STRAIGHT: Choire, do you consider us to be friends?
GAY: Not after you didn't put out.
STRAIGHT: Is that what all the tension has been about lately?
GAY: You understand that I am a simple, predatory man, with simple, predatory needs.
STRAIGHT: And that's what I've always respected about you. Just so long as you keep it to yourself and your gay ilk.
STRAIGHT: Don't try to "turn" me, or whatever it is you people call it.
GAY: I always wondered: when you finally figured out I was gay, did it worry you?
STRAIGHT: Well, I admit that when I finally realized you were a dude, after we had been making out for an hour, I was a little concerned. But that was more about my heavy drinking.
GAY: Hmm.
STRAIGHT: This article does worry me, though! Both as your business partner and your friend.
STRAIGHT: Also, I should have put "business" in quotes.
STRAIGHT: But first: Do you think I see you "only through the lens of sexual orientation"?
GAY: Like how you only want me to write about clothes and ballet?
STRAIGHT: Hey, I do some of the theater posts.
STRAIGHT: But it bothers me that you might think that I consider you to be "my gay friend Choire" rather than "my friend Choire, who just happens to be a gigantic mo."
GAY: Well it's not like I don't think of you as an idiotic mouth-breather who made questionable decisions about his life based solely on his heterosexuality!
STRAIGHT: But you don't see me as JUST THAT, right?
GAY: No, there's also your drinking!
STRAIGHT: Well, good. It's important that friends have a multi-faceted appreciation of each other's personalities.
STRAIGHT: Now there's this as well: "Another disconnect can be the tendency of straight men to purposely ignore their gay friends' emotional lives." Am I not enough of a listener? When you want to gab about the guys in your life, do you feel like you can talk to me about it?
GAY: Jeeeeeesus Christ.
GAY: Who are these fucking people?
STRAIGHT: So that'd be a no?
STRAIGHT: It's almost like you're saying that this article does not accurately represent the way straights and gays interact on a personal level!
GAY: It represents the way movie studio publicists do not get it on with their cuter, balder straight friends, at least.
STRAIGHT: Well, I'm glad someone speaks for them. But it does seem a little unclear as to the realities on a larger scale.
GAY: Um... I only looked at the pictures. I didn't actually read the article!
STRAIGHT: Well, let me summarize what it seems to be saying, which makes me feel conflicted and deficient in the friendship department. At bottom — hahaha, get it? — it says that straight men are getting more comfortable with their gay brethren, and, so long as the gay knows that we're "not that way," a meaningful friendship is possible? BUT, the article seems to say that what straight guys want from gay pals is fashion advice and insight into the female perspective, which every homosexual man apparently gets when they give him his Gay Card. Which worries me: Have straight men just found another group of people to exploit? Or am I just seeing it that way because of my blinkered heteronormative perspective?
GAY: I have to say, historically speaking? My experience is that straight men want gay friends around for, yes, that sort of advice, except when they've finally had too much to drink on a Saturday night and then they want a blowjob. This is not some made-up gay version of Penthouse letters, let me add! This is sort of like an endless merry-go-round of boring personal experience. (PRESENT COMPANY EXCLUDED.)
GAY: In fact, I had straight friends in high school refuse to speak to ME after I refused to sleep with THEM.
GAY: But yes apart from that, the straight-gay friendship is mostly all about just letting your hair down and talking about chicks.
STRAIGHT: Then what does the gay get out of it?
GAY: Huh. You know what? I'd never thought of that before! I guess: nothing!
GAY: See ya!

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