Sometimes, I can feel a void in my life. Although I release the frustration by releasing the seminal juice, I cannot understand what is it that I am really looking for.

If it’s a sex partner that I am searching for, I have had them in sufficient numbers. In my 27 years of existence, I have slept with more than two dozen men, making the average of one sex partner for every year. But each sexual encounter left me more dissatisfied. There was something that was missing in each of these short and long relationships.

Then my mind tells that my search would end at a friend. A friend, who may or may not be my kind, but who understands me. A friend with who I can share my feelings. A friend who will be with me thru thick and thin.

And then I rue about the loads of good friends that I let go because of one reason or other.

S was a childhood friend. He was who I could share everything with. Although a few years junior, we had grown together and he quit sports because I was not much of a sports guy (I would forever feel guilty for this). We enjoyed each others company. But there was a gap. As I reached my teens, it had dawned upon me that I am a gay. Although I had wanted to tell him many a times, I couldn’t ever find the courage. Then I moved to Delhi. His father retired and the entire family settled in their village. Now all we have as a friendship left are some phone calls and once in a year meetings.

Ann had been with me in class since Kindergarten. We would sit together at class. It was so much of a fun. We would laugh at the silliest of jokes. He had the most awful handwriting. I would joke that I can write better with my left hand. Joy joined our group and it was more fun. Ann’s father was transferred and he shifted school while in eighth standard. I was so lazy not to ever visit him at his new home just an hour away. I last met him at Delhi. He came to visit me at my office. I wasn’t able to meet him like the Adi of his childhood. Too much time had elapsed between our friendship.

I was never very good at making friends. I was too much of an introvert to make the first move. I was too much of a sissy to attract friendship proposals from others. Also I was finding easy preys in friends. As if people read my mind, they were not very welcoming.

So it has been a friendless existence that I have lived for all these years.

Quite a large number of gays that I have met have complained about this void in their lives. D, who is a bottom like me, wants to get married to get over this friendless existence, although he knows that he is incapable of maintaining a normal relationship with women. Sometimes, I too have similar feelings. It is so good to look at loving couples – they are more friends to each other than a partner in sex. I feel lonely at this age. What will be my state when I turn old, say 40, and decide to not marry? Will I become a party animal and visit clubs to do away with the loneliness (I hate them although I fancy attending them. They make me uncomfortable). But also I cannot ruin a girl’s life by marrying her. Also I will be ruining myself – I end at such disappointing notes always – because I am myself very uncertain.