@Vazbol I've never personally had any truck with the "friendships cannot survive an admission of attraction" idea, indeed I mentioned my lady's best friend earlier in this topic, and they're still! very much best friends.
Then again, generally anyone I've been interested in myself has been a friend first, this was certainly the case with my lady, and of course Britain tends to be less gender polarised anyway making female/male casual friendships easier, I think than in some other places, though that is a hole other matter.
Interestingly enough aaron77, I have on a couple of occasions been asked if I was gay, once I suspect by a girl who was interested but whose interest I didn't share.
People have also asked me if I'm asexual too.
I don't tend to find such questions offensive, just slightly baffling, then again if people don't ask they don't know so I don't mind too much.
I also don't personally take using the word "gay" as an insult, I just tend to use it to describe someone attracted to the same gender they are, though I do know one chap who is gay who really doesn't like the word, mostly I think because he associates it with men who ponse around in pink spangly tites, then again he's in his fifties so likely he grew up with far more of a stigma about it.
I think the only time I have ever got mildly annoyed when someone asked me if I was gay, was when I told her politely I wasn't and she responded with "then why are you being so defensive about it?"
Then again she was a bit weird and tended to believe everyone bi and just didn't know it, so I wouldn't count her attitude as typical.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)