When I was in high school I spent most of my time hanging out with guys.  I just had more male friends.  Aside from my best friend all through high school, Briana, most of my close friends were dudes.  I wasn’t really romantically involved with any of them because I was afraid of guys.  I was always just one of the boys.  They always regarded as just that girl who always hung out. 

They never really minded me hanging out with them because I swore a lot, took their razzing fairly well by all accounts and I had pretty hot female friends that they would occasionally hook up with.  I never really minded the teasing and for all intents and purposes didn’t mind them sleeping with my friends.  I wasn’t even considered a viable dating option.  I was furniture.  If I dated it wasn’t in my immediate circle of friends and they seldom got involved in my romantic life unless something was wrong.

The men I hung out with were, for all intents and purposes, viewed as bad kids.  I grew up around gang bangers and thugs.  It is an issue that effects who I am attracted to to this very day.  To me these men were my friends.  They were never cruel to me and I knew I was always safe when I was with them.  It did, however, change people’s perception of me.  Many people who did not know me assumed that I was likely sleeping with several if not all of these men. 

Hanging out with a group of men rather than your female peers can severely warp the way you view yourself and your role in a male/female relationship, I always liked being one of the boys. I wasn’t as enthralled or consumed by sex as many of my peers seemed to be and in the presence of my male friends I really wasn’t a sexual being.  I was not someone any of them was interested in that way.

They seldom had serious girlfriends and most were more than content to have sex casually with whoever was willing and available.  I was neither and they all acknowledged that.  I knew then that I did not want to be one of those girls.  I never really was.  I had begun to regard those women the same way my male friends did.  Girls came and girls went.  I had my own views of what role women filled for men and I had no interest in it.

Eventually, several years after I graduated and moved away from the small town I grew up in my sexuality caught up with me and I spent several years wandering in and out of men’s lives with no real objective, as I assumed was what was expected of me.  I went from “one of the guys” to a “serial fuck buddy.”  As I became older and my desire to emotionally connect with a man became more prominent I found myself struggling to change this behavior.  I am still learning how to approach a romantic relationship.

Though being one of the guys does have its perks (like three to six scary big brothers,) it does warp the way you view your role and the role of women in young men’s lives.   But I do miss my friends and hanging out with men in a capacity I found completely comfortable.  I just want something different now.  I don’t want to be one of the boys or act like one of them.  I am a woman dammit!