WHEN HARRY MET SOLLY

Even though it’s my all-time favorite movie, I still have a quibble with “When Harry Met Sally”. When the movie premiered thirty-one years ago, it got a lot of buzz, not just for a certain diner scene but for it’s central question: Can men and women just be friends? (Hang on, I’ll give it a gay context soon enough.)

As a still mostly closeted gay man in 1989, I’d felt the query clouding many of my friendships. Yes, I had lots of girl friends but definitely no girlfriends. Maybe I passed for straight—it took deep concentration for me to get my pinky finger to cling to my coffee mug instead of dangling outward. Maybe, instead, people were subtly taunting me and trying to coax me to come out when they’d ask, “Did you and Ally/Sue/Rowena/Cynthia/Carrie ever date?” Texans were too bound by social niceties to just blurt, “Did you two have sex?”

No. And, as to what you’re implying, no. Not Ally. Not Sue. Not Rowena. Not Cynthia. Not Carrie. Clear enough for you?

“Told y’all,” Carole Lee no doubt said behind my back. “He’s gay.”

Back then, I wasn’t just in the closet (even if the door had come off its hinges). I was conservative and repressed. I should have lived in Victorian times. Why did everything come down to sex?

As I sat in a Santa Monica movie theater with my friend—yes, friend—Sue, after having just moved to Malibu—yes, Malibu!—I was loving the movie. Nora Ephron’s script sang, Meg Ryan looked and acted absolutely adorable and Billy Crystal locked in on likable schmuckiness. Still, when Harry authoritatively said to Sally, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way,” I was one hundred percent TeamSally as she argued the point. So, later in the movie, when Harry and Sally were walking in a park and he stopped and asked, “Are we becoming friends now?” I wanted to stand and cheer...something celebratory but not as euphoric as the classic diner scene.

Just friends! Yes! Yes! Forever and always! Oh, yeah!

It happens.

Okay, so all my personal cases in point with all my close girl friends were marred by that bubbling gay thing. I was—and am—still a big fan of platonic friendship.

That’s why I was startled when my current boyfriend, Daniel, asked me not once but twice if my closest gay friend in Vancouver, someone I’ve known for twenty-five years, ever dated or had sex or if, at the very least, either or both of us ever liked one or the other in that way.

What? Ron?! Ew.

Sorry,...no offense, Ron.

The query felt as icky as if Daniel was asking about my brother or cousin or uncle. Just no. Whether it’s blood or a clear friendship track, there are lines you never ever cross.

Gay men can just be friends with gay men. Can’t they?

It’s true that the friend I’ve known the longest in Vancouver—twenty-eight years—is a guy I met in a club during my first visit to the city and we fooled around that one night. I’d like to think we long ago blocked that experience from memory. It’s so insignificant compared to the friendship that developed.

I’m confident I can rebut the gay version of Harry’s claim wherein he says, “No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.”

Sally replies, “So you’re saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive.”

“No, you pretty much want to nail them, too.”

Yes, there are guys I’ve dated and it wasn’t the right fit but we became friends. Not best buds but something at least slightly more enhanced than Facebook friends. Initially, at least. People move. Really, I don’t see myself ever visiting Palm Springs. Sorry, Jim. I wilt in anything over 75 degrees.

And it’s true that there are gay men I’ve never dated that I felt might like me. I’ve been known to be oblivious and sometimes, yes, it’s a bit of an act. Let’s not ruin a possibly perfectly good friendship. Generally, it only takes a few occasions together before they come to their senses and realize I’m not all that (or even half that) and they dismiss any other kind of interest in me. Friendship is fine.

I’ve only had to spell it out once. Jay was my first friend I ever met in a gay bar after moving to California. He came on really strong—heavy flirting, maybe a grope (that wasn’t uncommon in dark gay clubs thirty years ago)—and I held up my hand to mime a strong STOP sign. “I just want us to be platonic.” From then on, he made a point as always introducing me as “my platonic friend, James.” Whatever. It worked. We became really good friends. (Until he moved to Bakersfield. I tried to be his Facebook friend fifteen years later and never heard anything back. Denied?! I have a hard time letting things go.)

I’m trying to think of examples where it worked the other way where I crushed on a guy and he wasn’t interested but we became friends, if only temporarily. Cue spinning rainbow. Thinking…thinking...Now cue Yukon Cornelius from my all-time favorite TV show, “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer”:

“Nothin’.”

My crushes never ever became dating experiences or consolation prize friendships because I’ve never ever figured out how to establish any sort of communication with them. My attempts at eye contact had me staring at my shoelaces. A simple “hello” was always nixed by a sudden tsunami of armpit sweat that caused me to flee for the nearest exit, even if it meant sounding an alarm. If I held it together enough to stick around, I feigned absolute disinterest. Right now, you’re everything but I’ll act like you’re nothing. Man, I was hopeless. I crushed every crush all by myself.

But, yes, gay men can just be friends, with no dating, sex or inkling of oogly, googly liking ever preceding a permanent state of platonic interaction.

“Are you sure Ron never liked you?” Daniel asked yet again.

“Certain.”

But then Ron hasn’t dated anyone at all in the last twenty years. Occasionally, just to be polite, I ask, “So,...are you seeing anyone?”

He scrunches up his nose as if I just offered him fried liver and a glass of milk that expired three weeks ago. “Are you kidding?” These days, Ron’s all about watching mushroom videos on YouTube. And, no, I kid you not. Little clusters of chanterelles in the forest. “There are thousands of videos!” he says.

Okay, so Ron is awfully quirky. Still, he’s my example and not just an exception (even if I can’t name anyone else).

Gay men can just be friends. Take that, Harry. I rest my case.