Another week flown by and the next post hits the screens. Huge thanks to all who popped in to peruse last week's musings. I greatly appreciate you taking the time and hope that you find the posts interesting and/or entertaining; perhaps even enlightening, for straight readers, a number of whom have been generous enough to comment very positively and also pose questions over FB messenger or email....and one such question is the topic for this week's subject.
(Please Note - photos/videos are taken from public sites and assumed to be open source. I do not hold the copyrights. If you do, and you wish the picture removed, just advise me and I shall take the photo down. The use of a photo does not presume anything regarding the sexuality of the subject)
I was delighted to find that one of my ex-Army mates sent a seemingly simple but important question over FB Messenger, "Can gay guys really have platonic friendships with straight guys?" This issue is fundamental to how many straight men and women view gay guys and girls. Assumptions, or suspicions about the "real" answer can feed phobias, prejudice and resultant discrimination. This is exactly the sort of issue I hope to touch upon in the Blog, because I know I have a number of straight readers and am keen to use this vehicle to increase understanding and break down ill informed preconceptions and enmity. I shall be honest and open in my answer, of course, as I have been in each preceding post; to the surprise of one or two readers.
Answers to such questions derive from personal experience, from pertinent discussion with mates and, perhaps, a little relevant reading but still reflect just one person's interpretation and understanding. I shall divide my answer into two broad areas, youth and adulthood. In my case, first crushes fell upon guys on TV, in the music industry, on the silver screen, in sports teams and, yes, upon other kids in school. As we have noted previously, adolescence is a time of excitement, exploration and thrills but it may also be a time of "storm and stress", as G Stanley Hall coined in 1904, of turmoil, confusion, of battling fears of failure and inadequacy. Well, if to this hormone fuelled maelstrom one adds the fact that your compelling physical drives and the deluge of enslaving emotions are rooted in that "love which may not be spoken", that your very being is one that society abhors, those years that should be wondrous can be a dark period, beset with seemingly existential dangers. One could not, in my youth and still in most cases today, peruse the array of male beauty with which nature presents you, select the most alluring, sachet alongside and enquire, "Do you come here often?" No, for the gay guy and girl then, and research shows still today, that young love really must not be spoken, but remain woundingly unrequited; see back to the posts on Coming Out and on Gay Identity and Gay Culture for more on this area.
In many cases such young love, or youthful lust, is necessarily sublimated, the forlorn torchbearer constrained to nurture the woefully inadequate and agonising alternative of friendship. That is not to say that every male teen who is mates with a gay lad is viewed by the latter as a modern day incarnation of Michelangelo's David, to be corporeally coveted and fantasised over, quite the contrary. Many gay teenagers deliberately abjure (ie run like the wind from!) the company of those peers with the finest physiques and most alluring looks, in fear of what might result from prolonged close contact....but primordial drives are just that, and the competing, conflicting imperatives can tear at the very core of a gay adolescent. He yearns to exist in the closest possible orbit around some fabulous creature, while knowing that that would bring daily punishment and would risk, well, would risk just about everything. I was never conscious of building a friendship founded on physical attraction or lust, but my first boyfriend was my 'straight' best friend of the time, in school; a kid who would not only eschew descriptions such as gay and boyfriend, but would proudly beat his chest and declare his credentials as a true champion of the straight world at the slightest excuse....rather belying what may have passed between us only moments before. In no way did I consciously seek him out to be my best mate because of any sense of attraction and he was not the best looking of those I was pleased to call friend. Over time, however, we became closer and closer. Our friendship deepened and transformed to the point of genuine emotional and then physical pairing. At the last time of hearing, after our relationship he had returned to the 'straight and narrow' and had various heterosexual relationships, none of which endured as he went through three or four marriages. I am sad for him. In the first life of this Blog I related a version of how we stumbled upon the physical element of our relationship and I may reprise that in this resurrected form of the Blog in a future post.
