As close as guys can get on a crew team, it is still hard to be The Gay Guy. I have never been one to make guy friends easily. The Fag Hags and I always seem to find each other first. My husband, on the other hand, has what we refer to as Fag Stags - a hoard of straight male friends who love him and look up to him. Rowing is where I made my first real platonic bonds with men. However, the first go around I was closeted and felt like I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was always the fear of being found out. This time around, in Master's Rowing, the Gay is out on the table. Some bonds are there, but they feel loose, ephemeral. We don't eat and sleep and do double workouts together in my Master's club. We have lives and jobs and families. A post-erg trip to the pub is the best off-water bonding we get. Hey, that's pretty good. But sometimes I catch myself wondering, where are my gays at? Where is my Fag Stag, even?

Last weekend, my husband and I went to a barbecue with his Stags. The food was simple and manly, there was skeet shooting (which I totally rocked, by the way - I should train for the biathlon), and there was even naked hot-tubbing and saunas. A dozen straight, twenty-something dudes getting naked and talking about their feelings and relationships and their journeys in life...and of course farting and teasing and being wise-asses. It was so intensely satisfying and also alien and rare at the same time. The young guys on my team are so Type A, that they don't even make time for experiences like this. They are working non-stop.

This post seems schizo because my brain wants two things, but is lumping them together as one. First, I would love to have another openly gay rower on my team in hopes that we would bond more closely than I have been able to with my current teammates. Secondly, I want to bond more closely with the guys, period! Somehow I imagine bonding with a fellow fag will be easier, but I know that's not necessarily the case. This is just my idea of Utopia, I guess. Not something I'm stressing about, but something that's been prominent in my mind lately.

Anyone else have similar experiences with their teams? Any thoughts?