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i saw my good friend mark the other night, and somehow our meeting reminded me why we are good friends: we both love long talks.  i remember when were much younger, we’d lose track of time and realize that we had been talking non-stop for hours. 

talking with mark is always a delight.  with him, topics can neither be too trivial nor too deep; this is why our conversational pieces range from the mundane to the most philosophical ones that our brains can accommodate.  when i talk to mark, i feel no danger of being judged.  i can talk nonsense and i’d run no risk of being tagged shallow.  i can tell him my twisted views on life and relationship and not be labelled nonconformist or deviant.  perhaps our long talks have preserved both our sanity and somehow cushioned us to the blows that life brings us.  yes, one can never totally prepare for life’s surprises, but our sharing of our experiences, fears, hopes, and aspirations allows us to get by life with much ease.

when i was in college, i met another kindred spirit in oliver.  like mark, oli is someone easy to get on with.  i don’t feel inhibited to talk to him about anything.  perhaps, of all my friends in college, i can say that it was oliver who understood my weirdness the most.  sometimes i felt i put too much baggage on him, but he was gentle enough to put up with me.

i may not have the perfect life.  i still struggle with it paycheck to paycheck.  i have insecurities like everyone else.  but if there’s one thing that i am truly grateful for no matter how excruciating life can get, it would be having very good friends like mark and oliver.  but then again, i ask myself, how come i don’t connect with my other male friends the way i do with oli and mark?

don’t get me wrong.  i have many male friends, but the level of conversation that we almost always have doesn’t go beyond the surface.  we joke, exchange brutal banters, talk about work, compare notes on what’s hot and not.  but as to go deeper, as in talk about our own personal struggles, fears, and hopes, the chance is as impossible as getting the real age of keanna reeves.

in his article entitled "seamless souls," peter nardi wrote that male to male friendship is quite different from female to female friendship.  he described male to male friendship as side by side and female to female friendship as face to face.  this description claims that a female friendship has more room for intimacy.  i was so tempted to refute this but given the number of male friends i have who are not abashed to appear less "macho," i am compelled to rest my case.

i feel saddened how our society has become obsessed with labeling because it is this obsession that has hindered men to be more open, more sensitive, more emotional.  how can you expect a man to be totally honest about his feelings when at a very young age he is told that it isn’t manly to cry?  given that kind of conditioning, how can you expect him to openly acknowledge his weaknesses to another soul?

a lot of people associate intimacy to feminity, and therefore, most men dare not cross paths with that word.  few have courage to defy society’s expectations, and they’re branded "queer" and naturally tough men don’t want that. but then again, if you are so secure with your masculinity, why do you have to be affected by what other people say?  does your masculinity need the validation of many?  statistically, there are more men whose death is caused by suicide.  due to repressed emotions?  most likely.

i wish there were more marks and olivers in the world.  relationships wouldn’t be difficult to handle, emotions would be easier to handle, life would be more worth living. 

for those men who insist on acting it tough to the end, consider what lola, the main character in the movie kinky boots, has to say: "…ask any woman what she likes most in a man.  compassion, tenderness, sensitivity.  traditionally, the female virtues.  perhaps what women secretly desire is a man who is fundamentally a woman."  if this won’t convince you to let your emotional wall down, i don’t know what will.