265. stultify

Earlier this year I touched on realizing that, in addition to being gay, I’m also a demisexual.

After a great deal of reflection over recent experiences, I’ve made the decision to no longer identify as gay. For reasons I’ll get to in a few hundred words, I identify chiefly as a homoromantic (or androphilic) demisexual.

To explain, I’m going to respond to questions from an online “Are you a demisexual” test. It’s not scientific at all, but does hit on some of the key aspects of the demisexual identity.

Here we go. This will probably go over my 1,000-word limit, but to hell with it.

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1. I fall in love with the inner character of a person after becoming close to them. Their outer qualities are unimportant to me.

This is a mixed bag. While there are physical characteristics about guys that I do and don’t find attractive, and am more likely to find attractive, there are things that become non-issues if I’ve fallen for a guy’s inner beauty.

2. When experiencing sexual pleasure with another person I haven’t bonded closely with, I focus more on the feelings in my body than on my attraction to the person.

This was definitely true during my slutty hookup years. Sex was something I pursued because I thought that’s what gay men were primarily interested in, so it was something I thought I should pursue. While the sex was sometimes good and there were things I enjoyed doing, it wasn’t much different from masturbating. It was only with guys who I felt a strong connection to, like Seth, where physical pleasure became more transcendent, where I could get out of my head and focus on my partner. That happened only a handful of times.

3. I’m aesthetically attracted to certain people’s faces and bodies, but I’m rarely interested in them sexually.

Case in point, Tom Daley. We’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics around the house, men’s diving in particular… for reasons. I recognize the attractiveness of the faces and bodies of certain guys, but don’t want to fuck them.

4. It’s extremely rare for me to take any sexual interest in the body of a stranger.

See previous.

5. I find relationships very daunting and difficult. Sometimes I’ve gone into them without having any true feelings of attraction.

While there were aspects of my previous boyfriend, Jay, that I liked and was attracted to, I wasn’t attracted to or in love with him. Fear of being single at age 30 overrode my better judgement.

6. I’ve never experienced “love at first sight”.

I experienced what may have been a version of this with Seth the first time we met, but it wasn’t love. It was the idea of him I found attractive.

7. I’ve been single a lot longer than most people I know.

Type “single” into the search box above and see how many entries return.

8. I’d much prefer to masturbate than be sexually involved with a person I have no feelings for.

See answer to question 3.

9. I have a libido, but I rarely sleep around. The thought of having a “one night stand” makes me feel a bit sick.

This is what complicates everything. I do miss sex. Namely, the good parts of it, fleeting moments where I felt a connection, where I got the faintest taste of what I’ve been looking for.

10. Sometimes I find myself developing sexual attraction in close platonic friendships.

This has been one of the biggest benefits of realizing I’m demisexual—understanding why I tend to fall for guys I get close to. It doesn’t necessarily help me not fall for anyone, but it does help contextualize what’s going on.

11. Watching lustful scenes in movies rarely makes me horny. I find them either boring or amusing.

I’ve definitely experienced this while watching movies with gay guys, especially scenes depicting sex between men. I only find myself getting turned on if there’s a suggestion of emotional connection and intimacy between the characters. Otherwise it’s just weird.

12. I notice that the culture I live in is very sexually-charged, so I tend to feel a bit alienated.

Definitely true of me when I’m around gay men. Everything is about sex in some way, whether it’s innuendo, an overt comment about the speculative size of a guy’s cock, or discussion about some fetish someone’s into.

13. I rarely cheat in relationships.

See question 15, below.

14. I’ve never understood the attraction to porn. I’m not at all aroused by it.

This is and isn’t true for me. As with question 11, the only porn I find at all arousing is depictions of actual couples in which there’s real affection and intimacy.

15. When I’m in a relationship with someone who I’ve bonded closely with, it’s almost impossible for me to feel sexual attraction to anyone else but them.

