The straight boy

It had been going on for a couple of months before I even told my good friend Chris. We’ve been friends since high school and I had never kept any big secrets like this from him. I really wanted him to know because it was so hot and I needed a witness, if only through my tales, so that later I would have someone to reminisce with. And maybe to confirm that it hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. Now it’s been two years and it feels like this secret has turned into a game with lots of people knowing and everyone pretending it’s not happening.

For the last two years I’ve been in an intimate, sexual relationship with a straight guy.

In the beginning, when we thought we were just messing around, we thought it best that his brother not find out, so we didn’t let anyone know. It wasn’t expected to last so we treated it as a private affair. We were also both a little freaked out by the situation and this, plus the secrecy, made hot even hotter.

Jim is my ex-boyfriend’s younger brother. I met him about six months before the relationship ended and we quickly became great friends. After I broke up with his brother he moved to town and moved in with me. One day he overheard me having sex and later told me it turned him on. He’s a big pervert and so am I, so we talked about it a bit and, next thing we knew, one thing had led to another.

We’ve never really considered it to be anything more than two good friends messing around. But the other day my friend Khai said it looked like this relationship was becoming a bit of a crutch. I haven’t really dated much since the sex started with Jim. Jim hasn’t really dated either. We spend a lot of time together and in a lot of ways we act like boyfriends. However, because we’ve never really considered ourselves boyfriends, we haven’t acknowledged how our relationship affects our pursuit of others.

In all the time Jim and I have been ‘together’ it never occurred to me that the one major thing I like about him is that he’s not gay. I think I’ve really enjoyed being with someone who doesn’t come with a lot of gay baggage. I’ve had the opportunity to see the values of my culture through someone else’s eyes and it feels like we have some work to do.

I’ve also learned that I want to get back to doing some of this work and I can’t really do that by hiding behind the straight boy.