And by “friends with,” I mean “know well enough to have a couple of beers and/or a dinner party with.”
Off the top of my head, I can think of three single lesbians and a half dozen dudes in their mid-twenties, and four long-term couples ranging in age from their mid-30’s to mid-70’s, two of which I count as very close friends. This is in a wider social circle of maybe a couple of hundred friends and family, and doesn’t count the odd person from work that I’d run in to while drinking at the Hamburger Mary’s that I used to live around the corner from.
I’m a straight male, 31, and in a pretty conservative city.
I am friends with a gentleman couple in their 50s, I recently reconnected with a guy I was friends with in high school who just married his partner, I am friends with one very nice fellow who is as yet un-spoken for, and my husband is friends with a complete ass of a guy who I can’t stand. I know and am friendly with a lesbian couple who also recently married, but I wouldn’t call us friends as of yet. We have lost touch with a number of nice gay folk from when we lived in Iowa City.
I don’t think I have any gay friends in my area at the moment. This isn’t my fault, though, all of my friends that I see regularly are in my class at school and AFAIK none of them are gay. Or if they are, they aren’t out to me.
But in general, that I don’t see often because they aren’t in this area, but with whom I would go out if I were visiting where they live? I don’t know, probably seven or eight. I’ve had close gay male and female friends in the past, but I’ve drifted apart from all of them, for non-sexual orientation reasons.
I have no idea. No one that I know of, but in my environment we don’t go about talking of whom we’ve boned. I know some gay people at work, but I’d not call them friends, and not because they’re gay.
Probably a dozen or so friends I go out for a beer with on a semi-regular basis. Plus a cousin, some college friends who I’m still friends with, and a few work friends.
I don’t know, I know a whole lot of gay people and could conceivably see having dinner with them, but I can only think of two off the top of my head that I see regularly in such a capacity.
A couple of guys from college, I’m friends with. There’re a few more people at work I hang out with on a “prep periods in the faculty room and happy hours” basis.
Literally, dozens. I’m the token straight agnostic in a gay-friendly Christian church, and I do a lot of volunteer work there. I suspect that my address book is well over half gays and lesbians.
Off the top of my head, out of around 150 people I am friends with on facebook, there’s maybe about 10 that are gay or Lesbian, and then there maybe some more that I might not know about or that I’m just not thinking of right now. And there’s my uncle, who’s not on facebook.
Maybe 30 or 40 of my 250 Facebook friends, including former neighbors, co-workers, and classmates who I’d have a beer with if we were ever in the same city again. I can’t think of anyone I know around here, though. sigh.
I really, really miss the gay neighborhood in Seattle I lived in for a decade. I miss drag queens and flamboyance and playful flirty banter with boys who will never get the wrong idea. I miss the Pride Parade. I miss triple-entendre. I miss the outrageously phallic stained-glass windows on the restored Victorian mansion I used to walk by every day. I miss manly men wearing pink.
If you count co-workers and the like I can think of five or ten.
I’m not really the type that has friends so in that sense, zero.
In the past though, I can think of four close friends right off the top of my head and I’m sure there are some “let’s-go-have-a-beer” level friends I am forgetting too.
All of my best/very close friends are gay (men) and a lot of my “regular” friends (I started counting, made it to 20, then figured it was a waste of time.) In thinking about how I’ve hung out with this week, every group has been made up of mostly gay men, and not the same ones, either. I work in theater/performing arts, and though it is a stereotype, there is definitely a higher proportion of gay men in that field, so that’s probably where it comes from, but I’m not sure. I’ve always had gay friends- I met my best friend (a gay man) when I was 13 and he was 15. People refer to me as a fag hag. I don’t mind it. I do have straight friends, it’s just that the majority of my friends are gay.
Out of the folks I know face-to-face, none that I know of, but that’s probably mostly due to the fact that I have a pretty small social circle. On this board, though, there are a fair amount of gay folks I wouldn’t mind having a few beers with (or the non-alcoholic equivalent).