Advice from three of EMandLO.com's guy friends. This week they answer the following: “Do straight guys ever have innocent “crushes” on other guys, like girls sometimes do with other girls?” To ask the guys your own question, click here.
Gay Engaged Guy (Joel Derfner, author ofSwish): I don’t understand straight men anymore. Apparently the biggest change in answers to sexuality surveys in the last ten years has been in the number of straight guys who say, well, if I had a beer or two in me, and if he was attractive enough, sure, I’d go for him. The man who says this is a creature who didn’t exist when I was growing up. So I’m just flummoxed by the whole thing.
But if we’re talking about utterly Platonic feelings — like, you just super-admire the guy and want to spend time around him — then I guess sure. But still I’d put my money on some identity issue. Like, he displays some trait that you feel you lack, and being around him makes you feel like you have it. Or maybe you’re secretly gay and you just want him to f--- your brains out.
As I say, I’m flummoxed by the whole thing.
Straight Married Guy (Figleaf): Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s common. I don’t think men always think of it in terms of “crushes,” but you see it often enough. Often it’s not obvious either to the man with the crush or to the man he’s got a crush for, even though it can be pretty obvious to other.
I don’t have a lot else to say about it except that, historically, innocent “man crushes” were perfectly acceptable. In ancient times it was commonly believed that passionate love could onlyexist between men. More recently, Abraham Lincoln’s very affectionate letters to his best friend and frequent roommate, Joshua Speed, were recently used to suggest Lincoln must have been gay. They might have been, but in keeping with the times (when campaigning politicians frequently found themselves literal backwoods boarding-house bedfellows with their opponents on literal, backwoods campaign trails), it’s even more likely their crushes were passionate but “innocent.”
Straight Single Guy (L.A. Chris): Nope. We may admire or envy some guy for doing something awesome, but straight guys don’t have man crushes. Even with close friends, we never share clothes or call each other “BFF.” No guy understands how women can have those crazy close friendships, and we don’t even understand why women find men attractive — to straight guys, men are about as sexually appealing as a bathroom rug.
But I do think that a lot of guys have some latent homosexuality, and they probably have all sorts of feelings that I don’t have. Yesterday I saw a frat guy getting something out of his trunk, and when he leaned over his buddy pretended to bugger him, complete with hip thrusts, hand waving, and face gestures. That’s just gay.
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