Jay and I had several three-ways when we were together. For me, it was a kind of dissociative experience where it was difficult to stay aroused with the other guy. The only good time for me was when I bottomed for him and a friend of ours, and <rant> I was reminded of what it was like to be with a partner who didn’t just lie there and expect me to do all the work.</rant>

16. Sometimes in close friendships or relationships I spontaneously develop sexual feelings of attraction. It confuses me.

See answer to question 10.

17. I often feel asexual. I’m just not that attracted to people.

See answers to questions 3 and 9.

18. I’ve been called “cold” or “frigid” before in relationships.

This is unfortunately true, and in hindsight it was a consequence of not actually being emotionally attracted. It was confusing for everyone.

19. I’ve only been attracted to a very small number of people in my life. I rarely have crushes.

Genuinely attracted, yes. There have been brief crushes and flings, but they never lasted. Seth was the closest thing I’ve had to a long-term attraction.

20. I’m extremely uncomfortable with sexual advances from other people.

Huge YES to this concerning gay guys. It’s not just that I’m not emotionally attracted to them. A major part of the discomfort is that I realize they, as gay males, think I’m similarly wired to them, and want the same things—fun, flirty, frivolous, no-strings-attached sexy times. This ends up making me feel even more broken, hopeless, and out of place than ever, and combined with the sense of missing what moments of physical and emotional intimacy I’ve had (along with the existential worry that I’m never going to find a guy with whom to build that sense of home I’ve been writing about) becomes intensely, emotionally upsetting.

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So those were the questions. It wasn’t scientific by any means, but it really helps paint the picture of how I’ve been mislabeled all these years. Just because I’m attracted to other men doesn’t automatically make me gay. There was another prefix that was always a better fit.

178. diglossia

This past weekend I saw the following list on a blog I follow. I’m not entirely sure why I still follow this guy. Morbid curiosity? He was a Xanga blogger I subscribed to back when I was a Christian. I still get occasional email updates from him when he posts, and am always curious what conservative hijinks he’s getting up to. On Thursday he wrote:

“… if you have a little sister or younger female friend, please ask her a few questions or make these comments when she says she’s with someone.”

1. Does he tell people he’s in a relationship with you?
2. Are you exclusive with him, or not?
3. Has he ever hit you?
4. Does he ever try to emotionally blackmail you?
5. Does he ever demand sexual favors from you?
6. Does he take you places?

The list bothered me on several levels. On the one hand, there’s the chauvinistic notion that women are the “weaker sex” and therefore need coddling and protecting, aren’t capable of taking care of themselves, or of making good decisions without male guidance or oversight. Of course, I highly doubt

Second, there also the concept of males as the predatory sex; that if left unchecked, men will mistreat, abuse and/or take advantage of women. Alyssa Royse wrote last month in an article titled The Danger in Demonizing Male Sexuality over on the website The Good Men Project:

“… girls are told that boys are predatory and somehow out of control. The corollary there is that boys are told they are predators, and out of control. Therefore, not a desirable thing, but a thing to defend against. From the get-go, we are teaching our kids to fear male sexuality, and to repress female sexuality… It means that he who possesses sexuality is assumed a predator.”

Of course, I don’t think the blogger in question meant to imply any of the above; that women are all damsels in distress, or that men are pigs. He simply lives in his conservative Christian bubble where “the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Corinthians 11:3). It’s a neat and tidy way of looking at the world, where everything has its place and purpose and there’s little to question or challenge.

But it did get me to thinking about relationships and our reticence to get involved in other people’s lives – specifically, to ask questions that might be perceived as prying.

Gay male relationships are an odd bag. In American society in general, men are perceived as being inherently more competent. Some of it is pride in being reluctant to often admit that we don’t know what we’re doing, but we tend to look at men as being capable, independent and strong. That perception is a little bent where gay men are concerned with the cultural trope that we’re more effeminate and therefore associated more with stereotypes of women than we are men. But even then though, there’s still a hands-off attitude when it comes to our relationships. It’s assumed that we know what we’re doing and don’t need guidance or for anyone to look out for us.

