Chapter 3 ( In-flight Movie)
Develop a tight group of friends.
These are the people you will go to movies (or football) with, dinner, and on whose shoulders you will cry when you get dumped or want to do the dumping. Some of the best times I have ever had have been with my gay friends spending hour after hour at a coffee shop talking about LIFE> This is much different, and in many ways more rewarding, than the single-minded search for a PERMANENT MEANINGFUL AND LASTING RELATIONSHIP.
Some people develop a large circle of friends who are mostly people that they have slept with or date at one time or another. I have never been particulary comfortable with that. In fact, there is no one in my circle of good friends that I have slept with. This might say more about me than anything else but I find that it is better not to have suck relationships clouded with collateral disappointments. Of course, just because you have slept with someone should not be a barrier to the continuation of loving (but platonic) relationship as friends. I personally find it difficult.
Try to find one person that you can talk to anything and everything: strange fantasies, bowel movement penis size, nipple piercing ... whatever.
This group, large or small, must include women, particularly Jenny (my sister) (although probably not to talk about strange fantasies etc)(that s weird because I do talk to my sister about that). It’s easy to surround yourself with male friends but I believe that you run the risk of losing perceptive on life. I know people who have not talked to a woman who was not a co-worker or waitress for ever ten years. I find this extraordinary. In addition, you need someone to agree with you that men are ass holes which leads me to the next subject.
Chapter 4 (In Preparation for Landing)
The biggest problem I find with being gay comes, I believe, from being a man. Being men we are programmed, by evolution and culture, to act in a certain way. This is not always something that we can wish away. The biggest problem I find with gay relationships is that they are made up of two men. The greatest advantage of straight relationships, until recently is that one-half of the relationship was a woman who had been programed, by evolution and culture, to act in a way which was essentially complementary to the way men acted. We don not receive the same training in compromise and accommodation. I think straight man would find it very hard to maintain a relationship with a person who, at core, is the same as him. I am not saying that this good or bad it just makes it more difficult to find the right fit. Ultimately, in the gay world or the straight world, if the fit is found, it’s incredible, better than the old way where one person was expected to completely deny their own needs and hopes, but it is not easy, so you shouldn’t be disappointed or downcast by a few failures along the way. It’s not necessarily you as a person but you as a man who want things a particular way and sometimes finds the fit with another man problematic.
There are certainly times when I wished my life was different but I have never wished that I wasn’t gay.
