To Need a Friend

Fanfiction
Title:	To Need a Friend
Author(s):	Carol Hydeman
Date(s):	November 1975
Length:	3,500 words
Genre(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Fandom(s):
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

illo by Jane Clinkenbeard for the story as it appeared in Warped Space

To Need a Friend is a Star Trek story written by Carol Hydeman and first published in Warped Space #12 and was the topic of much heated debate.

The story was also reprinted almost a year later in Warp Factor #2, a zine with a much smaller readership, and received little commentary.

The Story's Place in Time and History

"To Need a Friend" appeared one year after Diane Marchant published her coded Star Trek K/S story A Fragment Out of Time, a fact which is essential to understanding the strong reaction the story engendered. The story was published long before the term K/S was coined. It served, however, as part of the catalyst for the first great debate on K/S in fandom: do they or don't they?

The debate was more of a case of the story being in the right place at the right time than actually being about the story itself. Some fans read a sexual relationship into the story, something which surprised both the writer as well as the editor.

The Splash

The letters printed in The Halkan Council caused an explosion of debate, one which raged on in various forums for the rest of the year until it came to a head at Sekwester*Con Too the following spring.

The letters in response to the story and comments in Warped Space and Menagerie, were incendiary, and may have contributed to Paula Smith's decision to stop publishing LoC's in Menagerie after issue #14.

See the con reports at the Sekwester*Con Too page for examples.

What the Story is About

In the story, McCoy comforts a grieving Spock after the death of Kirk. Spock reads a posthumous letter from Kirk, urging him to confide in McCoy. There is no sex in the story - the extent of any physical contact between Spock and McCoy is a gentle touch of the arm as McCoy helps a grief-weakened Spock rise from his bed to take a walk.

A summary from The McCoy List: "Both Spock and McCoy are devastated by the death of Jim Kirk, but it is Spock who suffers the most as he tries to hide his grief. McCoy draws Spock out of his cabin and into the garden on the Enterprise. As they talk and Spock is able to finally express his grief, he realizes how much he needs the friendship of Leonard McCoy."

Reactions When It Was Published

The Halkan Council

Most of the initial discussion was sub rosa or in coded letters to letterzines. The letters below in The Halkan Council were only a few in that issue that dealt with sexuality and only one of them mentioned specially named "To Need A Friend."

For example in Halkan Council #20/21 published in August, 1976, one fan angrily wrote:

I am disgusted and dismayed by the interpretation of the Kirk/Spock relationship as homosexual. To me, *that* is evidence of a cynicism and a narrow-mindedness that grips too many people these days. To see a close, warm, loving friendship between Kirk and Spock (or any other two men, for that matter) as only being homosexual is as Archie Bunker as anything I've ever heard!

Another fan wrote in Halkan Council #20/21:

I am disgusted and dismayed by the interpretation of the Kirk/Spock relationship as homosexual. To me, THAT is evidence of a cynicism and narrow mindedness that grips too many people these days. To see a close, warm, loving friendship between Kirk and Spock (or any other two men, for that matter) as only being homosexual is as Archie Bunker as anything I've ever heard! It sits smack in the same smarmy category as those who inhibit close female relationships in adolescence by interpreting them as homosexual, and call any friendship between a man and a woman sexual, because "God knows, they must be sleeping together else how could they understand one another so well or even want to spend any time together." Damn it! There are so many different levels and types of love that to say that love is only expressed when sex (of any sort) is involved is to do an enormous disservice to the potentiality of the human spirit! What Kirk and Spock appear to have, in my mind, is exactly the sort of an open relationship that I HOPE is becoming increasingly possible for homo sapiens as he reaches toward a greater maturity as a species by discarding his old prejudices as the useless, imprisoning poppycock they so clearly are!

From Halkan Council #20/21:

To say that every Friendship is consciously and explicitly homosexual would be too obviously false…Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend... I should say that I am not opposed to the speculation on possible homosexuality within Kirk and Spock’s relationship, just that it’s sheer speculation, because there is no evidence that they have anything but a friendship, albeit a very deep one...

