way, refusing to give a set time or to corner himself into a real commitment.
I spent an entire night baking, making buttercreams, and decorating his cake. I also put a lot of time and effort into making him a handmade birthday card and a couple of tank tops and tees with custom designs on them. When I reached out on July 1 to ask about timing, he said he didn't know if he would be available. That triggered the fuck out of me, and we argued. I'd poured so much love and effort into making sure he had a beautiful and delicious cake to celebrate his 35th birthday, something Jaden hadn't bothered to do for him, yet he was so enamored with Jaden that he was unable to set aside thirty minutes for me to spend with him. The memory of his having let my 50th birthday come and go without so much as a single word of acknowledgement came flooding back, and I felt so stupid for letting myself be the only one in the supposed "friendship" to put in any effort. I'd refused to see that he was simply not interested in participating in it except when he wanted or needed something that I could give him.
I debated throwing the cake and the shirts and the card in the trash, but since I'd spent the last of my money on the ingredients and materials, I thought it would be wasteful. I swallowed my pride and brought them upstairs to his apartment where he ushered me in and let me stand in the doorway to his bedroom while he and Jaden lay on his bed as he opened his gifts and read his card. He got up and hugged me, said how much he loved them, and thanked me for the thoughtful gifts I'd made for him. I was clear, though, that that was all the time he wanted to spend friending with me, so I said my goodbyes and came back downstairs. He hit me up a little while later asking me if I had any Cialis or Viagra. I told him I did, and offered to sell him a couple so he could enjoy some good birthday sex. Much later, he came down briefly to get the two dick pills, thanked me, and disappeared back upstairs to get going. And I was crushed.
After a brief argument via text, it was right back to stonewalling me. I didn't hear from him again until mid-August, when I'd sent him a letter begging him to repay a loan I'd made to him in early June for groceries at QFC so that we could avoid my having to file a small claims suit against him. I'd told him that if he didn't get in touch with me about the loan by morning, I would be going to the court house to file my claim, but that I hoped he still had enough decency left in him to keep his word and repay his debt. He texted me shortly after 3:00 AM that Monday, August 14, 2023 asking me to meet him outside my apartment window for a smoke. I joined him, and he told me not to go to the trouble of paying to file a suit. He had every intention of repaying me, but he had been facing some financial troubles stemming from his unreliable car breaking down and needing several tows and repairs.
During that brief encounter, Cody shared that a couple of days after he'd broken off communication with me, he and Jaden had made their relationship "official", and that a couple of days after that he'd been told he was HIV positive. The news gutted me, and I started struggling to hold back tears. It was one thing I'd always feared for him, and it had happened. What made it hurt even worse was that he didn't reach out to me for support after such a devastating diagnosis. It meant that he hadn't thought of me as his friend at all in that trying moment, and it hurt me knowing he had gone through that without me to offer my love and support. In hindsight, that should have been a clear indication that Cody had written off our friendship long before, probably around the time Jaden took my place in his life, and that he was only reaching out then to avoid litigation. But I stupidly tried my best to reconcile with him, accepting all the blame for the arguments we'd had and reshaping myself even more to attempt restoring and rebooting our friendship on his terms.
I learned recently in my DBT group therapy that pain is an unavoidable part of living, but that suffering is pain plus judgement. By clinging to an expectation or judgement of what "should" be, we cause our own suffering. Radical acceptance is about accepting reality as it is, painful though it may be, but releasing the judgement and willfulness that cause us to suffer. I have struggled to let go of the should. My relationship with Cody "should" have been different. He "should" have been more patient. I "shouldn't" have let myself continue to offer him support and affection when he clearly had none to reciprocate for me. Those "shoulds" may be true, but they aren't what happened. So the reality is our friendship didn't work out. He very likely saw me less as a friend and more as a resource. I was used, and I let myself believe that was okay. The painful reality I have to accept is that I was manipulated by Jaden, I overwhelmed Cody's insufficient capacity for processing difficult emotions, and Cody chose the easier relationship that required less accountability and participation with someone he didn't fully trust or respect. I was blind to all of that. Or if not blind, too ashamed of it to let it sink in as truth. My rose-colored glasses are now shattered, and I see things more clearly. It's time to end my suffering by accepting things for what they are. Such a waste.
