For The Last Time, He Is Not My Boyfriend

I grew up with two brothers who are more or less the best people I know, so it's perhaps predictable that all my life I have tended to form very close friendships with dude-type humans. Equally predictably, all my life I have had to combat the constant “tee-hee, it's like you're dating” juvenilia from those around me.

In kindergarten and first grade: Hal is not my boyfriend, Marshall is not my boyfriend, Davis is not my boyfriend (actually he kind of was, but we were six or seven).

In prep school: George is not my boyfriend, Gregory is not my boyfriend, Nikit is not my boyfriend.

In high school: Eystein is not my boyfriend, Chris is not my boyfriend (and if I sort of wanted him to be, it was a very confusing time in my life and I was working a lot of stuff out).

In university: Sam is not my boyfriend (though if I had a pound for every time someone legitimately thought he was, I could easily pay off my student debt).

In grad school: Tyler is not my boyfriend, and would you all please stop saying that he is?

Maybe the first couple of times it was funny, on account of the sheer outlandishness of the whole idea. But with enough repetition it becomes, frankly, problematic.

Constant reassertion of a bullshit heteropatriarchal narrative, in such a way that any objections can be countered with “jeez, can't you take a joke?”, is a time-honored bullying tactic of the Heteropatriarchy Police.

I know you all still think it's funny. But to me it's starting to feel as though the Heteropatriarchy Police are saying, “Hm, two single opposite-sex humans are spending a lot of time together, but with 0% chance of romance on either side. We'd better put a stop to this before the whole bullshit heteropatriarchy collapses! Everyone, quick, start mercilessly pummeling them with the language of romance so they get the message that their friendship as it is is not okay.”

I hate what this narrative says about the power differentials of gender and sexuality. I know if we were both dudes, or both women – or probably even if he were the gay one and I the breeder – we wouldn't get anywhere near this amount of teasing. And I hate what it says about the supreme importance of romantic relationships in our society. I know we only get this much teasing because we're both single. For comparison, I recently mentioned my friend JT to my little brother (who, lest we forget, is one of the best people I know); my brother said in a jokey voice, “Is he your boyfriend?”, but when I said, “He's married,” my brother dropped the entire subject. So apparently a friend's marital status can end the “is he your boyfriend” jokes, but the basic fact of my, you know, sexuality can't? A marriage certificate allows two opposite-sex people to be platonic friends, but the fact that one of them is gay doesn't?

Why does the concept of a very deep, meaningful, 100% platonic friendship between a dude-person and a lady-person blow so many people's minds? Hell, even if I was straight we could still have this sort of friendship. It's not like we're inventing the wheel here. There's even a TV Tropes page for our relationship. Truth be told, I expect better from the denizens of a campus that prides itself on its inclusivity, queerness, and all-round challenging of the kyriarchy.

In conclusion, take your bullshit heteropatriarchal narrative and shove it up your arses.

So, You Have A Crush On Me.

You're my friend, or perhaps a casual acquaintance. Or maybe you've just seen me at a bar or something. Whichever, something's gone awry in your brain chemistry, and now your feelings toward me are a little more than friendly.

Stop.

Do not ask me out. Do not offer me a drink. Do not tell me you have a “thing” for me, as though telling me will somehow absolve you of the guilt you feel over mentally straying from your SO. Just don't.

I will not acquiesce to your advances. I am, with all the best will in the world, not interested. I do not need this information.

Prior to your outright telling me, I was not aware of your feelings for me. I have not picked up on your social cues. I cannot read the signs (and if I could I wouldn't believe them).

Your telling me changes things. Whatever stage of friendship we were at, whatever good thing we had going on, you ruined it. I value our friendship/acquaintanceship/strangership and I don't want it ruined by an aberration in your brain chemistry.

Repress those feelings. Squash them down inside. Turn it off like a light-switch. Your culture may tell you that it's healthy to get these things out in the open, but I'm telling you: if you just suppress it hard enough, it will go away. Or, you know, it won't; but either way I won't have to deal with it, and that's what matters.

In all seriousness, I'm frustrated by the concept that a close friendship will or must evolve into a romantic relationship. I think it's because our culture confers ultimacy on romantic/sexual relationships, and this necessarily entails devaluing friendship: think how many movies and TV shows you've seen where the protagonist throws over career, friends, and everything else for the sake of a romantic partner.

