Dorian, Age 22 – Wanted: Real Friendship, Non-sexual

Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

Looking for someone I can talk to on the phone about random things…just how our day was…

Someone that I can walk down South Street with, go shopping, go out to eat, not be sexual with each other and both be satisfied…

Someone I can hang out with, go to a club with, really enjoy each other’s company and not have anything attached to it.

Why take ourselves through wondering if we want to sleep with each other or if we really want to be friends? Let’s just be friends from the beginning…


I’m writing this because it seems like a lot of guys want to start the friendship off with sex. It’s like you hook up with someone first, then if it went all right you can be friends. If you’re both into each other, then it’s a relationship…but the sex always comes first. That’s not what I’m looking for here.

We never seem to meet someone and think they might be really intelligent, or creative, or funny. They have a nice ass. Everyone needs to dress the best, look the best, have the best body. You have to be really masculine or really muscular…you have to look the part.

It’s hard to come back from that and see a person for who they are. I’m guilty of it sometimes and I don’t want to be. It’s just how gay men learn to be I guess.

For me, it’s a trust thing. A friend should be someone I can trust completely and know they’re THERE for me no matter what. There shouldn’t be any hidden agenda.

But if I’m ONLY talking to guys I’m into…and guys are ONLY talking to me cause they’re into me…then how am I gonna trust them? Are they just being nice to me cause they want to sleep with me, or do they really want to be my friend? If you don’t know what someone wants from you, how do you trust anything that comes out of their mouth?

There’s not enough trust between the gay men I know. We’re all supposed to put up this front, like we’re happy and horny and beautiful and aloof ALL THE TIME. Maybe we’re so good at putting up these fronts we hardly ever see another person for who they really are.

That doesn’t make it easy to make good friends. Friends should be people we can let our guard down around. We shouldn’t need to have a front around them. They should be people who won’t judge us or cut us down.

We make up these categories and labels. We want to get away from those judgments everyone else puts on us, but then we start judging ourselves. We long to be perfect and not be outcasts, but sometimes it’s like our community makes its own outcasts.

Why can’t someone who you’re not attracted to be really fun to hang out with?

Why can’t someone who doesn’t look PERFECT still be a great person?

I try to give everyone a chance now. If I feel there’s something interesting there, regardless of what someone looks like or dresses like, I’ll talk to them…and it’s actually been working.

If I carry myself in way that tells people this is just a friendship…like if I’m not always touchy-feely with them, or using that flirtatious language that we sometimes use without thinking about it…people pick up on that. It seems like they like it too, cause they know there’s no pressure and that I’m not out for something.

I do want a relationship one day, but right now I’m into how nice it can be having some friends around who AREN’T there for sex. Hoping someone out there can relate?

Dorian, 22

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