Shift+Delete

What happens to you when you’re gay friend decides to get married to a woman? Does he continue to be your friend? Do you continue to be his friend? How do you re-define the friendship space?

More than a year ago I received an email from a FWB. I was rudely surprised when I got an email from him with the subject “Wedding Invitation”. Whenever we discussed topics like our future, male partners, loneliness, old age, and marriage, he was so sure he would never get married for convenience, for society or for his parents. And now there was a wedding invite from him. I didn’t take it seriously and thought it could be an invite for his brother’s wedding. Could it be a virus? Could it be a spam email? Every possibility ran in my mind. I mustered up courage and clicked on the subject and some more surprise unfolded.

The mail was marked to many others (FB, DF, FWB) and said he was getting married in Madurai on Sep 15. I opened the invite in awe and shock, but with a flickering hope that it could be prank. My eyes searched for his name, his father’s name and bride’s name on the invite. I even rechecked the date and venue. May be he was fooling around after tampering with an expired old invite in Photoshop. But it was all there in bold and red. I froze for a minute and replayed our conversations and decisions on marriage and how we guys could all stick together and care for each other. Now all that seemed far, distant and a big lie. It left me with one question - Can humans change their orientation and preference that easily? Was it due to undue pressure for family and society? Or was it a biological need? I couldn’t go back and talk him out of it, but atleast pray for his happiness and continue living with a hope that I would still be on his list of friends.

Losing a gay man to another gay man was something that I am used to, but losing to a woman was not acceptable. This is not the first time such a thing in happening to me. A good friend of mine in the US did the same a few years ago. He came to India to get married, but didn’t even inform me of his trip or marriage. One fine day he saw me online and told me that he was married, my heart just sank. I asked him when and he said it happened 6 months ago. I asked him where and he said India. I didn’t ask him anything more and the chat was punctuated with silence more than words.

More than disappointment, I felt hurt because I was kept in dark. Leave alone an invite for the wedding, I was not even worthy of an information. How will we define our space and friendship? But then he was clear, he didn’t want to remember his past life and friendships and he wanted to put an end to it. That was the last chat we had and his marriage was the funeral of our friendship.

I closed the e-invite in disappointment and loss. More than what bothered me was the text below the first few lines of the invite. He said he is sending this email as a FYI and not an invite. He said he will not be accessing this email anymore and his phone number was already changed. I could not believe my eyes. Is he out of his mind? Why would I trouble him after his marriage? Can’t we still remain friends? I closed the email and again opened to make sure I was hallucinating. But it was in black and white and our friendship was “Shift + Delete”. It was an irrecoverable loss, and friendship.

Am I such a bad human being that he wants me out of his life? Isn’t it easy to say good-bye to people through email and walk away turning your back at them and your past? I felt like a cigarette and marijuana, I gave them happiness and at the end of it I was stomped. Rather than going through this grill mill every time, I have told me friends who are getting wedded to send me just an email with just the subject “I am getting married” and I will instantly rearrange my life.

Sometimes the shortest distance between two gay man is never a straight line, it is devious, long and abruprt. Anything that you can’t share it with family will always remain in dark and what happens in dark…stays in dark…

99 out of 100 times gay men are hurt by their own community more than st8 men and women and rest of the community. There is no use holding pride parades and talking about gay rights if you cant treat your own community with respect and love.

It is time to move on…..

F-Words

I was shocked the other day when my close friend of 15 years failed to introduce me his “friend” at a social gathering to which he dragged me. Am I not eligible for the “friend” title after 15 years of association and kinship? This incident made me examine the meaning of the frivolously used word “friend”.

Maybe introducing someone in the straight world as a “friend” has no other connotation than in the gay world, where friendships are fleeting and forged in the market driven by lust, needs, meats and measures. This was a completely straight gathering and no one would even read otherwise, but still I remained on his “acquaintance list”.

I came home that night in slight funk after the friendly humiliation. I flipped through my contacts on my mobile, trying to decide which friend to call and unction my bruised spirit. As I scrolled through the mobile phone contacts something struck me really hard.

Next to our families, we all invest in a circle of trustworthy people we call “friends” with an unspoken agreement that we will be there for each other. I began counting the number of contacts that I would truly acknowledge as “friends” and I tried to remember how I forged those friendships and if the relationships were psychological bonds or physiological needs or both? This is when I realized be it straight or otherwise friendships come with boundary conditions, retention clauses, expiration dates and no guaranteed satisfaction clauses L.

What does the word “friend” mean to a gay man? What did my contacts list say about me? Could all the fuck buddies be referred to as friends? This humiliation made me honest, and turned me inwards. I christened all friends on my contact list with suffixes.

FWB– friends without benefits - these are just plain vanilla friendship without any benefits, they could be straight or gay, but no physical boundaries trespassed in the past and no intentions for the future

DF – dial a fuck – these are mere fuck buddies, sexploration, could be one night stands or get you to be a repeat customer, and driven by lust, pleasure, hormones and not for issues and tissues

FB - friends with benefits – these are guys whom you can connect with emotionally and physically (shoot from the hip and lip), they can wipe body fluids and bind raw wounds (gauze)

I was happy I was able to be honest and segregate my friends from FB and DF. Now I had to deal with all these contacts with suffixes. Should I make the DF and FB ones a little more perky and juicy by adding statistics to it? I know I sound like a herbiwhore now.

Some guys are really adept in handling friends, fuck buddies and friends with benefits. Now I kept thinking how am I going to handle them? I could name them however I want on my mobile, but in the real word “friendship” word comes with a set of rules and grammar. Do I call them as friends, though they would typically fall in the “DF” category? New words come with tenses, degrees and usage rules.

Should I call it a plain English grammar class or a word power class with Norman & Lewis? Doesn’t matter, it was a night of revelation. Mobile scrolling taught me other words apart from the flippant one – friendship and fuck. FWB, DF, FB got added to the dictionary of f-words. It exposed my oscillating between a predator and a prey, and brought back memories from the past – some names smelled of sweat, some smelled of gooey body fluids, while some were just plain tears. But the there were a few friends who started as FB but who got upgraded to FNB category and some who got downgraded from FB to DF.

But honestly I was coming to terms with my randy, gaudy and slutty side. I realized had used people like surgical cotton and disposed them without any reverence and gratitude. I will let you scroll down your mobile and repeat the same exercise …..let me know where and how I feature on your list.