The Guy Friend Club

I used to think it was just because I was an engineering major in college. The ratio provided an ample environment for making guy friends. And now I seem to have more guy friends than anyone else I know. Probably even in the world. You think I'm kidding.

And I'm always getting romantically involved with these guy friends. My first love, which lasted 4 years and still creeps up on me here and there, was my best friend for 4 years before he became my boyfriend. And although we were never truly in love, boyfriend #2 was also a guy friend. Skip ahead to #4, never a boyfriend, but again, my best guy friend. Back up to #3, "Lover", was not a guy friend first, and upon break-up/fade-out, did not tell me that he wanted me to be his best friend. I will cherish him always.

And now I have just told #5, albeit under the shittiest of circumstances, that I love him. He said it back, although I'm not even sure that it matters. The odds are looking pretty good that he is going to become one of the very special VIP members of my Guy Friend Club. The GFC is a great group of handsome, intelligent, funny, practically perfect men with whom I share a great deal of sexual tension. They are all incredibly special people who defend my honor at 3AM on the street in Adams Morgan and tell their parents I'm "fucking hot and cool as shit" while I stand next to them at family weekends. They invite me to play golf and drink beers and smoke cigarettes and eat pizza. They don't mind when I call them crying to let them know that another member has just joined The Club.

My relationship with #5 is complex - just like all the others - and I don't really know what to do with it. Part of me wants to put these feelings I've just shared with him in a jar on the shelf for a while. And a bigger part of me wants to put them in the jar and then fucking smash the jar to pieces. And obviously, the biggest part of me wants him to come running and sliding head first into my kitchen as I throw my jar into the floor and save it from smashing. He'll hold onto it and give me his own jar that he has in his back pocket for safe keeping. We'll accept each other's jars and be delightfullly sick with so much love.

But considering #5 is 1091 miles away, it's going to take some pretty impressive timing for him to catch my jar before it smashes to pieces on my kitchen floor.

So I'm thinking I will just keep these feelings in the jar and on the shelf for a while. Less mess. And if I do go through with the smashing, I'm going to have to invite him to join the GFC. But the GFC has really strict guidelines, including a 100% Lifetime Membership Guarantee. There's no going back and there's no tolerance for delinquency.

So #5, if you don't want to wear the Boyfriend label just yet, I'd rather not grant you GFC membership. We can swap jars in San Francisco in a few more months. And if it doesn't work out, I'll dig you up a GFC membership card. Promise. Just be prepared to have your ass hazed like hell.