I look back at some of my past relationships and wish that someone had had the courage and wherewithal to ask me some of the above questions in that list. Because I’ve dated guys who didn’t tell anyone that we were in a relationship, either because they were reluctant to define the relationship or because they weren’t completely out of the closet. I’ve dated guys who in hindsight were incredibly emotionally abusive, and I didn’t have the self esteem to acknowledge that this is what was happening, or leave and be alone rather than stay and put up with the abuse.

I’ve dated guys who didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. It may have been that they simply prefered to stay in, or that they just didn’t like to spend money. Of course, in the list above the question “Does he take you places?” implies that the man should be treating his lady to a 1950s romantic night out on the town (and offering her his coat for when it gets cold on their after-dinner sidewalk stroll).

(“Of course, you may not have a problem about what to do on a date… but Nick? Well, he has a real dating problem.” Because Nick doesn’t want to date Kay. Nick wants to date Jeff.)

Of course, this problem of not asking questions when something doesn’t seem right about someone else’s relationship isn’t related to gays. We often stand by and let people make terrible life choices that we know will end in tears. We’ll know that two people are going to be a terrible match for each other, but not say anything for fear of stepping on feelings or jeopardizing a friendship.

Yet these friends are always eager to commiserate after the relationship has gone down in flames, after your heart has been smashed to bits, and you find yourself wondering where these friends were before everything went to hell. However, there’s always the question of whether you’d have listened to anyone try to say that dating that guy is a bad idea…

Ah, hubris.

It bothers me that we’d take such a backwards attitude to others’ relationships. We’d speak up if we thought someone was developing a drug problem or eating disorder, if they clearly needed to go to the doctor, or were clearly getting into a life of organized crime. Yet we think nothing of standing quietly by as two people walk headlong into romantic disasters.

What if we took as much of an interest in each other’s emotional health as we do in each other’s physical health and safety? [Edit:] Perhaps not so much making direct, probing inquiries as it is simply asking, “So how’s it going with ______?” and simply letting that friend know that someone is there to talk and non-judgmentally listen should things go south.

159. disbosom

First of all, the eight-year-old in me finds the word “disbosom” so snortingly hilarious, but it’s precisely the reason why I love the Dictionary.com Word of the Day. It’s an eighteenth century word meaning to reveal, to confess, as in “baring your soul” or “the naked truth.” Words are a window into the sensibilities of another age, when they actually meant something to the people who used them. Today words seem little more than candy bar wrapping paper — disposable, cheap, trivial. I find particular awe in the opening words of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” While I no longer believe in the literal factualness of this idea, that God created everything, it’s still a beautiful image of creating through speech. It’s the dream of every writer to give his or her words life so that they may convey everything that can’t be expressed on paper.

Today I received a response to a comment I left on a blog several weeks ago during the national gay marriage debate that sprang up over the recent (and it turns out, successful) marriage equality initiatives. It was clear that this woman meant well and wanted me to know that God loves me, even though I don’t believe in him and am living a lifestyle that this God apparently thinks is an abomination.

She also pointed me to a blog entry written by a young man named Matt Moore who has been sharing his story of apparently finding Jesus on the floor of a gay club. (Or so she says. I’m skeptical about that claim.) One of his recent blog entries is entitled HIV/AIDS & The Hope Of The Gospel, in which he recounts a close call he had with contracting the virus. This apparently led him to conclude that being gay is a sin, and he claims to have “left the homosexual lifestyle,” which as we all know is code for going “ex-gay.” Whether that means attempting to change his orientation through therapy or “praying away” the gay, or turning to a celibate lifestyle is uncertain.

What I am certain of is that my heart is absolutely breaking for this young (and, if I may say so, very attractive) man. He’s had a hell of a time, and his story is rife with abuse and sadness. And this is precisely the kind of person that the Church preys on, exploiting the feelings of self-loathing programmed into them by society and promising deliverance, if not here then in the hereafter.

