Is my friend straight, gay, curious or something else?

Just a warning, this is a very long post. I've provided a fair bit of background info to try and help people understand the situation in the hope that someone can give me advice or something.

I have a friend who I met through work around two years ago with whom I regularly go out on nights out. This first bit is just to provide some context by the way... We used to work together very regularly and became pretty good friends because of this. He got a new job around 9-10 months ago but oddly in the time since then we've actually become better friends and I'd consider him to be one of my best friends and I think he would say the same of me too. This is kind of a big deal for me since I have a fairly small but close knit friendship group and the majority of them are girls so it's nice to have a new close guy friend. However, I should point out that he doesn't know I'm gay, only 3 of my friends do, one of them being my sister.

Anyway, quite often after a night out, a lot of mine and my sisters friends (my sister also happens to work with me and is a part of the friendship group) will end up staying at our house since we live the closest to the club we normally go to and we normally leave to go to places from our house. Usually when we get back, most of the girls will sleep in my sisters room and the spare room and me and my friend will sleep in my room. I have a double bed so normally we'll both just sleep in that. He's a very friendly, carefree guy so the idea of two guys sharing a bed really doesn't faze him plus we're both usually very drunk so as long as we get to sleep in a bed we don't really care.

Before I get to the main bit of this post I feel I should provide a little more context... this friend of mine is straight so far as I know since he's had a girlfriend and has slept with women and I'm assuming (but not certain) only women. He's an incredibly friendly, likeable and cheerful guy and it shows since he has many, many friends in lots of different friendship groups and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who dislikes him. However, after the girl he was seeing moved to New Zealand he became a little depressed and even though it happened over 6 months ago and he's pretty much over it, every now and then he'll get upset about it again and I'm normally the one he talks to about this stuff. Also despite his very outgoing and cheerful exterior, when it comes to girls and relationships he can be quite shy and reserved which is quite out of character for him. Not only that but several of his other friends think he's a bit of a player, always sleeping around and with a different girl every week when in reality he's only slept with two women that I know of. That may not sound particularly important but he hasn't slept with anyone in over half a year so recently has been pretty desperate he tells me. That bit is important. He's also got a bit of a reputation as something of a heavy drinker. On nights out he can drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol and not pass out or throw up and he never seems to get terrible hangovers but is obviously still insanely drunk. That's also fairly important.

So back to the story, after our most recent night out, a few of us came back to mine to stay the night again and as usual he and I were in my room. One of my sisters friends who was meant to come out with us unfortunately didn't get into the club and my friend was hoping that she and him might have got together since she apparently thought he was fairly good looking. So the idea of some girl wanting to sleep with him seemed pretty great but since she ended up not coming out with us, it obviously didn't work out and that kind of threw him off a bit.

At this point he's horny, a little upset and very very drunk. We're both in bed, him fully clothed and me in my boxers just because that's how I normally sleep. We were chatting for a bit and his ex girlfriend came up again and I could tell he was getting pretty upset about it and I think he may have even been crying so I was feeling pretty bad for him. Eventually I drifted off but after probably only an hour to an hour and a half I was woken up by something. While I'd been asleep he had snuggled up to me and fallen asleep. His head was resting just in my armpit and he was pressed right up against the side of my body. My arm was kind of up vertically on the pillow so I adjusted myself so that I could put my arm around his shoulders. I'm gay (obviously), so having some good looking guy snuggling up to your almost naked body didn't seem like such a bad thing. I was still quite drunk and the double vodka and red bulls were keeping me very much awake and I just couldn't sleep. I could tell I was getting an erection too and I was worried he might notice but then since he was the one snuggling up to me I thought he's just as much to blame. So some time passes and he kind of starts moving about in his sleep and suddenly he moves his right arm (he was on my right side and lying on his left side) over my chest so that he's holding onto me and he kind of nestles his head further into my armpit so that now the top of his head is just below my chin and I'm basically smelling his hair. Throughout all of this I thought that maybe he was just feeling really upset over the whole ex girlfriend thing and he was very drunk so maybe he just wanted some comforting plus it's nice to hold someone when you sleep. Again some time passes with us in this position but this is where shit gets really crazy. He kind of semi wakes up and looks over at his right arm. Then all of a sudden he begins rubbing and running his hand down my chest, over my abdomen and then over my underwear where I'm sporting a fairly large erection. He starts rubbing my penis through my underwear and then he puts his hand down my boxers and grips my dick in his hand and starts moving his hand up and down, essentially jerking me off! I was lying there in utter disbelief but I couldn't help but enjoy what was happening. As I've said he's a good looking guy and I've always thought he was attractive but as far as I knew he was straight as an arrow so this whole situation confused me a lot. After maybe about 10-15 seconds of his hand actually being in contact with my penis, he looks up at me and just kind of stares into my eyes for a bit. I'm not really sure what kind of look he was giving me but I think he could tell I wasn't gonna stop him from doing what he was doing. He then stops and rolls back over to his side and then it looked as though he was trying to undo his belt and jeans and I'm pretty sure he had at least a partial erection too. I sort of tried to reach over to him but was feeling a little reserved. Then he suddenly gets up and goes to the bathroom and he was in there for a good 15-20 minutes. My room is right next to the bathroom and it was the dead of night so I would have been able to hear what he was doing but the entire time he was in there I couldn't hear a sound.

