The "Straight" Guy Shuffle

Is he really straight? Am I misreading the signals? Is he in denial? How do I deal with this? I don't know that there's any more common refrain in the "Relationships" forum! I've been surfing the forums here on Empty Closets for around two months now, and it's been heartening to see that I am far from the only person, out or closeted, dealing with mixed signals from a same-sex, heterosexual friend. My own situation has taken a lot of difficult and confusing twists recently, and though I've semi-enjoyed the weeks of constantly crying, listening to Kelly Clarkson, and watching Friday Night Lights, I'm hoping that the droves of readers going through or already past similar situations can help me to gain some perspective and learn to better manage this friendship.

I will definitely do my best to be concise, but rambling is a fatal flaw of mine, so I thank those of you that slog through this post and apologize for my verbosity :icon_bigg

So for background, I am 23 years old, and totally out of the closet, so there is no ambiguity about my sexuality to any of my friends. I have never been in a relationship of any sort (which is getting pretty depressing at my age!), though not for lack of trying. I'm in graduate school, and have spent the last two years of my life without any gay friends (another depressing little tidbit!). About 18 months ago I met...let's call him Patrick, an extremely effeminate fellow grad student who presents a few signs of being gay (walk; gesturing; stance - always with a hip cocked; sitting posture - usually with legs crossed like a woman; voice/speech patterns, etc. I'm not meaning to perpetuate stereotypes here, but I noticed most of these things as soon as I meet him, and these are what initially made me think he might be an option).

For no apparent reason, Patrick and I made fast friends, which I've since learned is a true rarity for him. Within just a few weeks of meeting each other, we were chatting online for sometimes as much as eight hours a day, and never less than three. After some months of this detached sort of friendship, he started inviting me to hang out with him and his other friends, and we started eating lunch together almost daily. He also started opening up to me about some aspects of his life, which is quite a feat given his total lack of trust for...well, for anyone, really.

Our interactions, one-on-one and in groups, have become, for lack of a better word, intimate. There is a lot of physical contact (weird for either of us), including one afternoon where I was running my hands through his hair and ended up rubbing his neck, taking off his shirt, and rubbing his back, as well as near constant leg- and hand-touching at every meal we eat together or movie we attend. There have been at least half a dozen occasions where we almost kissed, though always presented in a joking manner. A mutual friend recently asked me if I could think of a single "non-private" body part of his that I had never touched, and the best we could come up with is "between the toes"! Most of our friends have become annoyed with the fact that, even in group settings, we talk almost exclusively to each other, always engaged in side conversations or walking ahead of everyone else to chat, bickering amiably, exchanging knowing looks, staring into each other's eyes for minutes on end, etc.

We had never really discussed his sexuality, until several months ago I invited him to dinner, and, totally unprompted, he announced to me that he is exclusively heterosexual and didn't feel comfortable attending. From that point on Patrick also started complaining to me about his feelings for a female mutual friend on a regular basis, though he basically ignores her when we hang out, and doesn't do anything resembling flirting with anyone but me. At the same time, the levels of touching and intimacy increased exponentially - incessant text/online chatting contact, the daily lunches, hanging out several nights a week, etc. Most of our mutual friends started asking me if there was something going on between Patrick and me, as well as acquaintances observing our friendship from a greater distance. A close mutual friend - incidentally, the girl he professes to have feelings for - described it best, I think, when she told me that Patrick and I are a couple in every sense of the word except for sexually.

After putting up with this for so many months, I finally snapped a few weeks ago and confronted him about the situation that has arisen between us - namely, him being extremely flirtatious and behaving in a manner that, to me, is unconscionable in a straight guy-gay guy friendship, and how I have developed feelings for him and everyone questions what is going on between us. Patrick blew up, blaming me for the doubts exhibited by our mutual friends and insisting that, by randomly asserting his heterosexuality to me on that one occasion, he had done everything in his power to prevent the development of any feelings on my part. He is willing to admit the intimacy of our friendship, and in fact says that he wants to preserve it (as long as I can accept that it's purely platonic) because I am extremely important to him, but has also been aggressive in making sure that I accept his heterosexuality.

I know that, as his friend, I have to believe what he has to say, and that I really have no place staying friends with him if I still think he's in denial and that there's something else going on between us. The problem for me is that I don't see a way to stay friends with him and also stop having feelings for him, because I am so utterly convinced of his denial (of course, confronting him probably didn't help on that front), but at the same time I feel such a responsibility as his best friend and confidant that I don't feel comfortable cutting him out of my life either.

So what am I looking for here? Well, opinions of what exactly is going on between us would be nice. Also thoughts on how I can learn to live with or move past these feelings without ending a friendship that is very important to me (and to Patrick), because, frankly, I'm paralyzed right now.

Thanks for your attention, everyone! Sorry for the length...