Two Straight Friends Go Gay Funny
Cultural Studies
The Rise of the 'Bromosexual' Friendship
A recent advertisement for the Bravo TV prove "Shahs of Sunset" finds two of its male person stars lazing on lounge chairs at the beach. Amid a scene of scantily clad sun worshipers, the best friends Reza Farahan and Mike Shouhed gaze at different objects of desire: Mr. Farahan at musclebound guys, Mr. Shouhed at voluptuous women.
Their distinct lusts, which may have alienated gay and straight men from each other in the past, inspire the ultimate gesture of fraternal connection: a fist bump.
"Mike and I are and then similar," Mr. Farahan said. "He has been a womanizer and I've been a role player. In the ad, we're having a moment, and information technology's the same moment. The simply deviation is that I'm looking at men and he'due south looking at women."
The bond strikes the Irish author Jarlath Gregory as fresh for the culture and familiar to him. His latest novel, "The Organised Criminal," has at its center a brotherly friendship betwixt a gay man and a straight man.
"That kind of easy relationship would non be credible to a broad audience ten years agone," said Mr. Gregory, 38, who is gay. "Ane of the things my publisher liked well-nigh my book was that this friendship was something we haven't seen much before."
At least in popular culture we haven't. Obviously, there have always been friendships between gay men and straight men, but only recently have they become more prominently, and comfortably, represented in Tv set shows, movies, books and blogs.
There is often a traditionally masculine sense of familiarity at play in these portrayals, exuding a feeling item enough to suggest its own term: bromosexual relationships.
Their emerging representation contrasts with one that has get a cliché: the connection betwixt a directly woman and her gay male person best friend.
The latest media reflection also takes a significant bound from one of its earliest iterations. From 2003 to 2007, "Queer Eye for the Directly Guy" presented gay men equally magical beings who functioned as helpers to heterosexual men, schooling them in matters of manner and domicile décor while keeping much of their ain lives off-screen.
Past contrast, the terminal flavor of "Scream Queens" constitute the hunky Nick Jonas presenting himself as a gay frat boy who bonds over golf with his directly fraternity brother and best friend, Chad.
Fly Men
In the recent documentary "Strike a Pose," virtually Madonna'southward trip the light fantastic troupe from her "Blond Ambition" tour, a fundamental plotline traces the arc of the lone straight dancer from homophobe to a man who becomes emotionally liberated past his many gay friends. Some other Bravo serial, "Manzo'd With Children," prominently features the relationship between the heterosexual lead brothers and their gay all-time friend, who was previously their roommate.
And that network's most recognizable representative, Andy Cohen, who is gay, rarely misses an opportunity to toast his close kinship with the guitar hero and ultimate ladies human being John Mayer.
Mr. Cohen mentions Mr. Mayer no fewer than fourteen times in his best-selling book "The Andy Cohen Diaries." He besides wrote an article for Entertainment Weekly last yr chronicling their bromosexual exploits. In one outing, during gay pride weekend, they attended a concert past an incarnation of a band both men beloved, the Grateful Dead.
Mr. Cohen wrote that a friend had texted him: "if I'd celebrated gay pride in any more of a straight way, I'd take had sex with a girl at the Super Basin." Another night, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Mayer went to a gay bar, where Mr. Cohen establish that his heterosexual pal was the "ultimate fly man."
"Direct men are very good that mode," said David Toussaint, whose compilation of essays, "Toussaint!," contains many humorous pieces about sexual identity. "If I'chiliad walking downward the street with this young, directly guy I know, and he sees a guy look at me, he'll say, 'Get get him!'"
Vin Testa, 26, a math teacher in Washington, D.C., who is likewise an L.G.B.T. liaison for the district's public schools, said the changes in relationships betwixt straight and gay men have been then rapid that he sees a significant difference just since he graduated from high schoolhouse. I of his greatest obstacles in coming out, he said, was something he thinks many gay men share: "the intense fearfulness of losing those masculine friendships we accept had."
As information technology happened, the master impetus for Mr. Testa to come up out in college was discovering that friends from his high school football team were "the ones who most wanted me to exercise it," he said. "They were honestly concerned for me."
Mr. Gregory, the Irish writer, thinks that ane connecting point for the younger generation is the proliferation of geek culture. "Information technology's technology, superhero movies, Pokémon Go and even some indie stone," he said. "They're all part of an oftentimes male civilisation that young gay guys feel part of, too."
