Gay Men as Girlfriends

I’m single.  Yep, it’s true.  For a woman who’s growing older, whose gal pals by the age of thirty have started getting married and having babies, female friends are becoming a rare commodity.  On top of that, the ones that I do have don’t want to go out and do the same things they did when they were twenty-nine, and they hardly ever want to stay out late. 

 

I’m pretty much the same person now I was then with the same joie de vivre.  Although I admit to more sophisticated tastes, it would be great to have a wonderful female friend with whom to hang at a bar, split that great new bottle of cab franc, and not have to get home by 10:00 P.M. because I need to be there when the husband gets home—or simply that I just want to get in bed and sleep…alone.

 

I even put an ad in Craigslist for older gal pals who still liked to party, despite my concern that the only responses I would receive would be from lesbians.  Lesbians or not, I just wanted gal pals of similar sensibilities who liked to have fun and not be limited by family obligations.  Please understand that by “party” I don’t mean fixing heroin or snorting cocaine.  I never did the former even when I was twenty-nine.  But what’s wrong with really letting it rip on a Saturday night, only in designer clothing with an expensive pursue clutched in your manicured hand.

 

It just so happened that the most interesting response I received from my Craiglist post was from a lesbian. Cool.  All the other women were the types who wanted to hang out at dive bars (and not the good kind) where the men were wearing cowboy hats and bad Celtic bands were playing.  Or they wanted to go to a restaurant with dinner dancing.  So when I saw Pat the lesbian, wearing a plaid work shirt as she got out of  a giant pickup truck in front of the restaurant where we were meeting, even better I thought.  Except the plaid work-shirt wearing black-truck-driving lesbian never really panned out.  Turned out she had several adopted children, which put her in the same unavailable to party category as my married friends.  She really needed a coffee clatch or a knitting group, and that’s just not me, although I do hope she found a few buds.  Pat, if you’re out there, hope the transmission is doing well.

 

I love my gay friends and acquaintances.  Ben, Tom, Hernan, Lars, Keith, Joe, Nathan.  There’s just something about each and every one of them that exudes acceptance.  If I didn’t have them, I honestly think I’d have shot myself long before now.  My friend Ben, especially, is a testament to everything that’s worth living, having and observing in the world.  His taste is impeccable.  His sense of style and design are flawless.  Yet he’s not a snob about people, which is where I come in.  If I had to have a designer profile in order to have true friends, it would prevent a lot of people from hanging out with me.  But not Ben.  My outrageous side compensates for a lot, but it’s his generosity of spirit that counts.  He’s honest and knowing and respectful and witty and very, very talented as a designer, photographer and graphic artist.  That aside, there’s just something about him that I adore to the point I feel he’s the family I never had. 

 

A few years ago, when I was traveling to Paris, Ben suggested that I connect a friend of his living there named Aaron.  Aaron, originally from Santa Barbara, had been living in City of Light at the time for more than fifteen years.  His California coastal accent was now a strange European patois, and while he sounded a little off in his English he spoke French perfectly.  So I telephoned him when I arrived, and Aaron agreed to escort me just about everywhere, including a transvestite Thai restaurant and a gay disco where we danced till dawn. Sigh. 

 

Perhaps our most memorable evening was at an intimate glacier, patisserie, restaurant and salon called L’Ete En Pente Douce, just down the steps from the Sacre Coeur.  We shared a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and he ended the meal with a lemon-prune tart while I opted for the chocolate.  Dusk melted into night, the lights of the city started to spark, the soft sounds of the other diners merged with the realization that I was in one of the great cities of the world having one of the best times in my life.  And somehow, that evening, I fell in love.  With a gay man.  As we walked to the Metro and he waved from inside the train, my heart broke.  Although it had been my wish to go to Paris with the man I loved, since I was single I figured I’d better go ahead and have the experience by myself.  Yet I did kind of fall in love, and I’m grateful for the memories. 

 

I think of Aaron fondly, although he never knew my feelings.  Maybe he did see me cry as he sped away.  As for Ben, I’ve often thought that there are only two people in the world I’d take a bullet for, and he’s one of them.  Of course, it would have to be in a very fleshy, non-life-threatening part of the body.  But still.