As an atheist, I don’t believe that there is anybody minding the store with a broom and dustpan at the ready to sweep up the mess and set everything right at the end of the day. I believe that, if we’re lucky, we have 70-80 years of existence on this planet, and then that’s it. There is no great reckoning. No big reward. No eternal punishment. We have one go at this life, so why waste it strapping yourself into a straight jacket to please the jackals who preach their toxic hatred from the pulpit?

I can understand how someone who fell into a lifestyle of promiscuous sex and drugs for a while would want to run from all of that. Many alcoholics pick up their entire lives to start over, leaving behind the environment and the people who enabled their addiction. But homosexuality is not an addiction. It’s an orientation, something deep in the wiring of the brain that leads some of us to seek out members of the same sex as mates. Unlike most animals, we’re capable of much more than just breeding. As primates, we’re highly complex social animals. We can form pair bonds, and build emotional and romantic connections with our partners. What conservatives like to describe as “homosexual behavior” is behavior we find among heterosexuals as well. But just because many homosexuals have engaged in that kind of party lifestyle doesn’t mean that all homosexuals do.

Most of the gay men I know are in committed relationships of some kind. The single gays I know are looking for committed relationships. With the introduction of more LGBT characters in movies and television, our community is moving from the fringes of an underground lifestyle to the mainstream. We don’t want a sling in the bedroom, or a dungeon in the basement. We want the house in the suburbs with the dog, the neighbors, the couch and the mortgage. That is to say, everything we associate with heterosexual marriage. Is this the gays trying to emulate the “straights”? I don’t think so.

Those things don’t just symbolize heterosexual marriage. They symbolize adult commitment, setting down roots with the person you love and care deeply for. Of course, those symbols are going to be different for each person. For example, I could never see myself as a suburban couple, with the Subaru jeep, picket fence and 2.8 kids. Maybe a dog. Jason and I don’t really see ourselves as a “planted” couple. We want to travel, live in foreign countries, study abroad, and see and learn as much as we can. But we want to do it together.

A few weeks ago I attended a wedding of a friend of mine. I know for a fact her now-husband has struggled with same-sex attraction. Another friend of mine there confirmed that many of the other guys there also struggle. It breaks my heart because I know what they believe their God is demanding of them, and I also know they have been conditioned to not see it as a burden. The author of the first epistle of Peter writes:

“But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:13)

They honestly believe overcoming their homosexual feelings is suffering for Christ. This is the evil humans do with religion.

As the character of Auntie Mame says in the stage play, “Life’s a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death.”

144. natch

On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg while en route from Southampton in England to New York City. I don’t need to say much about the disaster. There are documentaries and movies enough on the subject. The most poignant aspect for me about this story is the breakdown of survivors and those who died. The majority of the victims were men, as men were expected to give up their seats on the lifeboats for the women and children. 1,387 men died in the water that night.

The greatest number of casualties were, not surprisingly, amongst the third class passengers, of which there were 706 altogether. 84% (387 of 462) of male and 54% (89 of 165) of female steerage passengers perished. 66% (52 of 79) of their children didn’t make it either. The second class didn’t fare much better. Of the 168 men, 154 (92%) were lost. The second class women were luckier: of 93, only 13 (14%) died. Amazingly, all of the children in second class survived.

In first class, the men bore the heaviest toll, with 66% (118 of 175) never making it to New York City. Still, that’s significantly less than the lower two classes. Of the 144 women aboard in first class, only 4 (3%) died; and of the 6 children, only 1 didn’t make it.

That’s a lot of numbers, but those numbers speak volumes in terms of the human loss of life, of the drama of that story and of the terror and hopelessness that these people went to their deaths with. These were 1,514 individuals with their own unique stories, loves and losses that died in the water that night. Doubtless some of them died believing that their merciful God would save them or at least accept their souls into heaven—probably the greatest and cruelest tragedy of all.

It also speaks to the subjective standards by which human lives were weighed. Your chances of survival on the Titanic that night were predetermined by how much you paid for your ticket, and therefore how valuable you were based on your class. Steerage passengers were corralled below decks like animals and had little access to the lifeboats.

