I Once Had A Friend

who got medication for manic depression,
then refused to take it, though the pills
would have made him a better friend
than he proved to be, to me, in the end.

He ordered the meds only to prove
to whoever he needed to prove it to
that since he was ill, he should not
have to be made to look for work.

For him sex was the best medicine.
It was the cure he found for himself
when he was a teenager, long before
he ever thought about mental health,
before he knew how his moods altered.

I observed him through the ups and downs,
where he blamed everything and everyone,
but himself when events went wrong.

He swore by the good effect
of alfresco sex with strangers-
it was the best cheer he could find.

He regularly told me his adventures
and make sex sound like the weather.

He was half right when he pursued
his sexual interest in gay saunas- 
they were places where men regularly shed
the many pressures to appear to be normal,
by securing their everyday lives in a locker
and wearing just a towel, if that, for several hours.

I don't know if he was addicted to sex,
I do know that he was self deceiving
about his mental health, but he is surely
just one of many to be so deceived.

In the three years since I last saw him
I have been able to recognise myself afresh
with fewer friends but greater honesty.