Petrelis Files

MY STRAIGHT BOYFRIEND; REJECTING "GAY LIFE"

I met Josh one summer when I took an intensive five-week course in Italian at City College of San Francisco. For the first week, he made no impression on me, due in part to the large size of the class. When the instructor had us do language exercises with each other, I began to pay some attention to Josh and his voice, one that had a boyish timbre.

Over the summer, he and I would meet at cafes, or at my apartment, and practice Italian and do lessons for the class. When he first came to the apartment I live in with my genuine boyfriend, Mike, who is gay, Josh told he had lived in the apartment above ours the previous year when he occupied the couch of our upstairs neighbors.

“So you were once living in the same building as me, and making too much noise, while here,” I said to him. “We can every sound our neighbors make, including their houseguests.”

We’d been near each other in the city and didn’t even know it or each other, until later. Months before we signed up for the Italian course, Josh bought a VCR camera. One sunny weekend afternoon he walked about the city, videotaping people going about their business that day. His footage from the corner of Church and Market Streets shows a bicyclist, wearing an older, bulky helmet on his head and Levi’s shorts. He is loudly confronting two people in t-shirts for the California AIDS Ride, which had its kickoff that morning.

“The AIDS Ride is a scam. It does not help AIDS patients. The organizers reap all the profits from the scam, not people with HIV,” he says them, for less than a minute, as they cross the street. “I hope the AIDS Ride goes out of business. The sooner the better.”

The bicyclist was me. When Josh gave me a copy of the tape so I could see it, we laughed about how the AIDS Ride did indeed go out of business last year.

Some sort of force was bringing us close to one another, looking back on such things now.

One of oddest things about our relationship, is that he is not at all like the kind of man I feel attracted to. Josh was in his mid twenties when we met, under 200 pounds, light brown hair, clean shaven; your general sort of young artistic man living in the city. My taste in men runs toward the mature male, preferably bearish, with some meat on his bones. That wasn’t Josh, but I as I got to know him, his naturally adorable masculinity and innate cheerfulness grew on me.

In the next few years, I would see him sporadically on the campus, when he wasn’t off traveling abroad and experiencing life.

We lost touch for awhile, until he was back in touch with our upstairs neighbors and then phoned me. Soon thereafter, we went on a date. Our mutual acquaintances were part of a theatrical company that put on a professionally produced a play at the Project Artuad theater, and we went to see it.

On other occasions, we had beers or coffee together around the Mission and Castro neighborhoods. He then disappeared again, this time to Athens, Georgia. I would get postcards from him, on an irregular basis, telling me how much he liked me and out times together.

I didn’t see Josh again until I literally bumped into him at the line for coffee at Café Flore in the summer of 2002. He seemed to have grown a few inches and had more facial hair, still with his sweet smile and appealing eyes.

As we caught up with each other, I felt for the first time that I loved him, as a friend, and how he made me happy for the times I spent with him. I derived such pleasure from his mind and personality. We can just easily chat for hours about political developments, the latest movies, especially off beat or foreign ones, our lives, and a mutual concern and respect flows between us.

Still, I didn’t want to have sex with him and his orientation precluded any possibility of sexual intimacy, a fact that helped me feel so comfortable with Josh. But I felt we had a true friendship between men, one that transcended sexuality, difference in ages and that fact we only see one another a couple of time every year, if I am lucky and he is in San Francisco.

Details of sexual orientation aside, I defined us as boyfriends, in my mind. When I informed Josh of this on the telephone, he laugh so loud I had to move the phone a few inches away from my ear.

“That’s fine with me,” he said. “I’m telling my friends and co-workers that I am your straight boyfriend. Let’s have another date.”

We attended plays and movies together again, shared some brews at the Zeitgeist biker bar, found out what was new in our separate lives. He had no idea about all the legal troubles I had hanging over my head from phone calls I made in 2001 that landed me in the San Francisco county jail for 72 days. I learned that he bought a house in Athens.

Two months ago we went to hear Wall Street Journal reporter Marilyn Chase read from her new book about the bubonic plague at a bookstore on Van Ness Avenue. My real boyfriend had zero interest in the Chase talk, so he was only too happy to have me go with Josh.

Mike has met Josh and thinks it’s great I have a relationship going with him.

“If he’s willing to listen to you extol the glories of your favorite director, Bela Tarr, and his seven-and-half hour masterpiece ‘Satantango,’ I’m happy for you,” said Mike.

What does any of this have to with HIV prevention? Plenty, in my opinion.

I see the larger picture being one of an HIV prevention mafia operating programs with such silliness as federally funded flirting classes and other socializing events, to help gay men find lovers, boyfriends, and plain old friends, all in an effort to prevent HIV and STDs.

On a fundamental level I find it offensive, and somewhat incredible, that in San Francisco, of all U.S. cities, the poor pathetic homosexual is not able to acquire friends and partners without having to take an erotic writing course, join the HIV bowling league or attend a forum on how to fist safely. It’s my understanding from friends who have attended these events, that very few men are showing up for them.

The programs are getting so desperate for attendees that the Gay Life program of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which is run by a heterosexual woman, is offering a four-part series on how to find sex on the web. What normal gay man here needs the help of such workshops to locate sexual outlets and partners on the web? None that I know of, and it is my fervent hope that gay men reject the Gay Life efforts, as I have done. [1]

Girlfriend, if you need help flirting with men, or cruising the web, and you live here, maybe you’re not really gay. Or perhaps you are so pathetic and don’t have a life, and need to get one.

If I can find not only my gay boyfriend, whom I still love after almost eight years together, and he continues to reciprocate with bonds of affection and concern for me, but also a straight male boyfriend like Josh, then other gay men in this town should have little problems finding boyfriends.

Plus, you have to remember I’m no Colt model, have a wild, radical political reputation and adore the films of Bela Tarr, almost to the point of obsession, so I’m not exactly what many gay men would consider prime boyfriend material. But that hasn’t prevented me from making true boyfriends like Mike and Josh. And without the help of a single government funded HIV prevention workshop.

Source:
1. www.gaylife.org