The Cool Guy had a girlfriend to whom he kept proposing marriage. My first girlfriend, The Cool Guy and his girlfriend had all known each other since eighth grade.

The Cool Guy was always calling his best friend, my first girlfriend, to complain that his girlfriend felt she was too young to get married and wanted to date other guys.

For my part, I thought The Cool Guy’s girlfriend was sweet but kind of mousy, and I wondered why he was so crazy about her.

A couple of times we double-dated, but it always made me nervous to be in The Cool Guy’s presence because I figured he was making fun of me behind my back – which is what I heard he did from a friend of mine. “He was imitating the way you talk,” my friend told me. I was very self-conscious about my weird voice.

After six months, my first girlfriend broke up with me and started going out with another guy we all knew, someone I’d thought of as my friend.

All of a sudden The Cool Guy became my champion, saying that his best friend was making a real mistake because her new boyfriend was a creepy poet with no visible means of support. That made me feel good because I was totally depressed by the breakup.

The Cool Guy met a girl from Connecticut at a party and broke up with his girlfriend from junior high. His ex-girlfriend was a nice person, but I figured she was reacting to being dumped much better than I was because she’d kept turning down The Cool Guy’s marriage proposals and continued to date other guys.

I sort of liked this third girl, who was really sexy and always surrounded by a bunch of guys who followed her around. The Cool Guy was one of them, although he was clearly in love with his Connecticut girlfriend – he just couldn’t see her that often because she lived far away.

One time a bunch of us were drinking Sangria at the Jolly Bull Pub and The Cool Guy started telling what he thought was a funny story about my ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend – by then her fiancé. They had been over The Cool Guy’s house and apparently so seized by passion that The Cool Guy returned to his bedroom to find them having sex on his waterbed.

That hurt me a lot, and I went into the men’s room and started crying. When I returned to our table, The Cool Guy seemed oblivious to my distress. Later, the third girl, the one I liked, told me, “Today some people said things that shouldn’t have been said.”

But I figured The Cool Guy didn’t mean to hurt me, and when his birthday came around, I bought him a Batman comic from the Golden Age. It featured Two-Face, but I didn’t mean it as a message.

I also invited The Cool Guy to a séance some friends of mine were having to contact what one thought was a ghost in his house. I ended up holding hands with the third girl on one side and with The Cool Guy on the other. Afterwards we got stoned and played raga music while watching a UN Security Council meeting with the sound off. The Cool Guy lay on the floor, with the third girl stroking his hair. I was mellow about everything.

The next weekend I slept with the third girl. It didn’t work out too well. I was sure she thought The Cool Guy was a much better lover than I was.

I didn’t mention the third girl to The Cool Guy, and I wasn’t even sure he had slept with her. One night I went over to his house and we both got totally wrecked and something weird came over me and I sort of kissed him, but I don’t think he noticed.

I didn’t see much of anyone for a while. My first girlfriend got married, which sort of freaked me out, but I tried to concentrate on my classes. I took a Classics course, sitting next to The Cool Guy’s ex-girlfriend.

We’d have coffee after class and eventually I asked her out. I fell in love with her pretty fast. I learned exactly what The Cool Guy had seen in her.

The Cool Guy was cool about my going out with his ex-girlfriend. He told me that in order to make sure she was not late when we went to the movies, I should always tell her that the movie started 15 minutes earlier than it actually did. That trick worked.

The Cool Guy’s girlfriend and I were together for a couple of years and then decided to break up. It wasn’t like my breakup with my first girlfriend or her breakup with The Cool Guy because there wasn’t another person.

Maybe that was why we were able to go back to being friends after just a couple of months. She confided in me that she and The Cool Guy sometimes talked on the phone. I always had the feeling, even in the two years we were dating, that her true love was The Cool Guy.

I sort of hoped they could get back together, because they were both nice and I thought first love was romantic. But of course they both got involved with other people.

I lost touch with everyone eventually, although one Gay Pride Day I ran into the third girl, who like me, had come out. We started going to dinner together every couple of months, sometimes with her girlfriend and my boyfriend, and sometimes just ourselves.

Even though the third girl and I were both gay, we were still attracted to each other although we didn’t do anything but talk about it. She told me she’d heard that my first girlfriend had divorced her husband, the guy she’d broken up with me for, and had had an affair with The Cool Guy. That shocked me because I’d known them as best friends. I heard it didn’t work out too well.

Years passed. I connected again with my second girlfriend, the Cool Guy’s first girlfriend, and I became friendly with her husband, and her kids seemed to like me. We never talked about The Cool Guy except for the time I saw his father’s obituary.

She had always liked The Cool Guy’s father, and so did I. But I didn’t know where to send a sympathy note.

Then, one day, I got an e-mail with the subject heading “Hello from the past.” It was The Cool Guy. He said he’d stumbled across my web page and wanted to say hi. It had been over 25 years since we’d last been in touch.

The Cool Guy was the CEO of a cool company. He and his young wife had a three-month old son – named after his father – who’d already been to Asia and Europe. On his personal web page I saw pictures of them, the house they lived in, and his two grown kids from his first marriage.

The Cool Guy said he still had the old Batman comic I’d bought him for his birthday. He said he often thought about his three oldest friends: his first girlfriend (my second girlfriend), my first girlfriend (his old best friend), and me. I was really flattered to be included.

I told The Cool Guy all about his first girlfriend and what a great husband and kids she had. We agreed she was incredible. I gave him her e-mail address and then I wrote to her and said I hoped that was okay. She said it was.

Since then I’ve spent time with both my second girlfriend and The Cool Guy – separately, of course, when I’ve been in the cities where they live.

Because I’m sentimental, I hope they’re e-mailing each other occasionally – or at least that they connected one time – but I’ve never asked them about it. You’ve got to give your friends their privacy.

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