This brings me to my topic for today, which is a familiar topic for many who follow this blog: the religious opposition to gay marriage.

Today the ironically named conservative group Minnesota for Marriage posted a new “marriage minute” which addresses the question: “I have heard people talk about same-sex marriage interfering with ‘Religious liberty’ principles. What does that mean?”

This is probably the most popular argument from religious conservatives—that if marriage is redefined as genderless it will result in the persecution of religious individuals and groups. Churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages will lose their tax-exempt status (which I and many others don’t think they should have anyway). Christians who speak out against same-sex marriage or gay rights will be thrown in jail. Christian businesses that refuse to, for example, print wedding invitations for same-sex couples will be fined or lose the business altogether. Basically… GAYPOCALYPSE!!

This is one of the loudest talking points for conservatives. They have the nerve and audacity to cling to the Constitution in order to protect their right to discriminate—laws never intended to enshrine religious discrimination or prejudice. Quite the opposite. As a cartoon on the website Slap Upside the Head reads, “Not being able to treat gays as second-class citizens makes me a second-class citizen!” ThinkProgress had a great article about this a few months ago titled “Inside NOM’s Strategy: Use ‘Religious Liberty’ As A Catalyzing Red Herring.” In it, they quote from a memo that included the following passage:

We have learned how to make the coercive pressures on religious people and institutions an issue in the United States. We will use this knowledge to raise the profile of government attacks on the liberties of religious people and institutions in Europe, both for internal domestic consumption in Europe and to halt the movement towards gay marriage worldwide. Our goal is to problematize the oppression of Christians and other traditional faith communities in the European mind.

So yet again, conservatives are resorting to fearmongering and post hoc reasoning in order to scare the Faithful into the voting booth in November. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, this is precisely how Hitler was able to gain support in Germany: by manufacturing a threat (in this case, that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s financial woes) in order to rally the people to his side. And as we know now, it worked quite effectively. Here we have groups like NOM and Minnesota for Marriage doing exactly the same thing in response to the “crisis” of the looming threat of gay marriage.

Why shouldn’t a business that refuses a gay couple for no other reason than their bigoted religious beliefs be sued? True, a business has the right to serve whoever they want to serve; and in Maryland, special provisions were put in place guaranteeing that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. And frankly, we gays should boycott businesses that are not GLBT-friendly. However, at the risk of evoking an overused trope, there was also a time when it was acceptable for businesses to refuse to serve black patrons. As time went on, those businesses were pressured into change not by the government but by public opinion that came to view such behavior as prejudiced.

I say this a lot, but there is no reason other than homophobia bolstered by religious dogma for the GLBT community to be treated differently than the rest of hetero land. Their “scientific” studies are being discredited left and right. The medical and psychological communities haven’t been able to find anything wrong with gays. At what point do we just say “Enough!” to these people? We hear their fear, but we’re doing nobody a service by accommodating this nonsense.

Religious liberty ends where it senselessly tramples on the civil rights and liberties of citizens, and stands in the way of the inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

108. facades

It’s a bit frustrating to be nearly thirty years old and basically starting over in life. It’s true that there’s no check list for where you “should be” by such-and-such an age, but when you suddenly find yourself basically set back at square one after over a quarter century of heading down one particular path, it’s rather disheartening.

True, it could always be worse.

It also doesn’t help being nearly thirty, still being single and watching your friends who are five years younger than you finding their “soul mates” (hell, even writing that word brings the taste of bile to my mouth), getting married and having kids. Yes, I know enough about their personal lives to know that it’s no walk in the park and there’s nothing perfect about it (especially once children enter the picture), but still, it’s got to better than single life. And for a single gay man, the older you get the more you start to feel like a carton of milk in the fridge with a rapidly-approaching expiration date.

