By Perry Brass

A strange thing happened to the situation we now call "heterosexuality"-also known in TV land as "regular" life-sometime in the middle of the Twentieth century. Perhaps it was a product of our Cold War with heathen Communism when America was turning up enemies all over the place, but at that point men decided that they had to become "best friends" with women. It was, for the most part, an American phenomenon. America had gone from a country where women were looked upon as a special interest group (and found only on the Women's Page) to a place where women became looked upon if not as equal in all ways to men, then at least as an equal threat. At this point, suddenly a man's best friend became . . his wife. There were many reasons why this bizarre change took place. Part of it was the escape into suburbia, which had no separate culture of its own and which gave people no opportunities to establish the rich social lives of cities. Most suburban couples meet other couples through their children, at PTA or school meetings. In other words, they become friends with the parents of the kids their children get along with-a strange way to choose your friends, but then suburban living also gave us the drive-in church and that forum of individuality known as the shopping mall. In the suburbs, the church became another main place for adults to meet new friends. This meant that all of your friends had to share the same moral and social values you did, and friendship with strangers became charged with the threat that any revelation of your private life could be dangerous to your status in a small community. At the same time, the social venues of the city became suspect. There was something "city" as opposed to "decent" about them. Meeting people in taverns, bars, parks, clubs, etc. became even more undesirable. The idea of civility with strangers became especially foreign to us: civility could lead to any number of activities, including (imagine?) sex. Life in the suburbs, therefore, meant that couples had to look upon themselves as their main means of emotional support. Friendship networks outside work, the church, or the school tightened. They tightened even further as couples moved around frequently for career purposes, which meant that bedroom suburbs filled with strangers became the norm. In this case, new comers often had to resort to socializing with other couples from work. This meant that any interaction carried with it the threat of it being reported back into the work situation. Suddenly husband and wife were thrown solely onto each other, like two sailors clinging to one another in a turbulent sea. In this case, this very closed, ship-bound romance might take several years until either the marriage dissolved (remember, we are now at a place where first marriages are now called by sociologists "trial marriages") or became so stagnant that the couple became merely roommates with kids attached. But the other reason why his wife has become a man's best friend is that homosexuality has been pushed as far out into the open as it ever has been in our culture. Therefore, any sensitive intimate relationship between or among men-the sort of relationship men have been having with each other for thousands of years-has been shadowed increasingly under a cloud of homophobic suspicion. Men can no longer simply gather with each other, either in pairs or larger groups, without the fear that there is something "unnatural" about it. At any moment such a gathering can pull in a "gay" undertone or interpretation. In short, the pleasure of male company is now in question. In fact, any man actively seeking the company of other men would have to explain it first: the most he can say is that he is doing it for "networking" purposes. Male companionship for its own sake has become undesirable. It seems almost unthinkable. In countless TV commercials, same-sex company is looked upon stupid, worthless, or ridiculous. The promise of (or threat of being a failure at) heterosexuality sells products. The idea that a man can actually enjoy himself, his own company and that of other men, is made to seem stunted, immature, and pointless. Men who prefer a life of friendship and self-exploration are referred to as "Peter Pans," which carries with it the code message of "fairyism." What they have done, by not "growing up," is either postpone their participation in the heterosexual couple market, or they are seen to be hiding their own "latent" homosexuality. This is seen to be equally as grevious as the sin of homosexuality itself, in that "serious" women should have the right to be warned away from them and not waste important husband-hunting time. Any declaration, no matter how low-keyed, that the enjoyment of male company (and any self-esteem that might come from it) can be healthy is quickly made to seem ridiculous. Men who like men are losers. On Jerry Seinfeld's popular TV sitcom, "Seinfeld," Jerry's male friends who associate with other men are either fat, stupid, slovenly, or so socially inept as to be "geeky." They constantly admit that something is missing from their lives-the necessary "babe" factor, which pops up as soon as a woman enters the room. The women, who are always gorgeous compared with Jerry's "loser" friends, are then presented like dandruff shampoos or mouthwashes: after they are used any problems are cleared up and the result is momentary happiness until the end of the episode, when the girls