For men of an older generation, there is more than distrust to surmount. "Our traditional way of thinking of relationships with gay and directly men is that they are hostile, even bullying," said Michael LaSala, 57, the author of "Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Conform to a Gay or Lesbian Child." "For that reason, gay men accept traditionally not felt comfy in these relationships."
Mr. LaSala, who is gay, said he could non imagine being shut friends with a straight man when he was in his 20s. In the last few years, even so, he has formed a warm bond with Dr. Robert Garfield, lxx, a straight man who wrote the book "Breaking the Male Lawmaking: Unlocking the Power of Friendship." The two lecture together on the negative effects of homophobia on straight and gay males.
"My relationship with Michael, and with other gay men, is wonderful for me," Dr. Garfield said. "It expands me every bit a human beingness. There'due south a playfulness in talking nigh sexual practice that I don't hear from my straight male friends."
A Balm for Old Wounds
"There's a sense of a reprieve," said Odie Lindsey, 45, a straight fiction author and gulf war veteran, whose new book of short stories, "We Come up to Our Senses," features several gay characters. "With heterosexual male friends, sometimes a discipline comes upward that will require a particular allegiance to what guys are expected to say and do. That can feel blustery and false. It'due south nice not to accept to heed to a chorus of people who feel compelled to deed the same way."
For gay men, Mr. LaSala said: "friendships with straight men can be very healing. When yous experience a close friendship with a straight guy and that person is very accepting, it's a balm for some onetime wounds."
At the same time, striking contrasts be in the ii worlds. Gay men say it is mutual for their heterosexual male person friends to be jealous of, or at least compelled by, the efficiency and seeming ubiquity of human-on-homo hookups.
"Straight guys complain, 'You can but meet a guy and become abode and have sex,'" Mr. Toussaint said. "One hot straight guy I know complains, 'With a girl, I have to take her out and put on all these airs, when all I desire to do is sleep with her and move on.'"
In sex and dating, directly men also take to navigate complex power imbalances between the genders. Gay men can avoid that feet.
On the other side, some gay men express jealousy over certain aspects of heterosexual male person presentation. "Straight guys can permit themselves go and no one cares," Mr. Gregory said. "Gay men are judging each other worse than women in terms of torso shaming."
If such contrasts create fascination, other distinctions tin can be damaging. The cliché and lingering suspicion that a gay man may harbor a crush on his directly friend potentially throws off the power remainder and erodes trust. "A gay man tin can worry, 'What if this guy thinks I'm coming on to him?'" Mr. LaSala said. "'And what would that mean for the human relationship?'"
The writers of "Scream Queens" exorcised that anxiety through satire in a scene that gained traction on YouTube. Information technology portrayed Mr. Jonas'southward grapheme conning his way into the bed of his direct all-time friend. "That kind of crush seems really antique," said Lucas Whitehead, 29, a straight man who lives in a brownstone in Fort Greene populated by a revolving mix of heterosexual and homosexual males.
Amid his milieu, he reports zilch self-consciousness about having gay friends or roommates. Still disconnects do linger, some of them concerning sex activity. "I'll talk to gay friends near the before, not the subsequently," Mr. Whitehead said.
It's an attitude echoed by 1 of his gay roommates, Ben Moss, 25, who said: "I talk with straight guys about what surrounds the sexual activity rather than what nosotros've really done."
According to Mr. LaSala, many well-meaning straight guys can feel awkward addressing subjects they know they don't fully empathise. He thinks it's important for straight men to acknowledge the differences.
He relates this to friendships between those of a unlike race. "Some of us who are white are rightfully defendant of being 'colorblind,'" Mr. LaSala said. "There'due south an equivalent for directly men who can be 'civilisation bullheaded.'"
Sometimes there is dissonance when one friend finds himself in a group dominated past those of another orientation, rather than connecting 1 to ane. "Listening to bunches of directly guys together is like hearing a foreign tongue," Mr. Toussaint said. "The language is then strangely impersonal: 'dude,' 'brewskies,' 'the game.' They must feel the same way well-nigh the things we talk nigh."
At the same time, many men find value in the distinctions.
"I'm happy that I get to alive around people who accept a different life feel than I do, and I'm happy that they get to exist around me," Mr. Moss said. "A homogeneous experience in friendships isn't practiced for anyone."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/fashion/mens-style/gay-straight-men-friendship.html