Last night I saw the movie Bridesmaids for the first time. I rather expected it to be a female version of The Hangover, with estrogen instead testosterone-induced idiocy. What I saw instead was a film about a single woman hitting rock bottom while surrounded by people who had seemed to have everything she was looking for. Of course, as dig you find that everyone is a mess: the gorgeous housewife is beleaguered by three teenage sons and a horndog of a husband; the sweet, seemingly innocent newlywed isn’t getting laid nearly enough; the Barbie doll socialite has two stepchildren who (understandably) hate her, and her husband is always travelling. Melissa McCarthy’s character is the only one who seems to have it together, despite all of her… eccentricities. And it’s true. If you look closely enough, everyone is more or less barely keeping it together.

I can also relate to dating guy after guy who inevitably disappoints, and to having a fuck buddy who, despite your better judgement, you keep going back to because of how lonely you are; who is just using you for sex under the notion that you’re both adults having fun, no strings attached (though he secretly knows what’s going on but still takes advantage of you). I’ve even had that conversation at the top of the film, where she assures him that of course it doesn’t mean anything, we’re just having fun—even though she’s dying inside.

When (like Kristen Wiig’s character) you’re constantly surrounded by seemingly successful people, constantly reminded by their lives of how far you are from where you want to be, it’s pretty demoralizing. I can’t even count how many weddings/wedding receptions where I’ve been asked the inevitable, perennial question, “So, are you here with anyone?” Or, “Oh, hi, you must be David’s girlfriend!”, only to have to backpedal and explain that not only do I not even know this girl but that I’m also gay. (“No, grandma, I like cock.”) Once I even had to explain that the girl I was with was my younger sister, not my wife.

No joke.

So I’m less than a few weeks away from my twenty-ninth birthday (which, for those of you who are curious, I won’t be observing again, for one glaring reason). Every year since I’ve come out, I’ve made the resolution that this will be the year I buckle down to the business of finding a boyfriend, a partner. Because I’m nearly thirty, not getting any younger, and the older you get the more impossible it seems for a gay man to find a permanent, lasting relationship with a decent guy. And I’ll be damned if I’m one of those pathetic forty- or fifty-year-old men who are still sleeping around like some bloody twentysomething.

It’s brought up the question the past few months of what sort of guy I should date—and specifically, whether I should date someone of faith. It could be any religion, but (for example) a few months ago I was dating a Christian guy. He was fairly liberal in his views, but there were a number of things that irked me about him intellectually to the point where a relationship was untenable. Then his father was diagnosed with cancer. It wasn’t terminal, but he was hurt that I wouldn’t pray for him. What was I supposed to say? I don’t think that things turn out for the best, or that there’s a plan for each of us. I believe that things happen, and we’re each of us caught in the inexorable clutches of time and chance. It’s not a comforting thought, but that’s reality, and I’ve always been one of those that liked to know how things are, devoid of the illusions of comfort and cozy half-truths, like the guy in a Western who’s been shot and blearily slurs, “Give it to me straight, Doc.”

And, assuming that he wants kids, how would we raise them? No doubt he’d want to take them to church on more than a bi-yearly basis, whereas I’d be for a secular upbringing—the upbringing I wish I’d had. While I don’t want to be my parents and bring them up in a vacuum, at what point do you draw the line? Do you turn Sunday morning into a cultural field trip, exploring synagogues, Hindu and Buddhist temples, Protestant and Catholic churches? And how to reconcile that one parent believes in absolute truth whereas the other parent believes faith is patent nonsense?

Then there are things like end-of-life. I support euthanasia (we consider it “humane” to put down dying animals that are suffering), whereas he’ll likely believe that god alone has the right to determine life and death.

However, so much of it will likely come down to chemistry and whether or not we love each other, but I would like to be with a guy with whom I share views, because you do look at the world differently as a non-theist.

027. bonding

From A Treatise on the Mustache by Brett & Kate McKay on 8 September 2009:

Unlike women, who bond primarily through face to face discussions, males bond best through shared activities, namely through those performed side by side. Two men embarking on the road to friendship do so with a mutual appreciation of one another’s machismo. Such activities include logging, hunting, war, etc. At a more primordial stage however, the process begins with the most fundamental element of human bonding: similarity.

