Our guest columnist, Al Porter, begins to understand that everyone swings…

 
 
Bromance is a thing of beauty. A platonic male relationship that’s intimate, masculine… and incredibly frustrating if one of you happens to be gay.
 
I seem to collect straight male friends. My inner circle wouldn’t look out of place in the corner of Coppers, eyeing up primary school teachers. My closest mates skull pints of larger in their GAA jerseys, exchanging war stories about their battles with the missus. And I fancy them all, desperately. They know it too.
 
“If I turned gay, you’d be the first on my list,” is their gentlest rejection. Why do they have a list, I wonder? And is Ryan Gosling on it? 
I once met a man from Tipperary after a gig who attempted this hug-and-roll, but seemed to miss the point. “If I woke up gay tomorrow, you’d be the first on my list,” he too offered. Given that I’m yet to wake up straight, I’m still confused. Does he think each morning I wipe the sleep from my eyes and sigh, “Ugh! Gay again.” I suppose my autobiography could be titled Groundhog Gay.
 
Last year, I fell for a friend who described himself as pansexual. I think that means he’s bi, but has a degree. Our relationship was to be strictly bro-mantic. “It’s great that we’re spending all this time hanging out man,” he said one night, before fist pumping me. But this is a candlelit dinner? Surely, he doesn’t think I’d play Fifa with him if it wasn’t foreplay?
 
This is my problem. 
My default position in life is flirt. So when I meet someone I like I make a point of not flirting, to show I’ve genuine interest. Invariably, this gives the opposite impression. People I’ve no interest in think, “Ooh, he’s keen”. While the love of my life walks away – at best oblivious to my affection, or at worst wondering why that comedian is so cold in real life. Not to mention, I’ve wasted enough energy to power a small village chasing men my friends tell me are unwaveringly heterosexual. But surely everybody swings, right?
 
In showbiz, promiscuity is common. A director once told me, “men are like buses. One or two are up your street, but at the end of the night you’ll get on anything”. To me, they’re more like taxis. There’s too many of them, they’re expensive and they don’t know where you want to go. Not to mention you’re normally drunk if you’re in one and now you can order one to your house with an app. Speaking of which, I’ve barely come to terms with Grindr. There was a time I knew ‘NSA’ to mean ‘National Security Agency’. Given the meaning I now understand, it casts the whole Ed Snowden debacle in a new light. “CIA seeks NSA Whistleblower.” Pure filth. I imagine Snowden’s Grindr profile would read “NSA Whistleblower. Can’t accom. Must be discreet.”
 
But in spite of the countless articles I’ve read online about bro-jobs or some other sexual curiosity that occurs between men who are just mates, I’m yet to bed one. At least alone. The closest I’ve achieved is to share them. If I can’t seduce them, perhaps a gorgeous woman can. Preferably one I know, stunning and willing to be complicit in an all-too calculated plan to Trojan-horse my way past the walls of bromance.
 
Does it work? Well, yes. More than once I’ve found myself in bed with a ‘bro’ and a beautiful woman. The only issue is they usually hit it off. Far too well. In January I was tragically invited to the engagement party of two people I had such an experience with. I wasn’t named best man. I guess they spared their families that speech.
 Third wheel merely hints at how uninvolved I was in my last threesome. The other pair on a tandem bicycle, I was the unicyclist trying to keep up. A ménage à deux with a dodgy extension out back!
 
I waited patiently to be tagged in, but never was. When their romp had come to its climax, he slumped into the headboard, and she into a deep sleep. It was then I was offered a consolatory hand-job. The cheek! At least in blue movies the actors don’t dare break the fourth wall, turn to camera and ask pitifully, “Are you okay?”
 
I would prefer the woman involved to be like a referee in a boxing match. She’d let the two of us go at it before occasionally pulling us apart. Instead, they were going blow for blow and I was more like Don King at ringside. Strange hair, in a suit and knowing deep down that in some way I was taking advantage of them. 
Bromance blossoms for me still, despite its drawbacks. In Kilkenny I met a fine singer, Luke Thomas, with whom I’ll stage a swing concert later this year. Not for the first time, I’ll have to swing both ways.
 
Luke has yet to realise, but he’s on my list. At the moment we’re like a two-man Rat Pack, waiting on a third to fulfil my fantasy. I’m like Dean Martin, only I drink more. And Luke, with his handsome dark skin, is like Sammy Davis Jr. I told him this at our last rehearsal, attempting to flirt. Oblivious to my advance, he proceeded to explain to me that Sammy had a hard time of it in the ‘50s because of his colour. 
“Can you imagine having to use the back door?” he asked.
You’ve no idea, Luke. 
And he probably never will.

Catch Al Porter live at Vicar Street on October 17. Tickets available here.

Al Porter is one of Ireland’s most successful comedians. When he’s not headlining some of the country’s top venues, he’s presenting on RTÉ 2FM. 

Follow Al Porter on Twitter. 

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN GCN ISSUE 309.