320. BFBNR

A listener named Andy shares a new acronym with us! BFBNR: boyfriend, but not really.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Andy: Hi Nora, my name’s Andy, and I heard this was a show about acronyms, so I thought I would tell you about my BFBNR.  That stands for Boyfriend, But Not Really.  And this acronym came from a friend of mine, um,  His name was Josh and he and I grew up in a pretty conservative, um, Christian environment and we would hang out at church together a lot and Josh was one of the first people to ever come out of the closet to me and, um, I started to realize pretty quickly how much p  differently.

Um, in the e we grew up in and I alway of  desire to protect him a really sweet person. He  He was colorful, he was loud, he was funny, he was sweet, he was friendly. And, um,  when I was in high school, I had like a little bit of a crush on him at first. And then he came out to me and I was like, oh, that makes sense. 

And, um, It really just started me thinking differently about how I treat people and, um, eventually led me to my own coming out journey, um, as someone who’s bisexual. So,  um, he became a really important person in my life. But the way that we came up with BFBNR, um, we used to write little notes back and forth to each other during the church sermons.

And, um, I, ended up having a brief fling with a mutual friend of ours. And one time I was talking about him in our little note exchange. And, um, Josh asked me if he had a shortened BFF  to BF. So best friend forever to boyfriend. And I said, well, I’m not really sure. Uh, you know, I’m kind of getting mixed signals.

So he’s kind of my boyfriend maybe, but I’m not sure. And Josh said, Oh, so he’s your BF, BNR boyfriend, but not really.  And I thought that was so funny. And it ended up being actually pretty relevant to our friendship later because, uh, when I, whenever I was out in public with Josh, like if someone was giving me a hard time, I would just hold Josh’s hand and he would pretend to be my boyfriend so that they would leave me alone.

And, um. We would often hold hands in church, you know, we were very like just physically affectionate with each other But that was just kind of part of our friendship and a lot of the time people thought that maybe we were dating Which we thought was hilarious because obviously we weren’t but Josh wasn’t out to everyone either.

So  If anyone ever asked us if we were dating, I would just say he’s my BF BNR and no one else knew what that meant So So they would just sort of give me this confused look and move on with their lives. Um, so Josh ended up being my real boyfriend, but not really.  Um, I hope you enjoy the story and, um, it just gives me a little bit of joy every day to know that, um,  My friend  was protected that we were able to protect each other in a really incredibly hostile environment during our upbringing and  We were able to create our own little sense of queer community  Even within a place where our identities were not generally accepted or valued

  And this was our way of making sure that no matter what happened, even if people were mean to us, it was going to be okay.  So thanks for listening.