My gay best friend is cheating on me with another woman. I saw him with her the other day and now I’m prostrate with grief and shock.
I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to forgive him. Even if he begged me to come back to him, we can never be the way we were. I don’t even know how to tell him I know about the affair. He is carrying on as if he doesn’t know that I have found out.
All I keep thinking is: ‘How could he do this to me? How? After everything we have been through? The long discussions about Botox, the episodes of Kath & Kim, the endless gossiping…I wouldn’t mind so much, but the gay marriage law was already making it harder than ever for sad, forty-something single women like me to hang on to their gay best friends.
Those of us who rely on gay men need them to be as desperate and lonely as we are, and to feel as much a social outcast. But now they’ve all gone a bundle on the idea of a church wedding, settling down, raising kids. And they just don’t need us like they used to.
One of my oldest gay male friends has lost all interest in me since the coalition brought in equal marriage rights. We used to have cosy dinners à deux once a week in Chelsea, but now we never see each other. Instead of him calling me every other night for long, meandering, intellectual conversations about life, the universe and everything, all he ever calls to tell me now is how much he is looking forward to meeting someone special and settling down to raise a family.
That’s no good to me, is it?
‘You’re part of the establishment now,’ I told him bitterly the last time I saw him. ‘You’re leaving me behind in the land of persecuted minorities.’
Another gay friend, who is devastatingly handsome and who I have lusted after for many years, has been getting very serious of late with his long-term partner and I fear he will set a date any day now. When he does, I can kiss goodbye to any last vestige of a chance that he might agree to have a baby with me. He and his boyfriend wouldn’t even use me as a surrogate. They can do far better. A gay couple as glamorous as them could probably get Taylor Swift to knock them out a child.
But back to my gay friend who is cheating on me with another woman. This is even worse than my gay friends getting themselves hitched. I can take it when a dear male friend finds a man, or even marries a man, but when he finds a woman, it’s too much. Really. Talk about stabbing me in the heart.
This gay male friend and I had been meaning to meet to spend the day together when suddenly, without warning, and quite out of character, he cancelled. He said he didn’t want to meet me because it was raining. Raining? What sort of excuse is that for a person of outlandish stylishness and acerbic verbal dexterity?
Then he went completely quiet. Radio silence for days. Then the next time we were meant to meet he cancelled again, also citing bad weather. I tried to keep myself busy. I went off to do some shopping, and had almost convinced myself I was imagining there was anything wrong when I was driving back home and I saw him…with the other woman.
He wasn’t even hiding or carrying on with her in another neighbourhood. He was gallivanting around with her a few moments from my house, right under my nose. I felt a stab of pain to my heart so sharp I thought I had got wind. But it wasn’t wind. It was betrayal.
‘Ouch!’ I said out loud. He phoned me a few times after that, perhaps suspecting I might have seen him, so I didn’t take his calls. He texted to arrange another meeting and I agreed, thinking it would only serve to confirm my fears when he cancelled again. Which he did.
And on the day he was meant to be with me, I saw him with her. She’s blonder than I am. Clearly, he has traded up to a more flamboyant model. It happens, I guess. They look happy together. I expect he is even now advising her on where to get her Botox done.
While I sit alone, playing Gloria Gaynor and plotting my comeback. Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die? Oh no, not I. As long as I can find a new gay best friend I know I’ll stay alive…
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