Rambling Wednesdays: Hanging out with straight men.

A lot of my gay friends ask me why I bother to hang out with straight guys when there are so many gays to hang out with. I have a lot of gay friends who *only* hang out with gay guys (or girls) and they’re downright mystified when I can’t go out because I made plans with straight boys.

Also: I’m pretty fabulous, so what would I even have in common with them, really.

So let’s talk about straight guys.

First, we need to address how downright awkward it is to ask a straight man to hang out with you in the first place. There’s this guy—we’ll call him Dan—that I run into a few times a year. When we run into each other, we’re really friendly. I think he is so awesome and he thinks I’m funny and I really want to hang out with him because I know it’ll be a great time. All of my straight guy friendships have developed organically. Either we were roommates at some point and stayed friends or he was dating one of my girl friends and we stayed friends or we have a lot of other guy friends in common and just hung out more and more often. I never had to say “hey, lemme get your number so we can hang out.”

But Dan and I don’t have any friends in common and we don’t have a reason to hang out other than this one event a few times a year. I’d wanted to ask for his number for over a year, but it never seemed like the right time! I felt like I had to let him know that I was unequivocally not trying to get in his pants because I’m convinced all straight men think gay men are predators just waiting to pounce on unsuspecting heteros. But I couldn’t be all “you’re too ugly for me anyway” because he’s not ugly. He’s actually really attractive, which makes it even more difficult because he’s probably been hit on by gay men before.

How do straight guys ask each other out on man-dates? Do they exchange numbers and stuff? Do they do the whole phone swap “put your number in here” thing? How do straight guys even FIND new friends to hang out with? It’s not like they have grindr. And they’re not allowed to have that many girl friends, because actual girlfriends will get jealous, or they will have sex.

Eventually I just stopped thinking about it and said “Dan, we really need to hang out in real life, not just here.” And he agreed and gave me his number. I would love to know what his thought process was in that moment. “Quick, think fast. What do I do? I wanna hang out, but does he think I’m gay? Is this a date? I’m not down with the gay sex. Maybe I should say no. But then I’ll look like a dick. And I actually like him anyway. Fuck it, I’ll just give him my number.”

So now we have a man-date next week and I’m really excited about it because I love making new friends! But why hang out with straight guys anyway? What is the point?

Well the first one is easy. I live in NYC and there are a lot of gay guys with a lot of the same interests that overlap and have nothing to do with me. After awhile, I can’t really talk about Lana Del Rey and Rihanna and Fashion Week and all the fabulous anonymous dicks you sat on last week. Sometimes I wanna talk about football and go see some bands and play video games and go to the strip club (and get free lap dances obviously because I’m so gay and fabulous). Whenever I meet a gay man who wants to do those things, I usually want to marry him instantly and that never ends well for anybody. Hanging out with straight guys, I can do all of those things and not wonder if every glance means he thinks I’m cute and then plan our whole relationship and wedding in my head before we’ve even so much as hugged.

Also, there’s no competition! If I’m going out with a group of straight men, I’m the cutest gay guy in the bunch. Because I’m the only one. If there is another gay man in the vicinity, I’m already at the top of the list of his prospects because there are no more. And if I meet a straight guy, I don’t have to worry about A) if he’s already met one of my friends on Grindr and hooked up or B) if he will try to sleep with one of my friends.

Lastly, straight guys aren’t as awful as everyone pretends they are. They actually do have emotions and listening skills, and sometimes it’s easier to have “woe is me, nobody loves me” talks with a straight man as opposed to girls who will tell you how awesome you are and then tell you how horrible all men are as they get ready for a date with their totally cute boyfriend, or gays who will tell you how awesome you are and leave you thinking “If I’m some amazing, why you ain’t wanna date me, huh?” Straight guys are like “man that sucks, next round is on me” And sometimes that’s all you wanted to hear.

Plus, if you are the fabulous gay man among a gaggle of straight guys at the bar, the bartendress always gives you free drinks.

So I like straight-man-dates. I don’t have to worry about whether or not I sound too gay, I don’t have to carefully select an outfit, and I don’t have to shave my balls in case sex happens. Tell your heteromales to call me. I’m a really entertaining chick magnet.