I hadn’t spoken to Bridget in months. Fearful of a confrontation, I let the business of life—relocating to New York City, leaving my job, moving in with my boyfriend—act as sufficient excuses not to call her. I rationalized that I was just busy. Until recently, the excuses satisfied even me. But time was getting short—I knew Bridget was getting married sometime in spring—I could no longer procrastinate. I had to call her.

But I also knew our phone conversation was going to make me a little uncomfortable. It had been years since our friendship had been tested. I feared her upcoming wedding day might be the day of reckoning.

I forced myself to pick up the phone and dial, almost hoping she wouldn’t be home.

“Hello,” her voice sang through the receiver after just a single ring, and as soon as I heard it, I was glad to be talking to her.

I have known Bridget for 17 years— almost half my life, and longer than any other friend. We met in college, in an international co‑op house that we shared with two dozen other students, more than half of them from places like China or Kenya or Jamaica or India.

Bridget and I found ourselves frequent allies in late‑night debates around the house’s huge kitchen table. We were instantly united in our opposition to U.S. foreign policy just about everywhere in countries we refused to call the “Third World.” Together we marched in campus rallies to protest U.S. actions in Central America, the Middle East, and Africa, or to object to racism on our own campus.

Looking back, I smile at how earnest we were then.

But it was not all solemnity and gravity. When Bridget and I would take off together for the library, more often than not we would eventually abandon our books and head instead for the 24‑hour diner, drinking coffee and eating sticky buns until the late hours of the night. On Thursdays, we went to the only club in town that played Reggae music, and Bridget taught me how to dance to it.

And for social functions, Bridget and I often acted as the other’s official “date.” We each had our own reasons for being without a boyfriend. A devout Catholic, Bridget was still mulling over the prospects of becoming a nun, and steered safely clear of the many men attracted to her outspoken mind and her long, dark hair. Deeply closeted and still grappling with my sexuality, I threw myself into a myriad of student organizations. Involved in everything from the effort to get a university recycling program to preserving on‑campus gardens from the bulldozers of development, I buried my sexual impulses in do‑gooder deeds.

Unlike so many other college friendships, the one I had with Bridget did not succumb to the forces of time and distance when we graduated. When she joined a mission to do agricultural work in Peru and Guatemala, I cherished her letters and promptly returned each of them with one of my own. When I was finally comfortable enough to tell her I was gay, she cried—not for my soul, but for my forgiveness. In our college days, before she discovered liberation theology, Bridget had taken her cues on homosexuality from the Catholic Church. She knew I could never have confided in her then, and she regretted it.

In the years that followed, however, she met and adored subsequent boyfriends and lovers. We found we even had the same taste in men. In one of our closest moments, she asked  me if she ever had a gay son, would I talk to him, to show him that you can be happy and gay. Knowing someone like me, she hoped, would prevent her gay child from going through the same turmoil I did—so many of us did—in coming to terms with our sexuality.

And so it’s been, as the years have passed, that Bridget and I have made the road trips and placed the phone calls and mailed the Hallmark cards to keep strong this seemingly unlikely friendship between a pro‑life Catholic who is still a virgin at 38, and a sexually liberal, atheist gay man.

I last saw Bridget about eight months ago. She had good news to tell me: Although she hadn’t set a date then, she was getting married sometime this spring.

I wanted to be genuinely happy for her. But something was troubling both of us. As she put it, her fiancee was not exactly open‑minded about gay people. Unlike Bridget, he had either not discovered or not accepted liberation theology, and was still clinging to the hostile Catholic teachings about gay people.

Though she had repeatedly mentioned me to him, she had never told him I was gay. None of that, she assured me, should keep me from attending the wedding. And bringing my lover Darryl along, too.

I nodded, but silently I couldn’t help but worry about it. I am not generally prone to using other people’s personal ceremonies to make my own political statements. But I wondered: How would we be introduced? Would Bridget’s fiancee forgive her if I danced with my lover at their wedding? Would I forgive myself if I didn’t?

None of these things seemed to be on Bridget’s mind when we spoke on the phone.

“I’m so glad you called!” she exclaimed. “I need your new address so I can send you a wedding invitation!”

I dictated my new address, and she filled me in on her bridal shower, the honeymoon, and her promotion at work. In turn, I told her about the latest article I was working on, and how happy I was to finally be living with Darryl. I almost hung up without getting the wedding date.

“I’m getting married April 29,” she said. “Can you make it?”

I admit feeling relieved when I heard the date: April 29—  the same weekend as the March on Washington, something I’ve been planning to attend for months. I know I was supposed to feel sad I would not make it to Bridget’s wedding,  but what I honestly felt was a little relief.

Still, I wondered beyond the wedding: Could my friendship with Bridget, that has withstood so many years and so much improbability, weather her marriage to someone who is anti‑gay?

Perhaps without even meaning to, she answered that question for me before we said our good‑byes.

I knew she and John had been wanting to make a weekend trip to New York City, to do some sightseeing and take in a Broadway show. As my wedding present, I offered to arrange it. She immediately accepted the offer.