Author: Mark Bittlestone
Mark Bittlestone is a stand-up comedian. He is also very gay man. Just a very gay man, doing a lot of straight-up gay stuff.
Ok so this week’s blog is here #ByPopularDemand. Last week I explained how to have straight guy friends and I was INUNDATED (three people counts as inundated, right? Right guys? Right?) with requests to write about how you can avoid falling in love with your straight friends. So, gayboys, buckle up, here we go!!
Here are my top five tips when it comes to falling for your straight friends.
1) You can’t.
This is the honest truth. A very good friend once said “the true tragedy at the beating heart of the gay experience is that you are destined to fall in love with someone who can never love you back” – and oh my goodness is he right! I know I’m preaching to the choir because if you’re reading this I guarantee it has happened to you but look, don’t fight it, it’s to be expected. Straight guys are hot ok!
2) It has its benefits.
I once fu*ked my “straight” football captain at university. I got head from a “straight” guy on a stag do recently (click here for more detail on that) #WhatAmILike. It’s not all doom and gloom. Every once in a while fairy tales do come true (although to call either of those encounters fairy tales is a fu*king stretch (like my anus during encounter #1 above pahahaha)) and it turns out those “straight friends” aren’t that straight at all.
3) To tell them or not?
So here’s a scenario: you’re truly, madly, deeply in love with your straight friend. Should you tell them? I was, have been, probably still am, very much in love with at least – AT LEAST – three of my straight friends. In the sense that I would marry them, definitely (pretty safe in the assumption that they’re too straight to read this blog but also lol if any of them are and they’re like “shit, is it me?”) .I haven’t told any of them and my thinking on the matter is that I stand to gain very little by doing so. They are all definitely straight and I’m not going to change that. I really value my friendships with them and there’s no scenario in which me telling them won’t change the dynamic even just a little bit. But I suppose honesty is good and if you think you have to then obviously there’s nothing wrong with admitting your feelings, just be honest with yourself about the likely outcome.
4) Are straight guys actually hotter than gay guys?
Let’s set the record straight (eh eh!). You don’t “love straight guys”, straight guys aren’t “so hot”. You like guys! That’s it. Lots of them happen to be straight, unfortunately. There is of course a toxic and, for many gay guys, not conscious attraction to “masculine” guys – “MASC ONLY” Grindr bios we love to see it (we hate to see it) – and given that straight guys are more likely to be “masculine” I suppose that increases the attraction towards them for some people. There’s also the thrill of the chase, which I must admit to having engaged in. “Turning” straight guys, or imagining that you are, really soothes your ego, but in the end is contributing to the idea that those guys were “straight” in the first place and that getting with a gay guy is a guilty pleasure etc etc. Anyway, I’m rambling: bottom line, stop putting straight guys on a pedestal: they’re no hotter than gay guys!
5) Don’t make any.
This is definitely a policy some of my gay friends have: just don’t make straight friends. For whatever reason (maybe because I wasn’t out at school or in my first two years at uni), I sometimes like to think of myself as “quite masc”, but as the wonderful editors of this magazine once delicately pointed out: “that’s a complete fucking joke, but its adorably that you think that”. For me, most of my cis male friends are hetrosexual, which means the incidence of this ‘falling in love’ with s straighty situation is that much greater. But you can avoid it completely by cutting them out of your life! Probably loads of other benefits too! Less babies, football, and beer, amirite?
For more from Mark follow him on Instagram here and check out some of his videos below!