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Many years ago, long before I became a psychoanalyst, a friend of mine, Fabian, told me the following story.
During his university years, Fabian befriended Alain whom he loved very passionately, although very platonically since Alain was not sexually interested in men. They became inseparable and remained so even when Alain fell in love with Isabelle. Fabian suffered but he coped with the situation the best he could. He tried to pursue a few affairs with university girls, soon to realize that he was almost exclusively attracted by men and that the jouissance he could get with them was far superior to the pleasure he could get with a girl. He then began to lead a homosexual life which was quite active for some time.
Meanwhile he had almost become part of Alain's family. He would be invited quite often either by Alain's mother, Suzanne, whom he called tante Zette, or by Alain's father, Henri, who had divorced Suzanne when their children were still very young. Alain had a sister, Anne-Marie, who also became a good friend of Fabian. Henri—who was extremely rich and adventurous—used to entertain a lot and his sumptuous parties were quite famous in Paris among the rich and famous. He would invite magnificent women and a crowd of free spirits. Henri was a great hunter both of wild beasts in Africa and of women everywhere else.
When Anne-Marie decided to get married to a young German, Frank, Fabian was invited to the wedding which was to take place in Munich. He was to be Anne-Marie's best man. When everybody arrived in Munich where Frank was living, they discovered that Frank had not prepared anything at all for the wedding: the banns had not been published, he had no job, not even a flat in which to install his wife. Undoubtedly, Frank was severely neurotic, but it also appeared that the