leave and Jerry's friends begin the babe hunt again. Not only are men who like men losers, but male company is not even considered a "consolation" prize anymore: it's simply not an option. It is unacceptable. Rather than be with other men, the "normal" man would prefer to stay home alone with a computer or play video games. On the road, the successful (and momentarily "single") man now stays in his motel room, orders in pizza and an action movie from the desk downstairs that will be charged to his corporate credit card. Since male company can no longer be emotionally reinforcing, it is now seen as damaging. The only emotion that can be attached to it is one of testosterone-invoking competition. Therefore the only way men can appeal to other men is either to "reach up" as in business networking (which emotionally is like shooting marbles through a landmine field) or to engage in some form of "self-improvement," like the new "Christian Men's Movement's" Promise Keepers rallies, where vast numbers of men gather to promise to be better husbands and fathers for the sake of Christ. The flip side of this is that when "male social bonding" for business purposes is necessary, even demanded, some "neutral" (that is, non-business, non-threatening) female presence as a buffer is called for. This has brought out a whole new industry of "clean" "adult business entertainment centers" such as the very successful restaurant chain Hooters, where exceptionally bad food is served by women with exceptionally big breasts. Most major cities now have expense account strip joints, where men can drink, talk business, put the whole thing on corporate plastic, and not have to deal with each other. Detroit, the center of the macho auto industry, sports dozens of them, where Big Four executives wine and dine salesmen, watch an assortment of young women strip, pull off deals, and never have to look another man in the eye. Time with other men is not seen as "quality time." Today, people would question why Ralph the bus driver and Ed the plumber spent such an awfully long amount of time with each other on the old Honeymooners series. The new buddies on TV are men and women, usually husbands and wives. In commercial movies, which are aimed squarely at fourteen-year-old boys, male pairing is marked by constant violence, competition, aggression, and "action." The idea being that at no time can two men actually enjoy each other, except in scenarios that are too "hot" and explosive for women. Homophobia, as a tool, is now used openly by many industries, especially those based on communicating "commercial concepts." The main commercial concept, of course, is that it is important for you to keep buying and consuming as a way of actually competing in the business world. But the underlying concept is that it is possible to be a consumer, to be consumed, in fact, by your interest in clothes, cosmetics (i.e., men's "grooming lines"), furniture, home accessories, music, magazines, etc. and not be a "queer." Whereas in the old days, a "real" man disdained shopping-"fashion" was something you saw only in women's magazines-as a chore he'd do dragged around by his wife, now you can be a real man and still buy. And buy. And buy. A perfect example of this was recently cited by Amy M. Spindler in a New York Times article on the new trend-setting English men's fashion magazines Arena and The Face, that are trying to make an inroad in the American magazine market, despite the fact that their content might beviewed in this country as too "gay." "There is a very simple general operating principle for mainstream fashion magazines for men," Spindler says. "Exploit fears. And a fear of forward fashion is among them." What "forward fashion" is easily decoded to mean is explained by Peter Howarth, the editor of Arena, and the former fashion editor of British GQ, who tries to represent his slant on fashion as punk, but not queer. "The straight-guy phenomenon is all linked to Condé Nast and Hearst. They are so scared in their fashion coverage, and this is where I think they've got it wrong. Over here, there is a tradition of British men dressing up, usually related to music culture. Punk wasn't a gay scene, even if there were some gay punks." In the fashion world, this has spawned a trend towards "anti-fag" clothes. These span from the ever blander and more boring offerings of catalogues like J. Crew, which are doing "90s versions" of the WASPy golf and country club clothes Generation X's grandparents shoved to the backs of their closets, to Hip Hop's baggy oversized T-shirts and pants. Hip Hop's body concealments gets its origins from prison fashions, where showing any body definition was an invitation to gay sex. In the same way, kids now consider skin-tight Speedo swim suits and muscle-revealing Lacoste shirts to be "fag wear." To wear them means to show a body consciousness that is dangerous-even as our culture sells the male body as just a piece of fashion: you can have muscles. You can have good skin. You can furnish your apartment home so it doesn't look like a dork lives there. And, if you play it right, you don't have to be a queer. Although the newly nascent (and just as quickly forgotten) "men's movement" tried to counter some of this, it did nothing to counter the idea that men and women in pairs might not be absolutely perfect for one another. The women's movement, traditionally, said that women being together had a priority that could