"You Can't be in Trouble with Another Adult"

Freaking Out Issue 012

In the ranking of things I am most grateful for, “long phone call friends” are pretty high. You know the friends I’m talking about, right? The ones who will call out of the blue and talk for an hour or so about their life, and ask about yours, and when the call ends you feel rejuvenated instead of drained—like you’d just received a decompression you didn’t even realize you needed.

Recently, I had a call with one of my long phone call friends, let’s call him John. He was telling me about his feelings on the person he’s dating, we’ll call him Mark. John’s been seeing Mark for only a short period of time, but they’ve seemingly reached that stage where things either progress or, maybe, as often happens, they fizzle.

Chief among John’s concerns was a pretty big red flag: