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.