Boy Friends Explores Male Friendship and..?

 

 

BOY FRIENDS (2022)

By Michael Pedersen

Faber, 232 pages

★★★

 

Have you ever had a best friend to whom you pledged to be besties forever? Someone with whom you were instantly compatible. A person who simply “got you” despite your moods and foibles. Is this person still your BFF? If not, what happened?

 

There are a variety of reasons why good friendships cease. Mostly it’s because one or both people change. Of all the ways to lose a best friend, the worst is if that person dies.. It’s as if your friend was flash frozen. You grow older, but they stay forever young.

 

Note that the title of this book is Boy Friends, not boyfriends. Author Michael Pedersen details previous special friends, but none of them measured up as intensely as Scott Hutchinson (1981-2018). Pedersen is a Scottish poet, spoken word artist, and musician. Hutchinson’s name might be more familiar; he was the founder and guiding spirit of the indie rock band Frightened Rabbit. They made five albums from 2006-15. Hutchinson also recorded with others, briefly soloed (as Owl John), and did the artwork for Frightened Rabbit, other bands, and several of Pedersen’s collections. For eight years, Pedersen and Hutchinson were best mates. On May 9, 2018, Hutchinson was reported missing. The next day his body was discovered in the Firth of Forth, having chosen to end his life by jumping from a bridge.

 

Pedersen’s book is mostly based on diary entries he wrote as he was working through his grief over Scott’s suicide. It’s non-fiction that is a memoir, mixed with a lamentation, cultural history, and a love story. Scott and Michael were simpatico because their childhoods were challenging, each was more shy than they outwardly projected, and they oozed non-conformity. Not many kids dream of being an androgenous poet or a depressed musician and illustrator. They shared a twisted way of looking at the world. For instance, they both were obsessed with the Curfew Tower in Ireland, a 19^th century structure most people see as curious, but not beautiful. Boy Friends catalogs some of the adventures Michael and Scott had while trekking, sharing boyhood memories, writing poetry, and being on the road. Pedersen founded Neu! Reekie!, an arts collective that produced 200 mixed arts shows of poetry, videos, music, and artworks. As you can imagine, Hutchinson and Pedersen partnered in many Neu! Reekie! shows. They also collaborated on Pedersen’s second poetry collection, with Hutchinson illustrating Oyster.

 

Boy Friends is beautifully written, even when it is oblique. Pedersen has an enormous vocabulary and isn’t afraid to use it. He leaves open the question is whether his relationship with Scott was also that of boyfriends. Neither acknowledged being gay or bisexual, but the language suggests that they were occasional lovers. For the record, though, Hutchison’s known relationships and breakup songs concern women and Pedersen’s partner is the comely poet Hollie McNish. Michael clearly loved Scott, but his objective is to show the intensity of men’s friendships. As a poet he has written about queer lives and sometimes waxes so rhapsodic over male bodies that his language evinces the passion that landed Oscar Wilde in jail. I don’t know his work very well, others have said that he obliterates the borders between Platonic and romantic. I can say only that if both engaged only in heterosexual relations, Boy Friends is the gayest straight memoir I’ve ever read.

 

It matters not to me who sleeps with whom. In my judgment Pedersen makes a strong case that men’s friendships can have the intensity of romantic love.* There are many playful moments in Boy Friends, antics that are indeed what a boy might do. There are laugh aloud hijinks and deeply moving passages. However you decode the message, Boy Friends is a tribute and exploration of inner feelings held by men, a seldom-discussed topic.

 

Still, by leaving so much unsaid, Pedersen tempts readers to take a voyeuristic interest in the book rather than a considered one. I wanted to yell out, “Let’s hear it for enduing friendships,” but Pedersen’s florid writing often gets in the way. Moreover, the work is so interiorized that we seldom feel like we are part of the fun. Some have called Pedersen’s prose antiseptic. I don’t agree, but in a book where not much actually happens, it can seem that way.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 * Amusing true story: I once went to Amsterdam with a good male friend. We arrived too early, dropped off our bags, and joked about while discussing what to do for a few hours. When we got to our room, the twin beds were pushed together.