Whole Different Ballgame

Man, time flies. Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't let so much time pass between blog posts. Last post, I was pointing out just how much more some poor slob has at stake acknowledging (to himself) and then communicating his passion for his fellow fellow to said, um, fellow.

I went over it in some length about how it's unlikely you'd make a confession to someone who wasn't important, how that importance, that drive to communicate it just made it that much more to lose and how drastically the recipient (if he's not already established gay) could potentially react to the disclosure of featuring in a buddy's romantic fantasies.

Let's face it, there's a lot more at stake from "You're cute. Wanna go out?" to "I've tried and tried but I can't stop thinking of you. I love you and can't keep this to myself any longer," even if we don't add the gender element. So, yeah, being the man to man up and admit his feelings is no easy task nor one, I'd think, a man would take lightly except in the right environment (like say a gay bar where, hopefully, his odds of finding a prickly non-gay recipient are less).

But what about the other guy on the receiving end of this confession. Let's assume, for one moment that he's not an acknowledged homosexual (though he might be quietly aware of that particular sexual preference) and assume he's not the kind to kill or beat the ever living crap out of someone just because he admitted to caring about him, because, in either case, minimal soul-searching is required. If he's an acknowledged homosexual, he can answer with a similar freedom a heterosexual would have if the confessor were a different gender. If he's answering with violence, again, little thinking is required.

But, between those extremes are a great many situations, many of them uncomfortable. The recipient (Call him Sho just 'cause) for "Jin's" confession could be someone who always considered himself a regular heterosexual guy - could readily be a regular heterosexual guy who's just discovered his friend or a acquaintance likes him and perhaps lusts after his body. Let's assume there's no inclination (at all) for Sho to reciprocate. That's a whole world of hurt you're laying down, but, more than that, you're probably doing a good bit of soul searching on why your friend was gay without you knowing and what it says about you that he found you appealing. I suspect some people could move past the confession and maintain a healthy relationship, but I'd also suspect a large percentage of such people in that position would never look at their friend the same way again. A sad ending to our story, but only a couple of degrees more traumatic than its heterosexual counterpart.

Similarly, if Sho happens to be aware of his own homosexual inclinations (either bisexual or homosexual will work), again he can respond with sensitivity but without much more impact than a heterosexual encounter. One would think that the confessor (Jin) might have an inkling of this and have less to lose as a result, but that might not be the case.

What really gets challenging, however, is when Sho has never considered himself anything but a heterosexual person and yet can't quite dismiss Jin's interest out of hand, for various reasons: the friendship is so valuable/essential that he's willing to pursue more rather than lose it, curiosity, similar feelings he'd not been able to bring himself to acknowledge, etc. All that soul searching Jin had to go through before he could confess, on what his passion said about him as a man, now Sho's got to go through a crash course if he's not going to refuse Jin out of hand (which is almost undoubtedly his gut reaction). He isn't going to have the leisure to consider and work through it indefinitely - Jin is waiting for an answer, with 'bated breath no less. He's going to have to think about what people would say if they found out (because two guys "dating" is easier to spot than one guy with a crush).

Oh, and one more thing. Now they're both going to have to think about the implications of pursuing romance with another guy, the physical side of it. When it was just the dream of one guy, that aspect may have figured prominently (depending, possibly, on his experience level) or been too far beyond his expectations to have figured in it. If both guys are interested in moving forward, however, it's potentially both a bigger deal and a lesser deal than it would be if one were a woman.

And I'll probably talk about that next time, whenever next time is.