By Jack Mauro
As you date, explore, and seek the right partner, there's another thing about the lure of straight guys/friends to consider. They waylay us, to be sure. They make us think in terms of possibilities that are most likely not very real (not counting drunken lapses into pure sex). And it becomes rather easy to paint them as seductive, unfair users, men who toy with our hearts and dreams. The unobtainable, sexy bastards.
Yet we want to be fair and fairness demands that we see something not all that obvious. Our crushes on straight men are far from illusory fantasy because, as you may know from experience, the longing isn't all on our side and it definitely isn't exclusively sexual. The reality is that many straight men are deeply drawn to gay men because we're all men, and we share a background, however dissimilar it may be in certain elements, women simply can't relate to. The cliché of the battle of the sexes is and always has been based on the true and monolithic fact that women and men cannot understand each other in a host of ways. Thus works nature, inscrutable creature that she is.
Be a little merciful, when your straight buddy emits vibes perhaps beyond friendship. He himself is ensnared. You are, in a sense, the seducer, because you have that one inestimable thing no woman can give him: a genuine understanding of everything that being a male is all about. He probably isn't even aware of it as such – what straight man questions the why of why he likes being with guys, anyway? – but it's there, it's potent, and it's turning his head.
Which raises the question: is it OK to use this bonding, then, as a tool to forge a real relationship? Yes. But only because it won't be enough, unless he's one of the rare birds encountered by and drawn to you at that crossroads in his life.
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