What's a Fag to a Fag Hag?

During the welcome week of freshman year, I was a total social butterfly. Once I had all my stuff in my dorm, I kept the door open greeting anyone that would pass by. I made so many friends and I would often hear my name being called left and right. I had people constantly calling my phone asking me to come join them in whatever it was they were doing. I honestly thought that everything would be different compared to high school; it was a new school, a new opportunity to be what I wanted to be without the limits set by reputation and parental control. From the moment I would wake up, I felt like I had something to look forward to, people I couldn't wait to see.

This school year is/was different. The people I called my dearest friends from last year are no longer around. A few of them, I haven't seen or heard from in the past 4-5 months, yet they live less than two blocks away. Is it because I no longer wish to go out to the bars and drink every weekend like they do? Was I truly even a friend to them as they are to one another?

I often blame myself for what has happened. I expected all of us to be a family of some sort, but I guess it wasn't the sort of friendship they were looking for. The close intimate relationship I wanted with them wasn't the sort they wanted from me. Why would they? The whole group consisted of girls, where I was the only guy. They were ignorant to the instances where I was left out because I was the one that was different, not them. No matter how I put it, I am a guy and I was hanging out with a bunch of girls. Yes, I am gay, the diplomatic bridge between men and women, but I still have a penis hanging between both my legs and certainly a full-fledged man. Whether they were conscious of it or not, it was a common trait between them (i.e. their femaleness) that provided a deeper connection for them to share.

Yes, a gay is a girl's best friend, but at what point is a girl a best friend to the gay as much as he is to her? The television show Sex & the City comes to mind. One scene in particular, Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha, Miranda, and Stanford were watching a fashion show when Stanford overheard Carrie talking about going out later that night. Stanford enthusiastically asked Carrie, "Where are we going?" Carrie hesitantly responded, "Oh, I thought it would be just a girl's night out, is that okay?" Often, those were the sort of situations I'd find myself in. I found myself investing so much time and effort in maintaining friendships with these girls that I came to think of them as my central group of friends. But when I realized that the feeling wasn't mutual, I found myself at a loss. Gays were always too nasty and unjustifiably competitive with one another, I was socially conditioned to stay away from heterosexual boys, and the girls I spent so much time with didn't see me as an equal, whether they were cognizant of it or not...

To try an put it in clearer terms... I accepted the fact that I was gay at a very early age, at an age where I was the only gay person I knew; I was 11 years old. At that point, guys made fun of me and they often ostracized me. If one guy showed any sympathy for me or try to befriend me, other guys would ridicule him, so I basically became a social leper to the guys of my school. At that point, girls were the only friends I could turn to. As far as I knew, they were the only ones willing to interact with me. As time went on and the guys continued to share their apprehension towards me, I never really got the chance to develop my social interaction skills with other guys. They feared that I would perhaps turn them gay or try to make a move on them. I knew that this would never happen because I was never attracted to straight guys. Nonetheless, I habitually learned to stay away from them. It was ingrained into me that me being gay scared guys and I didn't want to bother them or get myself rejected and be humiliated, so I stayed away. In the end, girls were the only people I came to depend on.

Unfortunately, as the years went on, I came to realize how gendered society was depending on age groups. Now in my early adulthood, it seems clearer to me that girls have their solid group of female friends as their central group, men have their solid group of male friends as their central group (which I never felt welcome to join), and I'm stuck in the empty space between these two spheres of gendered society.

Is there something wrong with me? Am I that much of a social failure?