When I was five, and romance didn’t exist, I was a boy, and I was friends with a girl, and it didn’t matter, because why would it? We did everything together a normal couple of friends would do together, until we grew a little more and went on to different schools and didn’t see each other anymore.
So then I was eight. I was still a boy, and I was friends with a different girl now. She was confident and clever and bold, and we played games together during the lunch hour and went to each others houses after school.
“You fancy her,” the other children would say. I’d frown, say of course I didn’t, and why would I? We were friends, and that’s all. So we ignored the comments and carried on as we were, until her mother wouldn’t let me go to her birthday parties, because I’d be the only boy, and that would be “inappropriate”.
We didn’t stay in touch after school. I cried, when she didn’t respond to my letters - because I didn’t understand. Years of friendship: did it mean nothing to her? And then I’d remember her mother, and I’d realise what the problem was. I was a boy, and she was a girl. That was all there was to it.
So then I was twelve, I was friends with boys because I was a boy, and I only wanted someone to spend time with at lunch. But according to them, every girl I spoke to was a friend-with-benefits, and eventually I drifted away from them because I wasn’t interested in talking about sports and sex and risk-taking like they seemed to be. Instead, I talked to girls.
So then I was fifteen, and my friendship group was entirely female. I got called gay, a lad, a player, and all sorts of other things by almost everyone: boys and girls alike - but I ignored them. I liked being friends with girls, so what was the problem? Live and let live, I thought.
So one day I invited a friend over to the fair in town with me, and she came, and we enjoyed the day together without any hassle at all. Going back to school, however, changed that.
“Did you hear they fucked behind the public toilets,” people were saying. “They went on a date together.”
I said that wasn’t true - I didn’t have feelings for her that way.
“But you obviously fancy her,” they replied.
“No,” I told them, truthfully. “I don’t.”
Shortly afterwards, the girls I was friends with all organised a party, which I wasn’t invited to.
“It’s a sleepover,” they said. “Girl stuff.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Girl stuff.”
They used that expression a lot over the next few years. Trips to the cinema - going out together… And eventually I realised that I was an outsider. They didn’t tell me things anymore. I wasn’t let in on their secrets, and if I ever asked, I’d be told I wouldn’t understand - and it was inappropriate I should ask.
So I stopped asking, and my friends drifted further and further away. I never understood why I was an outsider, until I saw a picture of them at the prom I didn’t bother going to, because I knew I would have no one to go with. There were my friends in the pretty dresses I’d helped them choose, with a guy in the centre of the picture, in a smart suit and slicked back hair. That would have been me, if I’d gone. And it always will be.
And then I realised why I could never be as close with them as they are with each other. I’m a guy. And they are girls. It’s as simple as that. Guys never understood me being friends with girls, but that was fine, because the girls were okay with it. But on the day the girls stopped seeing me as just a person they could be friends with, everything changed.
And so here I am. I’m eighteen. I am not gay, actually: nor am I romantically interested in any of my friends. What I do know is, that we’re about to go on a group holiday together, and I’ve been told not to even come into the corridor outside their room whilst they’re getting changed, in case the door swings open and I “see something I shouldn’t” - as if I’d actually care, or be the kind of guy who watched for that sort of thing. And I’ve realised it doesn’t matter how nice I am, no girl is ever going to see me as an equal. I will always be a guy, to them. And they will always be a girl.
And guys and girls can never be “just friends”, right? There always has to be something more. Whether I want it or not, there always has to be that potential.
“Going on holiday with three ladies are you?” the ticket seller asked me. “Fair enough…”
And I said nothing, because I was sick of saying “not in that way”. I was tired of telling people that I wasn’t interested in the girls I was friends with. I was bored of trying to be seen as just a friend in their eyes, too. And if even they couldn’t see me as an equal, how could anyone else ever believe me, when I told them boys and girls could just be friends?
So don’t tell them my gender doesn’t isolate me. Because it does. And don’t complain to me about being in the friend zone. Because I’ve been fighting to get there all my life.
