The close bond between a heterosexual woman and her gay best friend is the basis of the new play “Journeys,” debuting this week at Dad’s Garage Top Shelf Theatre via Process Theatre Company.

Evan Guilford-Blake, a veteran writer who relocated to Atlanta four years ago, penned the play. “Journeys” is based on a true story about the decade-long friendship between Karen Skinner, a Chicago theater professional, and Wayne Buidens, her best friend — both of whom were also colleagues of the playwright.

“Karen and Wayne met when Wayne was teaching her daughter, and they immediately bonded,” Guilford-Blake says. “Wayne was very instrumental to Karen, who was recovering from an abusive relationship. He really helped her stand up for herself and get over what had happened.”

Buidens died from AIDS complications in 1993. This memorial service included readings from transcripts of actual telephone conversations between heim and Skinner.

“They were very funny and powerful, but I knew it was very personal for [Skinner],” Guilford-Blake says.

Later, the playwright met with Skinner, and she suggested that their story would make a good play. Guilford-Blake enthusiastically agreed to write it.

“She gave me journals, and I interviewed her for hours,” he says. “I must have 20 hours of tape of her talking about Wayne.”

Guilford-Blake also talked to other friends and Skinner’s daughter.

In the play, the two characters, are called Jerri and Ben and are played by Jill Hames and Jeffery Brown.

“Journeys” has an important non-sexual scene in which the leads strip naked.

“Ben takes Jerri up a mountain. They climb for two hours. When they finally get to the top of the mountain, Ben looks down and shows her a beach. Jerri looks down and says, ‘There are naked people down there!’” Guilford-Blake says. “Ben responds, ‘That’s why it takes so long to get here.’ Ben quickly strips in front of his friend, and after some hesitation so does Jerri. That is a key moment, where the two really bond.”

But the turning point of the show and of the characters’ relationship is when Ben acquires AIDS and initially refuses to tell Jerri. According to Guilford-Blake, in real-life Buidens actually created an argument between the two. They didn’t talk for a while, but one afternoon Wayne went to Karen’s apartment and almost forced her to follow him to a restaurant.

“You know, don’t you?” he asked.

She did.

“He wasn’t very good at covering up when something was wrong,” Guilford-Blake says.

“Wayne was not discriminate about his sexual relations. Some of the people he had sex with used drugs,” Guilford-Blake says. “And Karen knew how he lived his life.”

As Buidens died, he only let one person be his primary caretaker — and that was his friend Skinner.

“He didn’t even let his mother take care of him,” Guilford-Blake says.

“Journeys” debuted in Chicago in 1995, but the author was not happy with that production. He later retooled the show.

“I’ve tightened it up a bit, especially the second act,” he says. “It’s a better production now.”

He hopes audiences don’t see the show as a depressing tale.

“These two people became as intimate as possible without having sex,” Guilford-Blake says. “The irony is that Wayne’s relationships with men never lasted very long, but his friendship with Karen lasted 10 years.”

Guilford-Blake’s upcoming projects include “Wilde, at Heart,” an adaptation of three Oscar Wilde fairy tales as part of a reading with Theatre Gael next year, and the drama “Easter Sunday,” which he is shopping around at various venues.