Published in The Siskiyou, October 31, 2005

On a campus where women outnumber the men, we ladies can be hard-pressed to find a significant other. Not to mention that many of the men who roam our campus are married, otherwise taken, or gay. A friend of mine discovered last spring that the man she had been pining for is gay. Then she discovered that the man she dumped for the gay man is also gay. What ever happened to the good ol’: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl fall in love? Maybe it has to do with our expectations. No longer do we just want companionship, we want attraction. And no longer do we just want attraction, we want companionship. There can be no better companionship than with a gay man, and no better attraction than that towards a hot guy who thinks the world of you but isn’t trying to get you into bed.

Gay best friends are the straight girl’s new accessory: Grace’s Will, Carrie’s Stanford, Charlotte’s Anthony… TV has propagated or mimicked a new cultural trend that shows no signs of slowing down. I myself am accessorized, having been charmed by the perfect man only to discover that he’s looking for the perfect man. He has become my fake boyfriend and I in turn have become his “beard” – a fake girlfriend to ward off the concerns of his unknowing mother. We didn’t plan it this way. We didn’t plan to become the cliché of straight girl falls for gay man. And yet, I couldn’t have planned it better. Here we are: the ideal couple who think the world of each other, who fall asleep after talking non-stop like little schoolgirls, and who have no threat of being replaced because, for me, the competition doesn’t even share the same chromosomes.

Having a gay boyfriend is great. You can be hormonal and he still loves you. You can be sappy and authentic and he still loves you. He can understand you on a level that straight men can’t, because he sees things through rather feminine eyes. You can get out there and play the field and when you lose you can come back to him, cry on his shoulder, and know that he’ll never leave. And he doesn’t ask too much of you. He doesn’t ask for all your time or attention or weigh you against a million other girls. In his eyes there’s only you, perfect you, who accepts him for the gay man that he is.

Sometimes I think that straight men don’t have a fighting chance. Not without women’s expectations being lowered, anyway. But maybe this is the way nature intended it. We’re learning these days that one person can’t fill all our social needs as we once thought. Sure, there are things that my gay boyfriend can’t give me. And there are ways that a straight man will always fall short. But put the two together and you’ve got a pretty great combination. Maybe we can have both attraction and companionship after all.

Copyright © 2005 Shannon Luders-Manuel