I’ve read similar things before, such as C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, but the above excerpt is fairly concise. It describes differences between male and female friendships of the same gender. Even from my own observations, I’ve noted that female relationships tend to be based on shared emotional connection, whereas male relationships tend to be forged through shared activity. It’s not that either is superior to the other (though feminists and contemporary psychology would stress that men need to express more of their “feminine,” emotional side). In a vacuum, where each is left to their own nature, men and women will bond with the members of the same sex in fairly consistent ways—women through talking, men through doing.

But with men, the guard is eventually lowered through similarity. A powerful bond can be forged between two men who share a passion for LINUX programming, Batman comics, or, yes, facial hair. It is almost ineffable. As C.S. Lewis writes on Friendship in The Four Loves,

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. And when they were over as had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for future use. We liked this even better. We ridiculed or punished the cowards and bunglers, we praised the star performers. We revelled in technicalities . . . In fact, we talked shop. We enjoyed one another’s society greatly.

This pleasure in co-operation, in talking shop, in the mutual respect and understanding of men who daily see one another tested, is biologically valuable. You may, if you like, regard it as a product of the “gregarious instinct” . . . something which is going on at this moment in dozens of ward-rooms, bar-rooms, common-rooms, messes and golf-clubs. I prefer to call it Companionship—or Clubableness.

This Companionship is, however, only the matrix of Friendship. It is often called Friendship, and many people when they speak of their “friends” mean only their companions. Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believes to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision—it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.

Lewis said it far better than I.

But he observes that there is now a distinct mistrust of male friendship—”that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.” And as a homosexual, I find this to be flat out absurd, as does Lewis, as it stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of homosexuality (and even sexuality in general). If platonic friendship between the sexes can exist, why shouldn’t one between two men or two women?

That’s beside the point.

These days friendships between males seem so superficial, perhaps because the males themselves are so superficial and fearful of making really deep connections. They are even trivialised by giving them labels like Bromance, where homosocial intimacy is allowed, to an extent, but it is still something that men are expected to “grow out of,” like a phase or adolescence. But it speaks to something much deeper, it seems, that men are desiring to be more physically expressive with each other—something that up untill the early twentieth century was considered socially appropriate and in no way latently homosexual. “On a broad historical view it is,” Lewis writes, “not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation. We, not they, are out of step.”

“Hence,” he postulates later,

we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead . . . The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends . . . Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow travellers.

This is fundamentally the problem that I see with men these days and their relationships—they substitute noise for substance and expect it to fill the void. They surround themselves with things or with people, but aren’t going anywhere. They have their male friends as companions at first, then trade that in for a girlfriend and/or wife (or succession of girlfriends) to satisfy their sexual desires; but they are merely in a state of existence or surviving. Companions abound, but Friends (kindred spirits, if you will) are few and far between.

Men need the friendship and company of other men; someone to share a common goal or journey with. Because men bond by doing together: fishing, shingling a house, playing football (and yes, I mean European football), poker tourneys, or hunting to name a few traditional male bonding activities. But it’s a twentieth century phenomenon where masculine spaces have been abolished and deemed chauvinistic. It was the feminists who demanded that the boy’s clubs be opened up to women. But the boys have always found ways to stake out territory, though now on the outskirts of a heterosexualised society and always within reach of women (e.g., bowling night, for which men often have to get “permission” from their wives or significant others).

So what am I saying? That men need to stop being afraid of commitment and find something that they are truly passionate about. And if they are, they will eventually come in contact with other like-minded men who have the same passions they can pursue together. That is how empires were built.

You become a man’s Friend without knowing or caring whether he is married or single or how he earns his living. What have all these “unconcerning things, matters or fact” to do with the real question, Do you see the same truth? In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about anyone else’s family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts . . . At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also beat a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague or subordinate. Not among our Friends . . . Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves