We're In Love
On boygenius, Friend Crushes & Being Known
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The radio display reads, “Homiesexual.” Daniel Caesar’s name rests underneath.
“Wild title,” Koku replies to J.T.’s photo.
Before I understood the song from NEVER ENOUGH, Caesar’s latest album, as being a “non-judgmental” judgment of his ex’s choices since being with him, I imagined what I hope is a more expansive interpretation of its title. An affection for your friends that can feel as intimate as sex, if not more.
The kind of closeness between friends portrayed in boygenius’ music video for “True Blue,” which is featured in the band’s Kristen Stewart-directed short film aptly titled: the film.
In the video, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker join bandmate Lucy Dacus in painting an empty room before Dacus makes out with both of them. The short film ends with them cuddling in bed while looking lovingly at each other.
While much has been written about boygenius’ friendship during this cycle for the band’s latest album, the record—so much so that the profiles covering them have been mocked for seemingly claiming boygenius invented friendship—this recurring theme does seem to point to not only an appetite for closeness but re-contextualizing friendship in a culture that glorifies romantic love.
In one of those profiles, an interview with boygenius for The Atlantic, writer Spencer Kornhaber asks, “Is friendship love and romantic love as different as our culture makes it seem?” The band responds in unison, “No!” Dacus continues, “I have tons of romantic friendships that I treasure. I had a conversation recently with a friend who really disagrees with that and thinks that hierarchically, friendship is the highest form of love—and romance is a demotion.”
Gabrielle Zevin’s novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, also promotes this reframing. Toward the end of the book, one of the main characters, Sam, asks Sadie, his business partner and childhood best friend, why they never tried dating or hooking up despite knowing each other better than anyone.
“How can you not know this? Lovers are… common,” Sadie replies. “Because I loved working with you better than I liked the idea of making love to you. Because true collaborators in this life are rare.”
While Sam’s grandfather is on his deathbed, he tells him, “You may not ever have a romantic relationship with Sadie, but you two will be friends for the rest of your lives, and that is something of equal or greater value if you choose to see it that way.”
Evangelical Christianity taught me when a man marries a woman, they become one—that sex is the expression of that oneness. And while I once believed this, I now see it as reductive. Elizabeth and I were one before our wedding because of the friendship and care we cultivated over the years and our decision to repeatedly choose each other.
We also acknowledge our friends nurture aspects of us we can't always reach. Relationships have limitations, which is to say humans have limitations. We give each other what we can as best as we can.
Not only is friendship essential to our romantic relationships, but it complements our romantic relationships. And sometimes our friendships can feel so dear they have an element of romance.
“It was not like falling in love,” Bridgers says. “It was falling in love.”
I’m in love with my homies. Call it a friend crush. Call it a crush. Whatever you want. But what struck me most when first reading boygenius’ Rolling Stone cover story by Angie Martoccio is how certain lines reminded me of Cole, J.T., and Koku, my homies I write with under the name, Writing Boys.
“Lifting each other up [is] how we create,” Bridgers declares. “We all get to be the lead. We all get the high of each other being in the front.”
I love watching my friends write. I love watching them dare to make their words available for us and those beyond us to read. I learn things I didn’t know about them when reading their work. Answers to questions that sometimes get stuck in our throats when we’re with each other face to face. And they learn more about me. They see me more fully.
“There’s a realm in which I feel permitted to be ambitious in this band,” Baker says, “because it’s something shared with people that I love.”
My homies make me want to write, to explore the possibilities of my writing, to keep getting better because we’re doing it together. It feels adventurous.
“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk,” Zevin writes in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. “To play requires trust and love.”
Trust and love carried Nate and me, along with other boygenius fans, to a packed record store to hear the record days before it was released. Neither of us knew what to expect, but it wasn’t hard to notice all the people who came in groups to experience the album together and join with others outside themselves.
Everyone went quiet when “Without You Without Them” began to play.
“Give me everything you've got
I'll take what I can get
I want to hear your story
And be a part of it”
The chorus opens with, “Speak to me / Until your history’s no mystery to me.”
To be a boygenius fan, or to be human, is to carry within you a desire to be known. Not just on a surface level but to sing as the band does in “True Blue,” “It feels good to be known so well / I can't hide from you like I hide from myself”—knowing these aren’t just words but reality.
In The Atlantic profile, Kornhaber asks which was harder to write: “I want to be emaciated” from boygenius’ 2018 song “Me & My Dog,” or “I want to be happy” from “Letter to an Old Poet,” the last song on the record, which calls back to the 2018 track?
“Hard in a completely different way,” Bridgers answers. “I was having really disordered eating around the time I met y’all. The only way that I could write that ‘emaciated’ lyric was by myself. And then this song, I could only write that with you guys. Lucy wrote it, but it’s true for me. You noticed it about me: I’m ready to be happy.”
It’s in the places and relationships where we feel noticed that we feel loved; when the people we admire recognize something about us—or within us—we might not see. It feels intimate to experience that kind of recognition and care. It draws us in and urges us to choose closeness even when our fears and imperfections encourage isolation.
I’m glad Nate said yes to going to the listening party with me and that we listened to the record for the first time in the way it was intended: with each other, as one.
I still don’t know what “homiesexual” means or why Daniel Caesar titled his song that. But I do know iron sharpens iron, which sounds kinda hot. And I do like myself better when I’m with my homies than when I’m alone. And I do know sparks fly when we’re together, a reminder you can hurt me. “That’s how I know that we’re in love,” Dacus sings. Because you could. And even if you do, you still want me to remain whole. You still join me on the journey of finishing each other’s songs. And sometimes I want to kiss your faces because words aren’t enough.
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This is such a beautiful post, and it makes me feel so vulnerable to read. True friendships are safe, but you need to be vulnerable. When you are, they are deeply rewarding. Thanks for writing!
This. Was. Superb. At once tender and sharp. *tips hat all the way tf off*