The vagueness of the topic did not last long: another fan in Halkan Council #20/21: opened her letter with:

Regarding the oblique debate that has been floating around among some of us since Warped Space printed "To Need a Friend" -- let's get the silly thing out in the open. I sincerely doubt if there is or could be a sexual realtionship between any of the Kirk/Spock/McCoy trilogy. Considering McCoy's old-fashioned gentlemen's morals, Kirk's compulsive pursuit of women, AND Spock's disinclination for physical relationships, it seem rather unlikely to me. The only of the three I could possibly imagine in that sort of relationship would be Kirk -- and only if his vigorous interest in the opposite sex was a cover-up (even to himself) of interest in other men. But in either case, I doubt if it would be Spock... Kirk almost always uses sex as a power game... Kirk's personality so far has caused him to insist on the dominant position in his sexual liaisons... I can't see him becoming involved in a situation where he might have to turn command over to his 'wife.'.. And [responding to an earlier fan's comment in another issue] if 'Amok Time' and 'Turnabout Intruder' had occurred simultaneously -- by which I take to mean, what if Spock went into pon farr during the turnabout -- I supposed Kirk would do whatever necessary to save Spock's life. I also think he -- and Spock -- would have an incredible tangle of emotional tangles to sort out. It would keep McCoy occupied for months.

From September 1976 in Halkan Council #22:

...I think that a large number of writers in fandom lately are underestimating the power of friendship which lies between McCoy and Spock - too often I see writers pitting them in some argument and bickering like a couple of grade schoolers. I just wish that these same writers would tune in to their sensitivity channels a bit more often and see the depth of friendship (yes! and even love) which is there in the exchanges between McCoy and Spock . Frankly, that area has not been explored enough in my opinion . Always we have the duo team of Kirk-Spock. with McCoy in the background. And yet, can't we please get it through our heads that each of the three is more complex than most of us say in our stories?

Warped Space

The letters of comment were at first very general.

To Need a Friend on the whole was good. I thought it was very touching but some of the lines rubbed me the wrong way. I don't think Kirk would put anyone down in a farewell letter and especially not McCoy. No matter how bad he wanted Spock and McCoy to be friends, I don't think he would do that.

TO NEED A FRIEND was a stirring account of friendship that left a lump in my throat. I HATE those kinds of stories because of the emotion they play on but they're always the first stories I read in any zine. Shirley Maiewski has a touch with them because of her deep sensitivity. Carol also hit upon the right mood with some? very well- written moments, a very unenjoyable but enjoyable story. Anyone know of any stories floating around where the tables are turned and it Is Spock or McCoy who is killed and not Kirk? I'd be very interested in seeing different approaches.

They then started to be suggestive, and finally called the topic out.

'To Need A Friend' was smoothly written and very moving. Perhaps Spock's grief was overdone; but it was developed well, as was McCoy's concern. However; all that time —just smelling the flowers, Carol?

I'm afraid "To Need a Friend" was a bit too melodramatic for my taste. I really think Spock suffered a bit too deeply, even though he does love Jim and he is half-human. Too much milksop. Other flaws; Kirk's letter to Soock was too similar to his tape in "Tholian Web." It didn't really have any new info, just repeated what he'd said before. He must think Spock really has trouble understanding him. Watch my lips, dummy. By the way, the ending of that story put me back into hysterics. Because it is so vague, it is rather, shall I say, suggestive: "McCoy rose to go, but Spock's hand on his arm stayed him ... 'I could never tell Jim just what I felt for him. Right now I think I need a friend.' Hours later (hours?), a security guard found them still in the garden. He left without being observed." Okay— what were they doing in the garden for all those hours? Holding hands? I always knew there was something funny about that Vulcan— I saw the way he enjoyed it when Kirk grabbed him in the elevator in "And the Children Shall Lead." And now he's lost Jim and turned to McCoy ... hoo boy. Somehow, Carol, I don't think that's how you meant that scene to be interpreted, did you? You do get my point though?

