Pride in my friend
My Gay Friend Was So Much More Than Unresolved Trauma Leading to Addiction
Those facts aren’t his whole story
Drug addiction did not define him. He was defined by being a teacher of severely disabled children. A caretaker for his mother. A father figure and godfather to my son. A man loved — no hyperbole — by all who knew him. He was my funniest and most supportive friend for thirty-three years. This is his story.
I met Terrence when he was 26 and I was 38. He was an undergraduate and I was a graduate student at North Texas University.
We met in an Abnormal Psychology class, and that became our joke for all the years of our friendship. I was a wild woman going through a mid-life crisis. He was a serious student working to finish his degree.
His father died 200 miles away shortly after Terrence arrived on campus. Theirs had been somewhat difficult relationship. Terrence was gay. He never came out to his father before his father died, but there was an unspoken tension between them that wasn’t there with Terrence’s younger brother, who played sports and was more typically a boy.
Back then, some in the Black community claimed there were no gay people who were Black, although they had to overlook some famous people —…
