Adam — A Troubled Young Man Who Was Always There for Me Until He Wasn’t

World Traveller Series III — Relationships ~ Episode 6

by Brett Hayhoe

Introduction

There are friendships that begin in unlikely places and end in unlikely silences. The beginning is easy to remember. The middle is long and complicated and occasionally loud. The end, when it comes, arrives in a way that nobody quite planned for and nobody can quite explain.

This is the story of Adam. Twenty-five years, give or take. A chat floor, a motel in Melbourne, a spa, a tram, and a friendship that survived arguments and long silences and serious crises — until, eventually, it didn’t.

Adam — The Chat Floor, the Blonde, and the Flight South

I have almost always been an early adopter — particularly of technology. Car phone when they first appeared. Computer at home. Laptops, software, the works. In my younger years this extended to moderating chat floors, which, in the pre-social-media era, was its own particular world.

It was on one of those floors — off duty, for the record — that I met Adam. As memory serves, he was cute, blonde, and very forthcoming. The conversation moved quickly. So, in due course, did the travel arrangements.

A flight from Cairns to Melbourne was booked. A week in a motel was arranged. And goodness me, what a week it was.

The Week — Spa, Pool, Tram, and Considerable Optimism

The majority of the week was spent, as one might reasonably expect given the facilities available, between the spa, the pool, and the double bed. This is not a criticism of the itinerary.

We did venture out. Adam took considerable delight in showing Melbourne by tram — clasping my arm, entirely unbothered by who might be watching, making it plain to anyone who cared to notice that we were together. I was equally unbothered. The city was new, the company was excellent, and the whole business had the particular quality of something that felt worth continuing.

No long-term plans were made. Cairns and Melbourne are separated by a meaningful quantity of Australia, and geography has a way of tempering optimism. But there was a spark. Worth noting, if not yet worth planning around.

The Return — and the Conversation That Changed the Shape of Things

Back in Cairns, in one of our subsequent chats, Adam raised something that had not previously been mentioned. He had only recently separated from his boyfriend. It was too soon, he felt, to move directly into something new. The conversation was honest and comfortable — no drama, no difficulty. We were both at ease with it.

What neither of us knew at that point was that I would eventually move to Melbourne. And that what had begun as something else entirely would settle, over time, into a friendship of around twenty-five years.

Some things find their correct shape eventually.

The Friendship — Long, Irregular, and Genuinely There

The friendship was not one of constant contact. It was not designed that way, and it did not need to be. Regular phone calls. The occasional catch-up. The reliable knowledge that when something serious happened — and serious things did happen, to both of us, repeatedly — the other would be there.

There were arguments. Several of them. Long stretches of non-communication followed some. But at some point, contact would resume — and I will be honest enough to note that the first contact, on each occasion, was his.

He went through things of a very serious nature. Things that required him to sever ties for a time, which he did in a manner entirely his own — characteristically unusual, unmistakably Adam. On the other side of that ledger: when I was going through my own serious stretch with Adi, Adam was one of a very small number of people I trusted completely. Not a shoulder to lean on in any metaphorical sense — on the phone with me, practically around the clock, for as long as it took.

That is not nothing. That is, in fact, quite a lot.

The Move — and the Last Good Thing

Fast forward to a recent move of mine. Of everyone who knew about it, Adam was the only person who immediately and without hesitation offered to help.

The situation was explained clearly: my lungs were not in any condition to allow me to contribute physically. Helping, in this context, meant doing everything. He understood. He agreed. He showed up — wrestling his own health issues at the time — and his assistance was invaluable in a way that is not easy to overstate.

He played a significant role in sourcing various products for the renovation of the new place. The place is now completed. It looks, if I say so, rather good.

I have wished, more than once, that he could see it.

Conclusion

A series of misunderstandings — the details of which belong to the two people involved and nobody else — brought things to a stop. We have not communicated for several months. Whether we will again is genuinely unclear, and I am not inclined to pretend otherwise.

Twenty-five years is a long friendship by any measure. It survived arguments and silences and crises of the kind that end shorter friendships without particular effort. That it appears to have concluded in the way it did — not with a significant falling-out, but with a series of misunderstandings that compounded into a silence — is the part that resists easy explanation.

He was a troubled young man when we met on that chat floor. He remained, in various ways, complicated throughout. But he was there — genuinely, practically, reliably there — when it mattered.

The door, for my part, remains open. Whether it will be walked through again is a question I cannot answer.

The World Traveller Series is written and produced by Brett Hayhoe — publisher, editor and administrator of Q Magazine.

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