At this point I was lying in my bed alone and I started to panic a bit. I was worried that he was basically disgusted with himself and was in the bathroom trying to come to terms with what he'd just done. I thought this was gonna completely change or end our friendship because he'd be unable to face me again. I get pretty bad anxiety sometimes especially when it comes to my friends I always think and assume the worst so I was running through every possible terrible scenario and it was really freaking me out. After a while I could hear him trying to unlock the door but the lock gets stuck sometimes so I went out and unlocked it for him from the outside and before the door even opened I turned around just so I didn't have to face him because I was terrified he might say something I wouldn't want to hear. But instead he just says "You're my hero" in a jokey kind of way and I laughed and got back into bed. I thought after all that he might decide to sleep downstairs or something but he came back into my room and got back into the bed. So now I'm feeling fairly relieved since he's obviously not so disgusted or ashamed of himself that he can't be near me since we're now in the same bed together again. He falls asleep almost immediately but I'm still lying there wide awake trying to figure out what just happened. Eventually I begin to get comfortable and am ready to sleep. He's on his side with his back to me and normally I sleep on my side too. So I was on my side facing his back and I decide (perhaps foolishly) to put one of my arms around him over the top of the duvet. I do this and amazingly he doesn't wake up all of a sudden and throw my hand off or yell at me or run away. I could tell that he knew I was doing it so I'm assuming he either just didn't mind or he quite liked it. A little while later I adjust myself a little and decide to put my arm around him again but this time under the duvet so that I am actually in contact with him. Again he seems fine with it. Later again, he's now adjusted himself so that he's lying on his back so this time I put my arm around him again over his chest and kind of grip his arm and pull myself right next to him and spend the majority of the rest of the night like this. We then wake up fairly early since I had to drive him home so he could be somewhere. I was still a little worried that he might be a little awkward or weird but things were just like the morning after any other night out and we talked and laughed as normal. I thought the car ride might be fairly awkward but again we chatted and joked as normal. I dropped him off, said goodbye and said how we'd probably see each other again next weekend for another friends birthday so I thought everything was good.

It wasn't until I was home and everyone else had left and I was alone with my thoughts and my anxiety could flourish that I started to worry that this might significantly change our friendship for the worse or perhaps even end it. As I said earlier, from everything I knew about him, he was straight. He's never shown any sign that he might be gay or bi and I still don't think he is. I think the combination of alcohol, his lack of any sex recently, being upset over his ex girlfriend and narrowly missing a chance to get with someone all added up to this. We've been texting and snapchatting each other pretty much as normal since it happened but I can't help but feel like he's maybe trying to avoid doing so. I'm also not even 100% certain he remembers it happening since he drank a lot and usually struggles to remember a lot from the night before. I don't know whether I should bring it up with him next time I see him and we're alone to maybe try and talk it out and just put it behind. I don't know whether this means he wants to try stuff with a guy because I would be more than willing. But I'm worried that if I try and bring it up he may freak out so I'm not sure if I should leave it and we just pretend it never happened but I feel like that could be really awkward. I've come out to my sister and 2 of my friends but I don't want to talk to them about it simply because I don't want to betray his trust because if he found out I'd told people I think that would be really really bad.

If you've managed to read through all of this then I thank you and if you have any advice or help you can or want to give then please do.

