Interestingly, most of my friends don’t mind me staying at my mum’s. It’s the girls that seem to find it an issue. For the sake of clarity, I don’t count girls among my friends, so when I say "my friends” I am referring to only the guys.

Like someone so aptly put it, "friendship is not possible between a man and a woman. There is enmity, passion, love, but not friendship”. So when am counting my friends, forgive me ladies, but you are not included. I wasn’t always like this.

At some point I actually had more female friends than guy friends, until I realized that what I was confusing for "friendship” was actually something else, something that my still un-sophisticated mind couldn’t differentiate from friendship.

But I learnt my lesson, and although I was still relatively young, it was a lesson that impacted my future relationships with girls.

There was a girl called Jackie. Of all my friends, I liked Jackie the most. And this had nothing to do with her looks. She was a pretty little angel, and the very first time I saw her, I knew we had to be friends.

We were in the same school, same class and after a while, we even sat together in class. Basically we became inseparable. I trusted her completely and told her everything about me.

I imagined me and her had a connection, a loyalty to each other.

So, I was totally disappointed to learn that it wasn’t like that with her. For my dedication to the friendship, I didn’t understand how she could date some other guy. When I learnt about it I was surprised.

She told me she had a boyfriend. And the jealousy, that mix of disappointment and "friendship” rushing through my blood made me realize that all along, Jackie hadn’t been just my friend! I was in love with the girl, and I had confused this love, in my innocence of youth, with friendship. Disappointed, hurt, sad, I tried to just let it go.

But again, her behavior changed. She spent more time with the other guy, and forgot about me. She had just met the guy; I had known her for over a year.

Friends don’t do that; you don’t forget a friend just because you met someone new. So, from that time, I realized that I couldn’t really be friends with a girl. And it’s not a sexist or chauvinistic thing, that’s just the way it has been all my life.
 
Back to my mum; yeah, my friends understand why I need this time to recoup. The girls I know, confirming the fact that they aren’t really my friends, tell me that I am being a baby.

That a grown man shouldn’t be staying at his mum’s! This one particular girl, Tracy, who found it so offensive that she even walked away from me in a restaurant, had her own issues! All along, she had had plans for me.

Simply put, she wanted me and her to date. I learnt this from a friend of hers who had told her about her secret crush on me. See, I told you it’s hard for even girls to be friends with girls!

I mean, this girl just betrayed her friend’s secret to me! What kind of friend does that? Later that very same day, Tracy called me and told me she had got a house that I could move to.

I told her I had no furniture, not even a mattress. And she said, "It’s ok, we shall be using my stuff. We are moving in together!”

Ends