I’ve danced around it for weeks. How could I praise single life if I wasn’t really single? I mean, he and I have date nights. And an anniversary. He sleeps over. He cuddles with me. He kills the bugs in my bathroom. And he’s always my last call of the night. Confused? So am I. I’m Katie Kelly, and I’m hopelessly devoted to my gay boyfriend. Fag-hag. Fruit fly. FROG (friend of gay). I admit to it all.

Ah, the gay man/straight woman relationship. There’s nothing else like it in the world. I grew up knowing how to be a daughter and a sister. In time, I learned how to be a girlfriend. It was conditioned into me. I didn’t even notice it. This is how a daughter acts. A girlfriend does that. But there is no example, no ‘George and Gracie’ of the gay guy/straight girl combo.

Before I knew anyone gay, I assumed a gay best friend would be someone to go shopping with, a manicure partner and a person who agreed navy doesn’t match with black. And when I met my first gay friend, it was like that. Then one became two, two became five. Now I seem to know every face at Manray on Thursday, Vapor on Saturday, Axis on Monday. Straight guys as distant a memory as homecoming football games.

After a while it wasn’t just shopping and dancing. I had a best friend with whom I’d spend at least six hours a day talking to or being with. So much so that my roommate said, ‘You pretty much sleep and talk to him.’

So what’s the problem? I have a gay best friend. Big deal. It shouldn’t really change any other part of my life. As one irritatingly blunt potential boyfriend once said, ‘You’re a nice girl, Katie. But why would I date you? You already have a boyfriend.’

And I had no argument. It’s true. And after that particularly stinging conversation, guess where I ran? That’s right straight into my non-straight boy’s arms. As he patted my hair, assuring me that I was far from becoming an angry, frizzy-haired spinster with only cats to comfort me, he whispered, ‘He wasn’t good enough for you anyway.’

Since I met my gay boyfriend, no one has been ‘good enough.’ They’ve been too immature, too cocky, too shy and too straightforward. I can’t win. I mean, how can I date someone when the person who knows me best doesn’t approve? Sure, it can last a few weeks or even months, but his disapproval always hangs over my head. It’s particularly grating to see him wince at the mere mention of the man-of-the-moment’s name. And this isn’t because I have perpetually bad taste.

The key to relationships is boundaries, but a gay man and a straight woman don’t have a relationship, so the lines are unclear. Should he get jealous if I go on a date? Should I feel threatened by his new boyfriend? Objectively, the answers are no. But I file it in the same place I do the pashmina-mania of `99 and the return of peasant blouses, under things that I will never understand, and have given up on trying.

Maybe it’s wrong of me to compare one of the most important relationships in my life to fashion-gone-awry, but a lot of fellow fag-hags feel this way. One once said to me, ‘My gay boyfriend ruined my life.’ While I won’t go that far, I will admit to screaming fights, and arguments that just don’t die. So much so that both our mothers say we act like we are married.

And that’s when people tell me to cut him loose. Will the people who suggest dumping him hold back my hair for me when lactose intolerance triumphs over me? Will they fly home to be my plus-one to a family party? Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. Who else would I want to stay in with on a Friday night and laugh endlessly with?

But if doing that scares away any chance of a real date, is it worth it? Should I hold back my own hair? Kill the bug without calling him? Spend some time with my neglected female friends? Is it just a comfort zone?

My friends have developed what we term as the Parking Space Theory. People have spaces for the roles in their life. There’s a boyfriend/girlfriend space, a best friend space … it goes on and on. The problem is that sometimes a gay best friend parks his ‘car’ vertically across the best friend and the boyfriend space, leaving no room for anyone else.

But a gay man can have the best friend and the boyfriend in essence, a boyfriend and the girlfriend, and no one is the lesser. I’m not saying that every gay man is selfish. Most of them go out of their way to help me be happy. But when it comes down to it, I think Helen Fielding said it best, when describing a gay best friend’s disappointment in a straight woman finding someone, ‘The last thing you want is your best friend forming a functional relationship with someone else.’