Conquering, or at least learning to master the torments of adolescence one comes of age, becomes an adjusted, adult member of society. That transition is often portrayed by Hollywood as a watershed and, at least in my experience, when it came to how I viewed straight guys and straight friends in particular it was. I dare say that some gay friends would rather I was "economical with the [my] truth", above, would have preferred me to dissemble or just outright lie and say that never has a gay teen fancied one of his friends. Such a declaration would have been untrue and contrary to the purpose and previous practice of the Blog....that said, however, it would, indeed, be applicable to my experience of adult friendships between gay and straight men. Gay guys know a good looking when when we see one, it's nature, but recognising that a mate may be good looking does not translate to fancying or lusting after him; not at all.
In fact, once the horrendous (and stupendous) hormone charged teens are travelled, the very thought of sexual engagement with a straight friend is rather distasteful. Some might observe that, in my case, this could be put down the fact that all my straight mates appear to suffer from a symptom of sloth or neglect....having failed to remove their halloween masks, year on year, but it's more than that. In my mind, it is a combination of respect for and acceptance of them as straight men and valuing them as friends; I guess one might equate it to the sort of mindset I hope and trust they have in regard to my sexuality and relationship with them.
Seeing straight men as attractive is like viewing a painting or sculpture, but seeing them as sexual is a horse of a different colour; as the Guardian of the Emerald City and carriage driver coined to Dorothy, though most have the phrase is rooted in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I could not see any of my straight mates in such a context, not solely because they are ugly as sin, but because it would be so "wrong". Respect for that person's sexuality and for our friendship made such an idea positively nauseating. In truth, I do have a few heterosexual mates who are good looking, one or two of whom have enjoyed being eyed up when drinking with me on the Soho gay scene, but the idea of them being figures of fancy and lust for me is actually distasteful.
Now, in the spirit of the Blog, I also have to admit that I know of gay men who actively seek out "straight" men with the intent of having sex with them. They derive something of a sense of conquest from such encounters. When being taken to task over their hunting strategy, as I have done, their response is that they do not use date-rape drugs, they do not employ inopportune force and the sex is entirely consensual. This takes us back to the brief discussion of sexuality in the post, Tales of Straight Guys' Gay Sexual Experiences and are 'Bromances' Simply Cover for Closeted Gays?, where I commented that, "....my take on sexuality is that very few men or women are 100% heterosexual or homosexual. Humans are rarely straight forward, particularly regarding emotions and basic drives. The hue of the inner man is not black and white, it is more grey, infinite shades of grey....though becoming bright, colourful, sparkly and spangly as one edges closer to gay, of course....". Homosexual guys having sex with heterosexual guys is different from this post's discussion of gay-straight friendships, not only in the fact that the two consenting adults are not friends but also because the gay participant usually questions the description of his sexual partner as "heterosexual"; citing de facto physical evidence....and smiling, impishly, as he does so!
So, in conclusion and to answer the question in the title of this post, yes, gay man can enjoy wholly platonic friendships with straight man. Indeed, all my adult friendships with those outside the rainbow realm have been entirely such and could be nothing else.
In a future post I might focus in on the issue of gay men and women in the military, from my experience, discussing how a gay man can enter a community populated by predominately fit guys and neither offend against military law nor drive himself to distraction. It rather grows out of this post....and mention of it affords me the segue to note that at the recent Pink News Awards, the winner of the Public Sector Equality Award was the British Army. Hooray and Hurrah for the boys and girls of my old trade, leaders in LGBT equality in the work place.
So, time to turn to other things and leave you in peace. I do thank you, most sincerely, for taking the time to pop in and peruse my ponderings and I am sending huge e-hugs or manly embraces, as appropriate. If anyone has specific questions about LGBT issues, as was the stimulus for this post, please do let me know by commenting on this post or, if we are already in personal touch, over FB messenger or email.
If Saturday and Sunday constitute your weekend and your work allows you the freedom to enjoy the same, I hope you have a fabulous one....and would love to think that you will join me again, next week.
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