I have this friend. I don’t want to reveal too much detail about when we met or what we have been through – it wouldn’t be right to disclose so much private information in such a public forum – I’ll just say we’ve been friends since we were kids, go to school near each other and meet up for dinner when we can. At said dinners we like to fill each other in on what’s been going on in our lives.
It was one of those weirdly warm days this past December. We were at Starbucks when he revealed, with an anxious look on his face and a sense of urgency usually reserved for when he has really, really good gossip, that he had something to tell me. Whatever he had to say was so important he made me walk outside to prevent the Internet surfers, imitation hipsters and yoga mat-holding moms occupying Starbucks from overhearing.
“So I think I’m gay.”
It’s not a big deal at all. But when you’ve known someone as long as I’ve known him, you think you know everything about each other. It’s always a bit shocking when you realize you don’t.
As I drove back toward the city after our talk, a different, more self-centered thought occurred to me. All my male friends are gay.
Hear me out. I’ve always known that I have a lot of gay friends. It started in high school, when I was a huge theater nerd. There were a lot of cute boys in theater, but it didn’t take long for almost all of them to take giant steps out of the closet, one after the other. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the super hot prince to my Snow White was way more into the huntsman than he was me. But other than severely limiting my pool of potential mates, this didn’t upset me much.
The trend has continued into college, where even though I’m no longer involved much in performing, I still seem to gravitate toward the gays. I never saw it as a problem. If I did happen to think, “Hey, maybe I should try to make more straight male friends,” I always remembered my one old friend and stopped worrying about it. But now that I know he’s gay too, I can’t help but wonder: am I incapable of sustaining solid, meaningful, platonic friendships with straight men?
I should slow down for a second and assure you that I do have a very solid group of straight, male friends. But when it comes to making new friends, somehow I always end up pursuing the gay ones.
As an inquisitive journalism major I was inclined to think, “Hey, there’s got to be a reason why this is a thing.” So I Googled “why are girls friends with gay guys.” (Google even recognized it – it’s totally a thing.) I found a 2007 story from a British paper called The Guardian discussing a book titled “Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys.”
“While [the author’s] female friends are competitive when shopping and ‘secretly want your ass to look fat,’ her entourage of gay men makes her feel like ‘Marie Antoinette and her court’ as they encourage her to buy extravagantly, tell her she looks divine, while ‘holding my handbags more gracefully than I do,’” the article said, quoting pieces from the chapter entitled “Shop Girls” by Karen Robinovitz.
By this logic, I have a lot of gay friends because I need someone to tell me how wonderful I am and can’t deal with people I consider a source of competition. This, if you ask me, is a load of crap. How is a friendship sustainable if one of the people involved is nothing but an accessory? It’s not, and I really can’t believe some people act like it is.
Yet at the same time, I feel a little better knowing this isn’t at all how I view my friends. They’re not accessories, they’re people.
While drafting this column (before I ever even Googled the issue) I had another, arguably more profound thought: Who cares? Why should the sexual orientation of my best friends matter, as long as they’re good people? Well, it doesn’t. All that matters is that we enjoy our friends’ company, have a grand old time and treat each other well.
