Four days of dating

Last week, my friend Pierre became my boyfriend.

I’ve known this friend of mine for almost three years. We met in college, and although we didn’t immediately hit it off, we became incredibly close. Our class schedules were almost identical so we were hardly ever apart, and we talked all the time. He’s my constant travel buddy, the other half of my own Team Rocket, and my confidante. This guy practically knows me inside out, and I consider him to be one of the most special people in my life.

Don’t get me wrong — as much as I’d like to make it sound like a cheesy romcom of Harry Met Sally-esque levels, Pierre and I didn’t wake up one morning and realize that we were madly in love with each other. (We’re too madly in love with ourselves for that to happen, let’s be real.) 

Instead, our “romantic relationship” took its cue from a social experiment called fortydaysofdating.com. This website chronicles the relationship between two good friends who decided to date each other for 40 days and see if they’d end up falling love, just remain friends, or kill each other with machetes.

I know it sounds a little silly to try dating someone who plays for the same team, but I felt that our own romantic neuroses could yield interesting results. Pierre, who claims to look like an underage lesbian, feels that he is destined to be single forever, but “desperately yearns” to be in a monogamous relationship. 

As for me, I tend to overanalyze interactions with the opposite sex, possibly because I cannot believe that every single guy out there is not in love with me. Like, what the hell is up with that?

While we did not have the time nor resources to recreate the original experiment to the letter, we agreed on similar rules: we’ll go on dates every day for four days, answer questionnaires about it, and won’t hook up with anyone else during this period.

It sounds harmless enough, but I should have you know that when you decide to date your fabulously gay best friend, three things may happen:

1. It will be painfully expensive. You think you can take that diva to a fast-food joint? Think again.

2. Your friend will be so pretty that people will think you’re in a lesbian relationship.

3. You may or may not fall in love with each other. Just ask Jennifer Anniston — it’s totally possible.

Truth be told, I was a little hesitant to conduct this experiment with Pierre because I’m more than a little familiar with friendships getting ruined by failed romantic overtures. The idea of possibly getting into awkward situations with him was so unsavory to me that I did consider backing out and finding a random friend who I wouldn’t mind throwing under the bus if it didn’t work out well. Sorry, random friends.

When I did decide to go through with it, I realized what a great excuse this is for me to hang out with him again. We didn’t even do anything particularly interesting — we would just meet up to have dinner, go shopping, and talk about hot boys. It’s just like Sex and the City, but gayer.

In fact, I loved our final date — I picked up Pierre from the office, we did some grocery shopping, and we had a slumber party at my house. He cooked dinner for my family (my mother was enthralled with the pasta sauce he made) and we watched movies till morning.

I gotta admit, though, that dating, even if it happens to be my GBF (that’s “gay best friend” to the uninitiated), can be incredibly exhausting. Aside from the financial drain of going on dates, there were moments when I became resentful of what an inconvenience it is to allocate a chunk of my day to see Pierre for a few hours. Like, couldn’t we just send each other texts or talk on Skype? At least that way, I wouldn’t even need to put on pants.

I also didn’t expect to find our fourth rule (“Thou shall not hook up with anyone else”) to be moderately taxing. Is it just me or is it a truth universally acknowledged that when a girl ceases to be single, she seems even more available to other guys?

This isn’t to say that my life became the female version of an Axe commercial, but in the ridiculously short span of time that Pierre and I dated, guys from my past suddenly started coming back. It wasn’t like they were asking me out or anything, but these guys — some of whom I literally have not heard from in months — would send me cryptic text messages or ask me to hang out.

I even went to a party with Pierre after one of our dates and saw a guy that I’ve had an embarrassingly huge crush on since college. Aside from chronic awkwardness, I barely talked to him because it would have been unfair to my date to be extra-friendly with College Crush. Pierre, though, practically pushed me to the guy the whole night, threatening me that if I did not do anything, he’d snatch College Crush up like a McDonald’s Big Breakfast.

Some boyfriend, right? Ugh.

On a more serious note, dating my GBF made me realize that if dating would be half this fun with a straight guy, I’d be set for life.

But for now, as tempted as I am to maintain my “In a relationship with Pierre” status on Facebook because it seems like the milkshake that brings the boys to the yard, our brief but glittery love affair eventually came to an end. (To all our friends who said that they “saw it coming” and it’s part of “a cosmic prophecy,” better luck next time, I guess.)

In a way, yes, this experiment helped me love him even more. Despite knowing him for so long, spending all this time with him gave me an even deeper view into his life and his beliefs that I believe any man would be lucky to be with my GBF.

I just know that this is the first and last time we will ever venture into mushy feelings territory. Aside from our shared love for awesome shoes and One Direction, I love Pierre on such a deep, familial level that the possibility to downgrading to a boyfriend-girlfriend situation would be almost insulting to our closeness. He isn’t just a sister, he’s a sistah. You can’t just mess with blood pacts as serious as that, believe me.

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Check out more details and Pierre’s side of the dating experiment on fourdaysofdating.tumblr.com.

Feel free to tweet the author @margabee.