Johnny keeps Straight People in his Closet

Being out to my best friends who happen to be a straight couple has a completely different set of dynamics on its own. For closeted guys, it’s usually either you’re completely closeted from your straight friends or you’ve come out and then the friendship isn’t the same anymore. Sometimes a faerie will be lucky and he will have straight friends who remain loyal post-outing.

I love Adren. He’s my straight guy friend and he loves me back in a brusque brotherly fashion while his girlfriend Martha is my straight girl best friend who treats me like the sister she never had. Ironically, with his tisoy features, body-consciousness and luxurious lashes he'd look better as the gay guy among us. Even after I’ve come out to Adren, we still share the same interest with girls although his fondness for females is sexual while mine is (very) distant outside-looking-in and clinically objective. He still enjoys sharing his beerhouse anecdotes like he was sharing it to a frat brother, as he always did, but to me it sounds like the Na’vi explaining their mating rituals. On a good day I could make it sound like fax tone.

Nightcrawler snogs Cerise. Drawn on a random day ages ago.

I find it extremely thoughtful that he made the effort to go back to our old Philosophy lessons on Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” with its articles on sexual fluidity to convince me that my gayness is but an anomalous falling from grace.  I could almost blog about his personal discourse on the topic but I refuse to (meaning: I can’t). He is as intelligent as he is stubborn. One fine day when I felt especially annoyed, I brought up the topic of the fluidity of sexuality and declared how he might factually enjoy sucking cock in 2010. That ended his lecture.

Adren is, like friends should be, brutally honest. And I especially value this honesty because in my situation it is not easy to have a very close straight guy friend who will give you his truth. What could be very true, and very sad, is one thing that he told me a couple of weeks ago over a bucket of beer: “…but we’re never going to be 100% O.K. with the idea that you’re gay.” Inside my signature tipsy smirk was my voice getting caught in my throat. It is painfully true. That’s why he always invites me to see dancing naked Na’vi boobies in hopes of converting me. Or why he’d bring up the topic of how great it might be to make tiny baby Johnny Cursives. Or get very academic and appeal to my geekier side with Foucaultian philosophy. But the beer bottle I share with them is half full, not half-empty. Apparently it also never gets empty. They are still my friends, and the dynamics of a closeted gay guy being best friends with a straight couple is their struggle as much as it is mine. I didn’t come out of the closet to them; I’ve invited them over to mine. And it’s a hot, cramped closet with the smell of moth balls. It’s also very pink. Hot pink.