Close Friends

A homoerotic friendship between two straight men

"Close Friends" is something of a departure for the author from his usual style. It is a slow build-up of a friendship between two married men who admire each other physically and are emotionally close.

Don and Brian, who married young and were inexperienced, become instant close friends. The story explores contradictions in their thoughts as they come to terms with the closeness of their friendship and the different difficulties in their marriages. It deals intimately with a married man's sex life and the lack of satisfaction they ultimately each get.

This story is set in England in the early nineteen-sixties when attitudes to sex were very different from those of today.

Both men are anti-homosexual in their attitudes, nevertheless the heat slowly turns up in their homoerotic attraction both for themselves and for each other. They start off with a profound emotional friendship combined with an admiration of their own and each other's male physiques.

The straight friends become more physical in their shared love of sport, their friendly hugs and their embraces. This novel has elements of straight friendship, narcissistic love, male romance, locker room tales and lots of male nudity. Can married men be close friends without becoming gay friends?

"I doubt a man could love another man more than we do, apart from perverts, of course, but that's not real love is it?"

Their increasingly closer relationship and more physical friendship makes no sense to either of them, being fiercely heterosexual.

Eventually, having both been repulsed by the sexual attraction between them, as men, that they feel, they decide upon a wife swap to spice up their sex lives. The wife swapping has unexpected repercussions.

Will the inhibitions of the times prevent their narcissism and admiration of each other from developing into a gay friendship?

"Close Friends" is replete with admiration for male muscles and homoerotic scenes. If you are looking for more blatant gay sexual scenes, then one of Richard Peters' other novels might suit you better. But if you like a slow, sensual, erotic arousal, then read "Close Friends" and see how it all ends up.

Richard Peters' works, while containing explicit, gay, erotic porn descriptions never fail to move his readers emotionally.

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