not be dismissed. It was not simply "decoration." It was an inherent part of feminism. The men's movement was terrified of this. Although the women's movement produced the phenomenon of the "political lesbian," a woman who might be heterosexual but who realized that her greatest emotional commitments would be to other women, the men's movement will never produce "political homos." In fact, when "real" men got together, homosexuality always stalked their movement. The men's movement put up billboards to explain that it was a "hetero phenomenon." Straight men were looking for that precious necessary male bonding in a "heterosexual environment." There may be a lot of clenched fist hugging-and even some quick cheek pecking-but nothing was ever going to go beyond that. Gays were to the men's movement what Communists once were to the labor movement. Gays were more than simply the "lavender" menace in it; they were a time bomb set to go off, because any serious "straight" men's movement had an impossible time defending the gay right to be there. Women got over this problem years ago. Patricia Ireland, the president of N.O.W. (National Organization of Women) is an open lesbian. But the men's movement agenda-that is, the idea of men feeling closeness, bonding with other men, and achieving self-worth through this-would seem worthless in the media if that agenda became sexualized in any way. (To demonstrate this, the men's movement has stayed away from something that was an important part of the early women's movement: the women's dance, where women, even straight women, enjoyed dancing with each other. The best the men's movement has come up with has been drumming together. You can beat on a drum, or each other, but not touch.) So men and women, as husbands and wives, have become isolated "best friends," as much as they may detest it. At a certain age (usually when being single is no longer acceptable to the corporate world that openly discriminates against the unmarried or the never-married), a man will have to leave his social friends and "grow up." This means that through marriage he will have to join the very commercialized world of women. He will have to constantly improve his house, its value-and his family. During those few hours that a man has to himself (when he is not at work; or improving himself through "Adult Ed"), you will find him with his wife. Most probably they will be shopping at a mall or going to a movie or they will be with other friends or relatives who are coupled in exactly the same way. This lockstepping of couples in a way that would have embarrassed Noah finds its most amazing consequence in the idea that single people are considered outsiders and undesirable in modern hetero coupledom. Since she is now looked upon as her husband's best friend, a wife looks upon any single woman as a marriage threat. This is not simply because a single woman might seduce her husband, but suppose an outside woman suddenly became his "best friend"? Single men are also a threat because they are considered losers, although they have more value on the couple market than women. The role that single men used to play-that of the adored "city" uncle, the teacher, the adventurer with great stories to tell-is over. He is now either the closet queen, or between marriages. The reason I have brought up all this dreck is that gays for the most part are now modeling their expectations and relationships on "straights." This modeling from the straights (that is from mainstream, media-saturated heterosexuality) is getting spray-gunned ever closer to "one-boy-one-girl-forever" pattern, as an older "gay" model has gotten more out of favor with writers and figures in our corporatized gay media. In turn, the corporatized gay media wants very much to present the idea that gay men are not to any degree very different from "straights." They want to do this to make it easier to sell us to corporate big-bucks advertisers, who only a few years ago would have felt stigmatized being involved in anything that even whiffed of the word "gay." So now many younger gay men are picking up their cues not only from the straight world, but from a slick gay media one. In short, gay men now want to "universalize" their lives: they want to see that there is no difference between them and a very straight, suburbanized world. They want to fit in. They want to be a part of a couple, and they want this couple to be like their neighbors down the corridor, in the co-op that lies empty all day. They are looking for the one man who will be everything to them, the way that a woman is now supposed to be (may the old, patriarchal God Himself help her) everything to a man. So gay men want another man who will be their best friend, buddy, intellectual equal, sexual fit and fantasy, career asset ("He makes as much money as I do and his career is something I can take an interest in!"), and who shares their interest in hobbies, musical taste, friends, restaurants, etc. This "new" lover situation (now called the "partner") has become more of a networking situation than a romantic one, since it is probable that the partnership will become more public than old gay relationships in the past were. Your new lover will have to pass muster with your friends, family, and even business acquaintances who will take on an amazing patina of intimacy as they become allowed into your own . . . "gay" life. Which translates to mean one thing: you introduce your