A number of circumstances coincided this week to set me to thinking about the way I relate to people. What triggered it was actually an off-the-cuff comment I made myself, in an earlier journal entry. I wrote about how I used to make new friends when I first started to go out to bars as a young adult. I probably wouldn't have dwelled at all on that after writing it had I not written it at a time when I was feeling lonely.

It's hard to admit that I sometimes feel lonely; it makes it sound like I've failed in building a home life. In this country of extroverts (75%, by many estimates, of the population of the U.S. compared to 25% in England), I feel that people look down on and even pity people who don't have a thriving social life.

What makes it even harder for me to admit this, is that I have a morbid fear of being judged. Why the hell do I have a personal journal on the web, then, you wonder! Good question. In any event, although it might seem that in these pages I'm being unusually honest about myself, there are large parts of me I hold back. Partly out of a desire to retain some privacy, and not give all of myself away. And partly out of shame, Like with the loneliness - it was only last night that I even admitted it to Brett.

My fear, in this case, also includes concern that people will conclude that I'm living only a cyber life. Why should it bother me if people think that? No reason, I suppose, other than that fear of being judged that I just spoke about. Partly for that reason, I'll make it clear right now that my loneliness is all a matter of degree. I have, three close friends in San Francisco, a larger number of more casual friends, and a yet larger number of older friends who live in other cities and countries; in other words, I'm not a hermit.

My occasional loneliness comes from having only one fast friend whom I can truly count on as being "there for me." Of course, I'm talking about Brett. Brett lives in Berkeley, and has a busy life of his own. He has a house to look after, and chickens to tend to. So we usually only see each other once a week. And I don't really have anyone else whom I can call on a whim. My other friends, close though they are to me, have their own elaborate social circles, into which I'm not integrated, largely because, being an introvert, I'm rarely happy in a group of people.

Anyway, I've gotten a bit off track here. I actually didn't know what I was going to write when I started off half an hour ago, and look where I've ended up! What I intended to write more about was where my thinking this week has taken me. I've spent a great deal of time thinking about why I have so few close friends, and what I can do to change that.

In some ways, it's clear to me that it's largely by choice that I have few close friends. In the last few years, I've met many people, and begun a fledgling friendship with some of them. In most cases, those new friendships have dwindled away due to inattention on my part, deliberate or otherwise. I've always told myself that I've let these people pass out of my life because I haven't felt a real connection with them. And that's mostly true - there hasn't been the right chemistry. Never the fluid, engaging comfort I feel with Brett, for example.

But then I wonder why it is that way back in my early twenties, it wasn't that way. I think it's only natural that you get more choosy about whom you spend your time with, as you learn more about people. Even so, there's another thing going on here. I know that, more often than not, my relations to new people I come across are characterized by a remoteness that I put across. This remoteness has clumped itself onto my personality so that when I keep myself apart from people like this, I don't see it as a protective act, but I see it, rather proudly, as being "who Keith is." And, if you're at all sane and healthy-minded, you do tend rather to like yourself, and therefore don't want to let parts of your personality go.

So here's this part of my personality that I cling to, but which is actually rather self-destructive. And it's been, for me, a very good thing to recognize that. It gives me at least the inkling of a chance to change.

One of the reasons I write all this is that I know, from all the many people I've encountered online through my website, that there's a vast amount of loneliness in the lives of many gay men out there. And I think it helps to put it down on paper so we all know we're not really the only ones who feel this way.