Re: Paula Block's letter in #13 and M. Bayard's in #14. I liked Hydeman's "To Need a Friend." The description of Spock's grief was too physical, possibly. Possibly a massive outbreak, like the end of Amok Time, as catharsis, would be better, but I think Spock would react very badly to Kirk's death. In the actual episodes, the only time Spock comes close to losing control (when not infected, etc.) is when Kirk is in danger. Spock wanted to kill the Horta! And he has no emotional outlets. Kirk being the only person Spock ever had a give-and-take relationship with. It all adds up to a severe emotional crisis— and with Kirk's insistence on doing dangerous things himself— one likely to occur. Block's and Bayard's DOB ((Dirty Old Broad, re: GRUP)) tone about the ending was rather unsophisticated. Spock and McCoy's being alone for several hours might be interpreted many ways, but varying interpretations are part of the fun of reading and writing fiction. And if they weren't just smelling the flowers, so what? Using Diane Marchant's words, in their emotional state, it wouldn't be setting a precedent.

Later Reactions

1993

Some 18 years after publication, the author posted the story to the Virgule-L mailing list and asked fans to discuss it with her. She said that she'd written it as a strictly straight piece, showing the deep friendship I felt was between Kirk and Spock, and which could be between Spock and McCoy, given a chance, and that an implied sexual relationship between any of the men was the furthest thing from her mind. The author wrote that she wanted to show how Spock and McCoy would be affected by the loss of Kirk, and specifically, she wanted it to be in a situation when Kirk could NOT be revived at the end of the story for a happy reunion. She wrote that fans were just getting their sea legs in fanfic back then, and many people were still in the mode of "I can't kill off any of the main characters." She had always always been fascinated by the interactions of those characters and wanted to see precisely what might happen to the structure of the Great Triumvirate if a key member were taken out. She also added that she was very young, naive, and that sex was the furthest thing from her mind. She also notes that it wasn't that she was horrified by the idea of a sexually intimate relationship between two men, but that people were reading it into something where she had not intended it to be.

The author also mentioned that the editor of Warped Space, where it was published, did not see it as a slash story, or she would have slid the story into one of the "adult" issues of that zine series.

This is an extremely hasty and unconsidered response; I might expand upon it later, when I have time to think and type.

I don't think it is a slash story; it is very fannish, and a bit melodramatic. I don't have any sense of the context in which the story first appeared, that is, what else was being written and published at the time. I've seen somewhat similar things in B7 gen zines. These stories, and I can't think of titles just now, don't fit B7 at all and are unbelievable and very melodramatic in the B7 context, but certainly not slash.

It is possible that slash grew out of this kind of story - it is not much of a stretch. But the writer's intention has to count for something; now, people might say, Why not just have them DO it? but I think maybe we are more sensitive to slash implications and maybe find them where they are not intended, as did Catherine's editor [in Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality ].

To Need a Friend came across as *non-slash*. I've been reading zines since 1976, and this story doesn't resemble slash as I know it. The two men love each other as brothers and friends. Spock does come across as more emotionally dependant than Kirk.

Carol asks, do we NOW see this story as slash? I don't. A deep friendship does not NECESSARILY have to have a sexual component. To Spock, a man whose ONLY friend, "human" contact, whatever, has just died, the reactions don't seem overboard. (IMHO, McCoy's "voice" wasn't quite captured. I don't recall him having really any speeches as long as some he had in this story. Then again, I'm halfway through a beer, so my attention span is somewhat short right now... Anyhoo, I just couldn't "hear" Bones saying the soothign psychology quite that way.) It seems the "/" interpretation came mostly from Kirk's letter to Spock. But how else would you write a farewell letter to your repressed best friend who is likely blaming himself for your death? (I like the fact that the letter implies that Kirk understood Spock's feelings for him, despite the fact that Spock could never really voice them.)

IMO, this is not slash. As I have said before, I don't believe that intimacy requires a sexual relationship. I grew up with the notion of Kirk and Spock as closer than brothers, with love the best word to describe the feeling between them. Carol, I can empathize with you. At 19, I would have been shocked at the idea of a sexual relationship between these two. Good thing I didn't find B7 slash 'til I was 22. But to return to the story, I don't see Kirk telling Spock that he loved him to be a problem. What else could he say in such a context? I liked you a lot? As last words of comfort, they would ring a little flat. Reading this story now, after so much slash, I can see that some might read more into it than is explicitly stated. However, that does not make it slash. If you were not a slash fan, would you even recognize that aspect in it? I'm not so sure. If I read it in a genzine, I would not even think twice. It would simply be an emotional story about the bond between two friends (and the possibility of a new one).