 

I know it does sound kind of stupid to even question whether he's straight or gay but I think it's just that it's so out of the blue. In terms of his stance on gay people, the only time something like that's ever come in conversation he said he had no real issue with gay people, he just didn't like it.

 

I'm seeing him again this weekend and if it feels right I'll ask him about it and let him know i was ok with it. Depending on his response I'll see if he is curious about trying stuff with a guy. I still don't think I'm ready to come out to him yet though but I guess I'll see how the weekend goes.

 

So an update... basically it's all gone to shit. Saw him again last weekend for another night out. Everything between us was fine and normal as if nothing had ever happened and we were all having fun. Later on in the night he basically got kicked out of the club for being too drunk so me and another friend decided to get him back to mine since he was in a pretty bad way. We get back to mine and me and my other friend put him into bed and my other friend leaves to go back to his since he only lives round the corner. After making himself throw up in the toilet and me cleaning him up I put him back into bed with the help of a couple of my other friends and then get into bed myself. This time around I'm the one who ends up holding him while we sleep but he doesn't seem to mind. At around 6/half 6am I'm spooning with him from behind and at this point he's feeling a lot better and is awake and talking and we stay in this position for a while. Feeling a little brave, I decide to try taking things a step further. I start just by putting my hand under his shirt and rubbing his chest and abdomen and he's on board with it. Next I start rubbing his dick through his jeans and once he again he's fine with it. Then I started undoing his jeans and grabbed his dick and started jerking him off. I do this for about a minute or so and then all of a sudden he jumps up, grabs his stuff and leaves the room and heads downstairs. I go down after him and I ask when he wants a lift home and he just responds with 'Right now!' so I drove him home and it was really awkward we basically didn't speak the whole time. I dropped him off and he said thanks. I sent him a funny picture of him from the night before just to try and start a conversation and he responds but only with a couple of words and then I've messaged him since then and he's just completely ignored me. It's been 5 days now and I've messaged him a few times now saying how I just want him to talk to me and I've still heard nothing back. I get that he might be a little mad or upset with me but he did the exact same thing to me and I was more than happy to just ignore it and move on so I'm kind of annoyed that he's being like this since I don't really feel like he's in any position to be angry at me for this.

 

He drunk text me after a week of ignoring me and we started talking again for an hour or so and have more or less made up. He now knows I'm gay and says it's not an issue but I think it might be. He also says he has no recollection of what he did to me and when I brought it up he got all annoyed. He was asking why I did what I did and I told him it's only because of what he had done to me. I would never have initiated anything like this if there hadn't been some sign or indication that he was ok with it. I think he also thinks I'm basically in love with him or something and he's being quite reserved and aloof with me. I mean I get that some crazy shit has happened between us but he is partly to blame since he started it. Anyway I'm seeing him again tomorrow and he says he wants us to talk just to straighten things out so I'm hoping we can just put it behind us and move forward.

 