straight/business/social friends to your same-sex "partner." Which means, in a nutshell, that your own "gay" life is supposed to start and end with him. He will satisfy all your needs, and any friendship or intimacy outside gay coupleness will be as suspect and anxiety-provoking as one outside "normal" hetero coupleness. The seriousness of this pursuit of the new lover is exemplified in so many personals ads we see that ask not only for a man of a certain race, size, and sexual categories (active, passive, etc.), but also that he be "straight appearing." In other words, that he will not be a source of embarrassment to you on the streets, in your work environment (where he will now be known as So-and-So's Partner), or at your Aunt Bertha's, where he'll be invited quickly for dinner. There are two problems with the "new" lover who will be all things to all people: first, no matter how suitable he is, you may not fall in love with him, either because there is nothing there you can attach your own inner feelings to, or he does not know how to appeal to those feelings you are looking to have satisfied. And second, that unlike the straights who are stupid enough to think that a wife must mean everything to a husband and vice versa (as witnessed by our ridiculous divorce rates), gays should realize that a same-sex lover relationship is a special relationship that does not take the place of other important relationships-but should not conflict with them, either. In other words, you don't toss out your relationships with a best friend, other friends, or your family, when you find the person who will be, hopefully, your Significant Other. Nor will you allow your best friends, other friends, and your family to pass judgment on him. This is your call and your relationship, and you should keep it that way. A lover relationship, in short, is different from a relationship with a friend. Although there may be more tension in a sexual/romantic/lover relationship due to the demands of intimacy, there is also more room for conflict. Very few friendships can stand the stress that a good lover relationship can. The emphasis is on good: a lover relationship is not a friendship, in that it is not based on common interests but on shared inner feelings. There is an intimacy and sharing of feelings in this form of closeness that can and should stand a lot of battering-and very few friendships can stand this. One problem many gay men have is that they do put this sort of stress on friendship relationships, which are rarely really "special" relationships but more generalized ones. When two men become lovers, they find that their friendships ebb and flow as their relationship becomes more established. Men who find that their "lovers" come and go and their friendships remain stable are doing something wrong: they are trying to put the stresses of an intimate love relationship onto their friends. Conversely, they often try to make their lovers into their "friends," thus generalizing and neutering these relationships. This takes the passion and commitment needed to cement these important relationships out of them. The end results are stressed, difficult friendship relationships and shallow, phony lover relationships. Repeat: the lover relationship is a special relationship. It does not come about instantly; it requires more energy and it should be able to take more stress. This stress is a normal part of patterned heterosexual relationships ("in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, till Death . . ."); but it is usually considered an ultimate test of gay ones. Very few gay men allow themselves the seriousness of a relationship, one that will develop and mature and can take a normal lifetime's stress. Instead, they go about expecting everything they can-in a personals ad, shopping mall way-from many quicker, failure-bound relationships: they expect to find, somewhere out there, the man who will satisfy all of their needs in a lover, as long as these needs are fairly flat and fulfill a wish list that won't conflict with real human limitations, such as the possibility of illness or the lack of desire or the loneliness that can come into any relationship, even the most "perfect." So if your lover is not your "best" friend (in fact, he may not even be a friend, in the scheme of friends being people who come and go in your life-as in work friends, social friends, political friends, etc.) then who is he? The answer is your lover is a person who satisfies your deepest needs for intimacy, needs that are not only deep in that their roots go back to childhood, but also needs that are broad enough to need satisfying very often, perhaps even every day. These needs may include a variety of problems as well: in short, you will not be putting on a happy face for him every day. But it can't mean using your lover to recycle all those childhood dramas that never got resolved. Part of this intimacy scheme is allowing yourself to grow with him. You will both need to grow in this special way of two men who are open to each other, and yet respectful of one another's need for privacy. Privacy is an important part of any intimate relationship: there should be a privacy involved in a lover relationship that you do not invite your friends to invade, or even to investigate. This relationship is not up for their commentaries or suggestions. Many of your friends may never be able to establish a strong, intimate, sexual relationship. They may