How close can you get without having sex

Many straight American men acknowledge (and perhaps on some level problematize) the conflation of closeness/intimacy and sex when find themselves expressing feelings often constructed as "gay" towards other straight men that they want to be or are close with. These identity crises create tensions that are often released through irony and humor or violence. See terms like "bromance" and "bromosexual," and the plethora of internet clips or personal narratives of straight men (often younger, often comedians) dancing right up to, and sometimes tiptoe-ing across, with varying degrees of awkwardness, that line of sexual intimacy.

I found this scene from the movie Superbad of two straight male friends expressing their love for each other to balance tenderness and humor quite well. The top comment right now on youtube for this scene is "Bromance is the truest form of love!"

Speaking of "bromance," consider the incest taboo - a cultural norm whose existence and vehement enforcement suggests again an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility of a conceptual blurring of intimacy and sexual attraction. 

To be close, to know somebody as well as family members or best friends know each other - how is that possible without having sex? One common distinction between these relationships and sexual/romantic relationships is the perception of the speed at which they usually develop. A family's intimacy comes over time, is almost measured as a percentage of your entire lifetime. So too with best friends (with the possible exception of "my new best friend" - often an expression used to mark out a character or person as shallow or childish).

Yet, in a recent interview, David Jay, the founder of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), and subject of a new documentary, (A)sexual, says:

Yes, [I date] sort of. In the past I had a series of close relationships with women that weren’t sexual. And we didn't know exactly what that meant. A lot of times they also had boyfriends but they were much more emotionally intimate with me. And their boyfriends didn’t know what to do with that—they got really jealous. It was a mess. And it was a mess because there were no words for a really close friendship that didn’t involve sex or sexuality. There was no status for it.

Implicit in this narrative is that the friendships with these women developed along a timeline similar to dating, one that is generally faster than becoming family or best friends. There's something particularly unsettling about this when it happens between two straight men as well, as captured in a recent episode of Louie, reviewed here on Slate. That reviewer notes:

in order to dramatize the way straight white American men stupidly struggle with—and even refuse—a certain kind of intimacy, C.K. presents a scenario that reads as gay as possible. It keeps you guessing at what’s really going on, and wondering where the episode might be headed. 

I don't really have a conclusion for this post, but this topic is something that continues to interest me. Speaking of lacking conclusions, I'm reading Judtih Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure right now. Maybe I'll write about that next.