the awesome/terrifying freedom

the best new show on television is 'queer eye for the straight guy.' i felt such absolute glee watching this show, because it finally showed, in full glory, a basic element of of the relationship i have with my straight male best friends - until i got out of undergrad, strangely, all my best friends were straight men. i never realized just how completely underrepresented this (and i think not uncommon.. am i wrong?) relationship is depicted. not all of us have fag hags. some of us have fag hogs.

pehaps the strength of my relationships to straight men came from an early feeling of envy, combined with a reverse fag-hag phenom.

i was a fag hag for straight men. what is that called? straight-weight? i was a gay male example of the fag hag phenom of insecure women clinging to and becoming best friends with attractive unavailable men.

i first realized i was gay when in 8th grade my first true best friend, max, began dating a girl named jennifer. i seethed with uncontrollable jealousy. the big wake-up came when i realized that i wasn't jealous of max for being with jennifer - i was jealous of jennifer for being with max. i did everything i could to split them up - god i was an evil little bitch. years and years later, when i finally came to terms with it all, i came out to max. our friendship was restored, stronger than ever. i sort of lived my imaginary straight life through him.. a product of self-hatred, yes, but the resulting friendship was well worth it. several years later max ran into jennifer in a bar and they dated for many months.

my other straight best friend is steve, who was an on and off again frat boy who i went to high school and college with. we weren't very close in high school, but were only a handful of kids from our high school to attend my undergrad. faced with the new environment, we clung together, and discovered how much we had in common based not on our sexuality, but on our common maleness. getting invited to his frat parties was a good perk too. when neither of us could get dates, steve and i would have 'guys night in,' where we'd get drunk, go down to the adult video store and pick out a video that had both hot chicks and hot guys, watch it while drinking beer and cracking wit, talk about sex, talk about how much we hate being single, and go home. believe it or not, the group viewing of porn is common among straight men, especially in frat house situations.. it's pretty fun actually; the porn is deconstructed and analyzed.. it becomes a sort of xxx 'mystery science theatre 3000.'

probably the best part of these friendships was being with people so completely comfortable in their own skins and sexualities. max and i would go to gay bars and i'd protect him by pretending to be his boyfriend. steve and i even got 'married' so that i could get a free gym membership...

steve ended up transfering back to our hometown college in boulder after a year away. i would come home for the summers and we'd work out together at the university of colorado student gym. since i wasn't a CU student, i would have had to pay $10/visit. our solution: get married. so we opened a joint checking account to provide evidence of our 'domestic partnership.' we presented the bank's form at the gym and the woman behind the counter happily gave me my free membership!

but i digress. the essence of my relationship to these straight men, and even to an extent to my straight roommate was to be 'the style advisor.' i picked out the paint colors for my roommate's apartment. i taught max how to work out and told him what to wear on his date with jennifer. i told steve which outfits to wear out to the club and which product to use in his hair. i taught them to be metrosexuals and they taught me, well, they taught me at least something of what it means to be a man. i learned to flip over a corona like a frat boy and watch the lime rise to the top without exploding beer everywhere. i learned to nurture my love of action movies and video games. i learned to not be afraid of asking the hulk at the gym for a spot.

i kinda forgot all this since i moved to new york. the show made me remember it. it's yet another sign of the great things that can come by melding two seemingly incompatible worlds.

the closing of the ny times article, written by a similarly enamoured straight man puts is best: 'television has long featured straight male characters making jokes about gay men, or teasing each other about acting gay, or just generally reveling in their babe-watching, couch-potato-ing heterosexuality. not infrequently, these characters have even been played by gay men.

now the same medium features guys like butch and adam laboring intensely to look more gay. and all across america, straight guys will watch the show, and from their stained, sagging couches, where they sit in their boxers drinking budweiser from a can, they'll see people's lives transformed by queerness, and they'll think, "dude, maybe someday that could be me."'