I had family over last night. By this I mean my gay family. Unfortunately this family is not constant and is ever changing. I had a revelation last night. I discovered that I don’t have a single friend except for Jason. I simply have several people I associate with that happen to be Jason’s close friends.

The one person in the world that is quickly becoming my close personal best friend is Glenn, however, it is only because of my feelings for him. If I had never been attracted to him, he’d probably still just be some guy with a forgoten name that I’d met through Ross.

Why is it that I can’t have a friend without falling in love with them? I have to be brutaly honest. I don’t love Jason, or any friend I’ve ever had. I don’t miss people. I don’t even miss my family for heaven’s sake!

But I miss Glenn every second of every day.

Why?

Why can’t I just love people without being IN love with them? Why am I so selfish and uncaring about myself and those I love. So I’ve come to a cross-roads with Glenn. I need to either let it be, just as the Beatles tell me to do. Or, I need to try and transform my feelings for him into a true friendship of the kind I’ve never had.

I want the kind of friend that I talk to every five minutes on the phone. The kind that hang out together all the time, and are never seperated. They go camping together, and go out together. They know each other better than everyone.

But really, the only difference between that and a lover, is that the friends don’t have sex. That’s where I think the gay life becomes the most confusing. Who’s your friend? who’s your lover? Who’s your friend that you happen to have sex with all the time? I’m met many gay couples that really should be just best friends. Not to mention many best friends that should be couples.

Where in this God damn world do we draw the lines?????

In straight relationships, its more than obvious that once a male and female friend have had sex, something has change. I’m not trying to make generalizations, just speaking from personal experience. Females have female friends…males have male friends. Usually when there’s a cross-over you can expect there to be more feelings involved than friendship.

I’m babbling. What this comes down to is that a gay man will have sex with his friend, then say “thanks for the fuck, are we still up for a movie tomorrow?” without a single note of romantic feelings.

Can women do that?

There’s no boundries in my life. There isn’t even a clue to tell me I’m getting older. Straight men get a serious girlfriend, they’re older, they get married, they’re older, they have kids, they’re older, the kids move out, they’re older etc., etc., etc.,

What I’m getting at is that in the life of a gay man, there is no such thing as social norms, or those things that we are expected to do throughout our lives to prove ourselves as human beings. We start out as rejects, so we rebel against society, and then one day we realize that we’re sixty and about to die, because society forgot to tell us that we’ve aged.

I need to create these norms within my life. I need to decide what I should expect from myself. What I won’t tolerate myself doing. And then live by them.

This proccess has already begun. Is this what growing up is?