Friendship between Bret Ellis and Thom Wright

Bret Ellis and Thom Wright’s friendship is a long, intimate bond complicated by Bret’s unspoken love for Thom and by the unequal meanings the two attach to their closeness. Bret admires Thom’s warmth and steadiness, but a request to monitor Susan Reynolds while Thom is away exposes a limit in that intimacy: Thom treats Bret as a trusted friend and intermediary, while Bret hears suspicion, betrayal, and an unwelcome demand to serve him.

Formation of the Friendship

Thom and Susan had been together since sophomore year and had become two of the most popular students at Buckley. They moved through school and social life as a unit, while Bret was Susan’s closest male friend from seventh grade onward. By the time the three had cars, Bret, Thom, and Susan were spending weekends together, going to movies in Westwood, visiting the Jonathan Beach Club, and cruising Century City Mall. Their friendship took shape within this three-person closeness, even as Bret privately felt love for both Thom and Susan without admitting it to either.

Bret’s feelings for Thom had a longer history than their friendship as a trio. After Thom returned from summer in New York in 1979, Bret saw him differently and became newly conscious of his attraction. He also understood Thom as resolutely heterosexual, and assumed his own feelings would not be returned. Thom’s appeal, in Bret’s recollection, was not only physical: he seemed easygoing, agreeable, and free of ego, with a soothing blankness and a habit of putting a positive spin on difficulties.

Trust and Unequal Expectations

Thom’s parents’ divorce and his father Lionel’s move to New York brought Thom closer to both Susan and Bret. Bret admired how Thom weathered the separation and praised his refusal of self-pity; the maxim Bret associated with him was to get up after falling and not be a coward. Bret also recognized that Thom’s wealth, good looks, and social position made that confidence easier to sustain. The affection was therefore mixed with idealization: Bret saw Thom’s earnestness as genuine, while also noticing the privilege that underwrote his ease.

The friendship’s imbalance became unmistakable during Thom’s 1981 airport trip. Bret readily agreed to drive him to Los Angeles International Airport, feeling special that Thom had asked and admitting that he would probably have done anything Thom wanted. On the drive, Thom asked Bret to keep an eye on Susan while he was gone, suggesting that they spend more time together. Bret’s first response was an inward chill. The request sounded less like ordinary concern than an assignment to check whether Thom’s girlfriend was behaving, and it changed the angle from which Bret saw his friend.

Thom also asked what Bret now thought of Robert Mallory and whether his feelings had changed. Bret experienced the question as a test, while privately carrying suspicions about Robert that he did not disclose. He replied that he did not think Robert was gay, rather than telling Thom everything he suspected or felt. At the airport, Thom thanked Bret for the ride, said he would return in a week, and asked once more whether Bret would watch Susan. Bret nodded. He later remembered this as the last time he saw Thom happy.

Care, Secrecy, and Separation

Despite his reservations, Bret decided he would comply. He imagined arranging outings with Susan, including a visit to Windover Stables or a movie, and acknowledged that he would take on the task eagerly to please Thom. That willingness shows how the friendship persisted even after the request had hurt him: Bret’s desire to be useful to Thom remained stronger than his reluctance to become involved in Thom and Susan’s relationship. At the same time, the arrangement placed Bret inside a web of things he believed were being withheld, including Susan’s changing feelings and his own concealed view of Robert.

Bret and Thom’s closeness also belonged to the friendship Bret later described as carrying a possibility of another life. In his retrospective account, Bret wondered whether he and Ryan Vaughn might have made a relationship work after leaving Buckley, but he also contrasted that uncertainty with the love he had felt for Thom. He wrote that he had never met a man he wanted to live with as much as Thom. That later understanding does not mean the two became partners; it clarifies instead how deeply Bret’s private attachment shaped his memory of a friendship that Thom experienced differently.

Retrospective Meaning

Bret’s account presents the friendship through both adolescent experience and adult recollection. In 1981 he could admire Thom, want to serve him, and still feel betrayed by the request to supervise Susan. The airport conversation makes those impulses collide in a small, consequential scene: Thom sees a practical favor, while Bret hears a demand that exposes the gap between his hidden feelings and Thom’s assumptions about him.

The friendship remains unresolved in Bret’s later perspective. His memories frame Thom as a beloved friend and the object of a love that lasted beyond their school years, but they also register the costs of idealizing him and of accepting a role that concealed Bret’s own needs. Their bond is significant precisely because it offers no mutual declaration or neat resolution: its enduring form is Bret’s recollection of closeness, service, disappointment, and a future he wanted but never shared with Thom.