have girlfriends they can have dinner with (and complain for hours about what "shits" men are); they may have platonic friends to whom they can show off their knowledge of antiques and china. They may have quick sexual encounters (known, in the old days, as "tricks"—today called "dates") who satisfy their needs for attention and adventure. But they will not have the kind of sensitive, committed, resilient, tough, passionate, important connections you will have with a lover. So of course they would love to snap your connection to yours. They will tell you that he's "not worth it," that he is "using you," that your situation with him is "dysfunctional," "codependent" and bring out other jargon words that are stylish at the moment and that they've heard in the 12-step programs that are (too often) giving them the only relationships they can maintain. (Which leads me to the question of the 90s: why are there no 12-step programs for people who are dependent on 12-step programs?) In other words, they would love to wreck your relationship. They will do this to prove their love for you. Don't let them. Conversely, your lover may feel threatened by your friends, and he may make your relationship with him contingent upon your increasing isolation. I refer to this as the "It's-just-you-and-me-in-the-same-boat-babe!" complex. This is often caused by insecurities on his part, but even worse, by his own homophobic feelings. He is sure that all of your friends are out to hurt him. After all, he knows most of the evil people in the world are faggots, right? Your straight friends won't approve of him because, well… he's gay. And your gay friends: well, forget them. So the privacy thing is important both ways. You should demand it from your friends as regards your lover relationship, and you should demand it of your lover regarding your friends. In the beginning this may be very difficult. After all, you've had your friends before you met your lover. They feel that you expect them to be as crazy about him as you are: Stress Number One. He feels that you expect him to adore them. Stress Number Two. They feel that for them to be there for you, they have to solve all your problems. Bingo: Number Three! Since you will be spending a lot of time with him in the beginning (and if you live with him, even more as time goes on), the chances are that as your feelings for him make themselves known, you will jettison some of your old friends in his favor. Sorry: fact of life. Your need to have this person in your life-despite the risks involved-will supersede your needs to have X, Y, and Z as friends, even if X, Y, and Z have been there for years and saw you go from a mere acorn to a mighty oak. If the thing with "him" does not work out, it will be a test of your connections to X, Y, and Z to see if they come back; sometimes people expect this to happen, and often, if they have worked through lives of their own, they will allow you a certain amount of "credit" in your friendship account to allow for these "rainy day" emergencies. (The Man of Your Life, for whom you gave up the throne, turns out to be . . . a dud.) But don't expect this to happen too often. Loyalty is a lovely virtue; being a patsy-someone used over and over again-is not. But that sense of privacy that you develop around your relationship, that beautiful little hedge of thorns and roses that you cultivate so carefully, can expose something else in the most amazing way. Now that you have that very special person who is satisfying your deeper or deepest needs for intimacy, your feelings about your friends may really change: you may see some of them in fact as "enemies." Real enemies. As in the old saw, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Of course you needed them as friends because your own feelings about yourself, at one time, were so bad. You were sure back then that no one else would have you, and they bought you very "cheap"-simply by paying attention to you when it seemed that no one else would. These sort of "enemy-friends" for years were endemic to gay life. They were the jokes and gist of hundreds of plays, stories, novels, and movies. They were all the "Boys In The Band," the leftovers of "All About Eve," and half the cast of *Dynasty*. They were always giving you a good kick in the teeth of "reality" because only they knew what was good for you. Only they were honest enough. They figured gay friendships were supposed to be based on the lives of Tallulah, Bette, and Judy. When they weren't putting out their cigarettes on your hide and inviting you over to have a sixth martini washed down with a couple of Valium, they were offering to come over and mop up after your latest suicide attempt. In other words, they loved your misery. It made their own misery taste so much better. These were the dirtballs who told you (in the nicest way), "Honey, you know we love you, but you just don't have a lick of talent. Give up all those ideas and come down to Earth with us." Or who said, "Who needs a lover, when you have angels like us who'll always stick with you?" In Camille, Marguerite tells her young lover that only her low-life friends understand her, so she'll give him up. In John Cheever's great short story, "The Black Widow," an old friend always comes in to console the protagonist as he sinks farther down into alcoholism and despair. She always appears at the worst moment, until he realizes that she is sucking off his misery. Living on it. These "enemy-friends" are the most insidious type. Like a computer virus, they destroy your life from within. And they despise competition. They will see anyone who deeply loves you as exactly that. Competition. Once you see this dynamic going on between them and the man you've picked to be there for you, resign them to the Late Show. And don't tune-in often. But now that you realize that your lover may not be your "best friend," what happens to that need for a best friend, for someone that you can spend time with in a non-sexualized but intensely passionate way? The answer to that is it does not go away. Straights often try to satisfy the need for a best friend with their children. This is dangerous, since kids have lives of their own and most kids come to feel at some point that Mommy and Daddy are among the world's stupidest people-that is, until they live long enough to know better. What happens with the need for a best friend is that as your lover starts to satisfy some of this need, you can let go of some of it as well. And you can generalize the need onto several other men-men who share your interests the way your lover does not. Or men who may be the opposite of your lover, who invite or allow aspects of yourself to come out that your lover does not. Your lover may have no religious feelings and you meet Bruce, who is in contact with this part of himself. Suddenly all of your own spiritual needs spill out to him: a very charged situation. He becomes the "best friend" to you that your lover is not. But be careful: the intensity of your spiritual needs may not be matched by the depth of Bruce's invitation for you to fill them. It's easy to mistake this invitation for a genuine call to love. We call this "infatuation with a purpose." Priests experience it; so do therapists, who call it "transference.". Your lover may give you no spiritual satisfaction, but Bruce does. But this does not mean that Bruce, whom you want to be your "best friend," can't return that very same feeling-and bonding-to six other men. You may feel that he's your best friend, but he does not. So don't make the mistake of inviting your "best friend" to take the place of your lover. Instant intimacy is one of those things that our TV culture dishes out like little quickie packages of Lean Cuisine. This has invaded the gay world in the form of sexual-cum-spiritual groups like the Body Electric where intense intimacies are formed with strangers, who remain strangers after the experience is over. It is easy in the throes of these instant intimacies to "fall in love" with someone who is playing the game with you, who is "opening himself up" like you, but who may be much better when the end arrives at closing up. Therefore, "intimacy" itself, in this canned, instant version, may now become a weapon to be used against you. Again, watch out. It may seem easy to try to replace your lover (who was not meant to be your "friend," as much as a refuge, where you can safely take out your deepest needs and have them attended to) with one of your new "Whip-and-Chill" intimacy buddies. After all, Jim, who has been there with you for ten years, just does not understand the "intensity" of your feeling for Peter, the attractive sensitive star of a "touch-me-feel-me" weekend that left both of you gasping. What you might have found out during that weekend ("that we all spent with our clothes off and where we all got more naked than I've ever been with anybody!") was that you did want somebody else in your life. Your lover is not your "best friend." But maybe you need to have several "best friendships" along with him. How you are able to accomplish this will depend upon how satisfied and secure he is in your life together. And also how much privacy the two of you have allowed yourselves. One of the joys of your own gay life should be that having a relationship with another man, besides your lover, should not be suspect. Unlike the suburban straight couples who are now "best friends and absolutely everything to each other" and who cannot even be seen in the company of any other unattached adults, you can. You can give yourself this right. You can allow room in your life for both of these relationships-for your lover as well as your best friend, or even best friends. But the important thing is not to confuse the space occupied by any of them. To honor them. Not to compare your lover to your best friend. It does not work. Even best friends have other "best friends," who may not be you. But the relationship you have with your lover has a singular uniqueness, and if it does not, it is time to work on it and question it. It may be time to reinforce this relationship-and inject into it more of yourself. It may be a time to realize how much of himself your lover is giving you, that you are not recognizing. In fact, it may be time for you to start taking stock of all the ingrediants in this incredable closeness, seeing what you can do with them and how they are working with you, and for you. Perry Brass has published nine books. His newest book is The Harvest, a gay futuristic novel dealing with cloning and the market in human body parts, available at gay bookstores everywhere as well as www.amazon.com. This fall, he will publish The Lover of My Soul, a book of poetry and other writing. This essay is part of his forthcoming book, How to Survive Your Own Gay Life, to be published by Belhue Press in 1998. He can be reached at belhuepress@earthlink.net.