I wear flannel and dungarees and am pretty openly gay; and yet, even in this queer progressive community, my very close relationship with a male friend is constantly read as romantic (it honestly couldn't be less so). Thanks, wider culture.

In high school, I categorized my strong feelings for a (male, gay) friend as romantic, even though I had zero physical designs on him, because I'd internalized the cultural messages that any strong feelings I had for a boy must be construed as romantic. I didn't yet have the deconstructive tools to maintain a very intimate but wholly platonic friendship.

Now I do; and now I know that, for me, friendship – not romance, not sex, but real true friendship – is the ultimate in human relationships. And that, in essence, is why I don't want people crushing on me.

Valentine's Day for Single People

[Cross-posted at Newsgrape.]

Tonight, I’m staying in.

I will fix myself a drink, watch a cheesy movie (preferably involving an improbable sea beastie transformed by irresponsible scientists into an unstoppable killing machine), and try really hard not to think about the fact that I am doing something really inane on quite possibly the most depressing holiday of the year.

I speak, of course, of Birthday Eve.

Those of you who weren’t born on February 15^th (n.b. there’s still plenty of time to send me an Amazon voucher) may know this holiday by its more common name of Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad holiday.

“But Anna,” you’re saying smugly (yes, you in the relationship over there), “you’re just bitter because, out of the 22 Valentine’s Days you have now been alive for, you were only in a relationship for one of them, and that day you had tonsillitis and you had to go to Knightsbridge to teach Latin grammar to a poor little rich kid and after that the only thing you were capable of doing was crawling home to bed to drink Lemsip, watch 30 Rock, and feel sorry for yourself.”

Well, yes. Exactly. He was the classic poor little rich kid: you could tell he had every awesome toy and gadget going, but he’d have given it all up to know that his parents truly loved him. And of course I’m bitter because I’m single. That’s the entire point of V-Day: to make single people feel crappy. It’s not enough that people in relationships, you know, have relationships – they also get an entire day to celebrate the fact that they have all the perks of being in a relationship (PDAs, tax breaks, someone to go to zombie walks with) and we don’t.

There’s no escaping it. Want to hit the bars and drink away the loneliness? Canoodling couples and treacly love ballads abound. Want to look at pictures and videos of cute baby animals? Both the Google doodle and the YouTube logo are swaddled in hearts. Realistically, the only thing you can do is embrace it. Embrace the fact that today is all about making you feel bad, and celebrate it as such. Feel crappy on your own terms, not on those of some cynical manufactured Hallmark holiday.

For me, this means Birthday Eve. Today I am feeling crappy because an awful lot of very rich, very famous, and in some cases even very talented celebrities are quite a bit younger than I am. Also because I have to go to the doctor this week for new acne meds, and having acne at my age just feels like insult upon injury. Also because I am wasting my last day of being 21 on finding out what the Google doodle is and deciding which creature feature to watch.

You get the general idea. If you don’t have anything as obviously and immediately disheartening as Birthday Eve to celebrate today, never fear – I have some suggestions.

Job Celebration Day

For the unemployed: a day to reflect on how great employment is. People with jobs have enough money to pay the rent, and they have a reason to put pants on in the morning, and they never have to watch Jeremy Kyle. The only thing they lack is a holiday to make them feel superior to people without jobs.

Male Privilege Day

For women: a day to enumerate all the ways you have been disadvantaged through being female. Make a list of every instance of street harassment, every time somebody told you (implicitly or explicitly) that you can’t do one thing or you must do another thing because you’re a woman, every time you didn’t speak out against a sexist joke or remark that made you uncomfortable because you wanted to fit in or needed your boss to like you. Now think about how men don’t have to deal with any of that. Being a man sure is great!

White Privilege Day

For people of color: a day to enumerate all the ways you have been disadvantaged through not being white. Much as above. Being white is the best!!

Batman Day

Let’s face it: you’re not fooling anyone. Everyone knows you’re not Batman, and pretending you might be is getting a little embarrassing. Set your ambitions a little lower: why don’t you go get some gin and pass out in front of Sharktopus?