I realise I’ve left this thread unattended for a while now so for anyone who cares, here’s yet another update. During the day leading up to when I saw him he was being really weird with me over text and snapchat and appeared almost angry. I offered to give him a lift to mine before we all went out again and he said he’d make his own way but he was a bit of a dick about it. Anyway me and my other friends are at mine having a few drinks and getting ready to go out and he texts me saying he’s on his way and that he still wants to have a talk with me since this is the first time I’d be seeing him since we fell out. I responded by saying it might be a bit difficult for us to have a private conversation now since everyone is here and already a bit drunk and we’d be leaving in less than an hour. He gets really pissy and says he’ll have this conversation with me no matter what even if it means having it front of everyone. I then got really annoyed at him and essentially told him to fuck off but then I pulled myself together and just said that we can have our talk but that it’s between me and him and no one else.
It got to the point where even though I wanted to patch things up and be friends again, I was so terrified of what he might say or do and I was getting incredibly stressed out and I was completely unable to enjoy myself, that I was tempted to tell him not to come. Then about 15 minutes later he shows up and I can immediately tell that he is completely hammered. Now as I’ve said before, he’s known to be a bit of a drinker but tonight was something else. He was more drunk than I had ever seen him and it later transpired that he has been drinking for pretty much the entire day. The two of us don’t even say hello to each other we just basically completely ignore each other for almost 30 minutes. He finally kind of splits off from the group so I decide it’s best I just go over and speak to him and get it over with. It starts off really awkward and the whole situation is already started to annoy and upset me. He asks why I did what I did and when I tell him it’s because of what he did to me he just doesn’t believe me. He keeps asking again and I keep telling him the same thing. He was so drunk that he was just saying the same shit again and again. At this point our other friends start to wonder why the two of us are on our own talking so secretively and try to find out what’s going on and because of the nature of the conversation I was literally just having to tell them to leave us alone without explanation which I really didn’t like doing. Anyway as the two of us are talking it becomes apparent that he wants to try and blame me entirely and I get pretty angry and upset about that and I tell him that’s not fair. He says he doesn’t want anything like what happened to ever happen between us again and that we’re friends, nothing more, nothing less. He starts to see that I’m getting upset and he is too. Next thing I know I’m sat there crying in front of him at which point he starts to get upset. We talk a little more and basically say that we don’t want to lose each other as friends and we just want to get past it. He tells me to stop crying because it’s gonna make him cry and then he tells me to ‘come here’ and we hug for a minute and we both say we love each other. Sounds dumb I know. We hug it out for a bit and then as soon as we’re done hugging it’s like we’re back to being best friends again. He makes some stupid comment, we laugh and we just kind of carry on as if nothing happened. He spoke to my sister while we were at my house after he’d spoken to me and he got upset again. I also asked why he was so drunk and he said it’s becuase he wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation with me and he says that he’s no good at talking about serious stuff.
We go to the club, everyone has a good time, me and him are just kind of back to normal. After we leave I’m obviously quite drunk at this point. We’re all walking to get some food and we all kind of split off into pairs and I’m with him. I don’t know exactly what I said but it was something to do with how I hoped we’re all good now and that we’ll never not be friends and I start to get upset again and so does he. He tells me to stop and says he’s cried more tonight than he ever has in a very long time and doesn’t want to cry again. After we’ve got some food we’re all ready to go home, I assume he’s gonna go back to his since he said he wouldn’t stay over at mine again after what happened. So I say to him ‘are you gonna get an uber to yours now’ and he just says no I’m not going home and ends up coming back to mine with the rest of us.
Everyone else goes to bed and I grab him a duvet and get him set up on one of the sofas downstairs. He gets into bed and I sit on the sofa with him and we talk for a long time. I basically get upset again but this time over the fact that now that he knows I’m gay, I feel like it’s getting to the point where I’m gonna have to tell more and more people and I really don’t like that idea and it scares me. I’m just sat on his bed balling my eyes out and he’s lying there trying to comfort me and to be fair he does quite a good job. Eventually I go up to bed and go to sleep feeling overall pretty happy that the two of us have made up.
We are pretty much completely back to how we were before and I’m very happy about that. He was one of the people I was most afraid to find out I was gay but he’s actually handling it very well. Every now and then he’ll make a stupid comment but I don’t mind since we’ve always taken jabs at each other so why should that change now. We’ve seen each other multiple times since. We all went out again and things were fine and he stayed at mine again. He slept on the floor in my room which I’d like to think means he’s comfortable around me and doesn’t feel he needs to sleep far away from me to stop me from doing something. Even if he slept in the bed with me, I would never ever try anything with him again unless he literally explicitly says something or does something first and even then I’d be very apprehensive. I even saw him just the two of us. We went to the cinema and it was just like old times. We’ve also all booked a trip abroad together!
I can understand that this all may sound stupid and almost childish, but it’s kind of hard to put into words how this whole situation made me feel without using even more space than I already have. That week when he ignored me and I thought we’d never speak again and it was the end of our friendship was genuinely one of the worst of my life. I felt like shit the entire time and was just moping around getting nothing done. I even started crying at work and had to hide myself away before someone saw me. I’ve never been in a situation where someone has completely cut me off and I’ve only ever had a limited number of friends that I’m very close with so the idea of losing one was kind of devastating. Every now and then he can come across as distant or angry or annoyed and it kind of gets me, but he was always kind of like that and I think I’m only starting to let it effect me because of everything that’s happened. When I ask him about why he’s seems so annoyed or angry he always just says he was joking or that he’s never serious. I just think he’s kind of bad at communicating through text or maybe I’m just really bad at interpreting it. Now that we’re completely back to normal, it feels great. I know that me being gay is always gonna be something he tho is about or finds a little weird, but he’s honestly handling it 1000 times better than I thought he or anyone would. I’ve told him that it doesn’t change who I am and he doesn’t need to change how he is with me and I think he gets and appreciates that.