By Tyler Gillespie
I spent last weekend in a national forest with six gay guys (I’m sure there could be a few jokes made about bears and light bulbs or something) and our sometimes down-for-whatever female friend, Roach.
Before the sun set on Friday night, Roach and I drove down winding dirt roads as we navigated the deer-blood soaked roads of Ocala on our way to one of the camper’s family-owned lake house near Gainesville.
The weekend consisted of kayaks, one very carefully balanced beer bottle, barbeque sauce, and some intense truth-or-dares — I’m like the Anderson Cooper of truth-or-dare, asking the hard-hitting questions. While a couple of my friends drank enough whiskey to make Ke$ha jealous, and the scenario lent itself to some murder plot or a Craigslist sex party, all in all, the trip was pretty tame.
On Sunday morning, as we made our way home from our lake house weekend — I refuse to call anything with a air-conditioning involved "camping" — Roach and I started talking about her experience being friends with gay men. She said she had made her first gay friend during high school.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2011.