Humans logo

Yes, Two Guys Can Just Be Friends #MyWorstDate

A Tale of the Perfect Date and an Unrequited Crush

By Elijah JamesPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
Like

Hi, I’m E.J., I’m queer (specifically, pan), and I’m also transgender. I identify as male, people use my preferred name and pronouns, and I came out to everyone in my life halfway through 2016, so it’s been a year and a half now. And I’d like to say I pass decently when I really want to.

Andy, my friend of four years, who has evolved to be my best friend, is gay. He’s been out for five years and has dated a few guys over the time we’ve known each other. When we got closer I was happy, of course, because he was very accepting of me being trans, he saw me as another one of the guys.

At some point in the spring last year, 2017, we thought it would be funny to make people think we were dating—many knew we were queer and close so they assumed we would date or have dated—it wouldn’t be hard to trick anyone. But, just as Shakespeare spoiled the end of Romeo and Juliet, over the span of a fake date I went from maybe liking him to absolutely having a crush on him.

This story really starts at the county fair, which coincidentally is a popular dating destination when it rolls around every spring, so Andy and I were hanging out quite a bit when I brought up that we should go. He’s hispanic, handsome, and an asshole, what more could you want in a guy? In all honesty, I don’t know how long it took him to realize, but he knew I had a crush on him, maybe it was because I was all too eager or maybe he knew how much faster being close to him made my heart beat.

He knew, and I tried to hide it—mostly from myself—I really did.

That Thursday I went to his house to pick him up, there was no class the next day and it was wristband night. He had to stop by an ATM so we went out of the way a bit, he also played a funny gay cover of some Beyoncé song while we drove.

It was a little awkward at first to say the least, even though it was a fake date.

However, over the span of the next 6 hours, from 6 until midnight, I had so much fun.

The first ride we went on had him sitting in my lap basically, so we decided to take a ton of selfies for Snapchat, we went on that ride twice in fact, at one point our teacher passed by and saw us, to this day he doesn't believe we've never been together. My Snapchat story portrayed a cute and romantic date, and even though my teacher didn't see it, I'm not surprised it's so hard to convince him of the fact.

We took the hand holding picture shown above, we had our heads close together, we even met up with some other friends and went on rides as a group, we may have mentioned to them that we had to leave to go on the ferris wheel for a kiss, so later when we ran into them again they were surprised as well to find out we weren't actually dating.

It was all fun and games. It was fun to race him down the slides, it was fun to go on the zipper, which spins you upside down, it was fun to go on the gravity-tron rides that force you against the wall. It was even fun when we went on the ferris wheel for the first time of the night and shared a cart with a woman and her two younger children. She then urged us to never have kids, have safe sex, and offered to hold the camera for us while we kissed (we hadn't told her we were going to kiss, let alone that we were dating, as that was just a joke for our friends, so when she insisted upon taking a picture it was very uncomfortably humorous).

The whole night was the perfect date, the perfect place to develop a crush, the perfect way to remember that our friendship was nothing more than friendship. So in a way, it was the worst date I'd ever been on, because it was barely even that, no matter if everyone else thought it was more. I know it will never be more.

*Names have been changed for privacy.*

lgbtq
Like

About the Creator

Elijah James

Hi, I enjoy learning about sustainability and environmental issues. I also really love watching TV and movies, old or new. I think capitalism sucks and I write a lot of LGBT+ articles.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.