Gunther from Friends has been called many things. Including, rightly so, the saddest character on television. And also, well, he’s been deemed very obviously gay. Or at least Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), the long-standing object of his affection, certainly seemed to think so. For that’s what she indicated when she told him in “The One With the Halloween Party,” “Someday you’ll make some man very happy.” Then again, perhaps Rachel, still embedded in her Long Island mentality, can’t just accept that Gunther is what those of the time would call “metrosexual.” Minus the part where he actually looks good.
More than anything, however, Gunther’s crush on Rachel felt like something merely to have for the sake of having it. Perhaps because being asexual in the oversexed 90s (especially in “New York”) was even less understood than it is now, it felt safe for Gunther to faux-lust after Rachel. And maybe some of that admiration truly was genuine. Even if from a place of creepy respect… of the variety that Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs and Hedy from Single White Female know all about. Gunther, too, could easily be imagined to partake of some of the unsettling behaviors these characters are known for during his off hours from Central Perk. That is, if he ever truly leaves the place. For one can also envision him lurking in the shadows and watching with a combination of rage and the urge to masturbate during that iconic kiss shared between Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel in the season two episode, “The One Where Ross Finds Out.” Finds out what? Well, that Rachel reciprocates his now-suppressed-again feelings.
Speaking to the point about Gunther’s stalker-y tendencies likely resulting in the sort of behavior seen in One Hour Photo or Taking Lives, Chandler asks Gunther during a rare exchange, “So, uh, what do you do…when you’re not working here?” He replies in his usual deadpan manner, “You don’t need to fill these silences.” Gunther, possibly not wanting to reveal anything too personal because it would indicate he has an allover wall collage devoted to Rachel, never allows anything to be known about himself. There are glimpses of the man he might be outside of Central Perk, like when he speaks fluent Dutch or happens to have enough money lying around to buy Rachel’s Sphynx cat (perhaps saved from his days as an actor on All My Children rather than the four dollars an hour he claims to make at Central Perk), but, because of his deliberate mutability—designed for comic relief when in fact it’s actually the saddest thing in the world—we’re never meant to know much. Other than he must have a sizable apartment to be able to offer it to Rachel…even if his intent was to share the space with her.
This, indeed, was part of a kiboshed plotline to have Rachel move in with Gunther, which never could have happened because it would have unveiled too much about his (a)sexuality. And yes, even those “straight” men who pine away for women turn to others for sexual release, just as Ross did for most of the series. Gunther, in contrast, is never seen with another woman, and even feels obliged to confess to Rachel when Phoebe decides to kiss him one day at Central Perk (so she can catch his cold). The truth is, it’s easy to picture Gunther stabbing himself in the urethra as a form of masturbation for some kind of release than it is to picture him with a woman.
As for Ross finding out about Rachel’s love for him, she, in contrast, chooses to never find out about Gunther’s “suppressed” love for her precisely because it’s more about the theatrical performance of it for Gunther (or rather, for the show’s writers to infuse more “comedy”) than it is about actually getting some returned affection. Hence the anticlimax of the final scene between them where he at last shares his “feelings.” The things that are “extensions” of Rachel are what he prefers to deal with anyway, like the Sphynx cat, Mr. Whiskerson, in “The One With the Ball.”
The dissatisfying way in which Gunther finally confesses his “true” feelings for Rachel also adds to the belief that he’s doing it more for the sake of having a “coda” to his grand role as Man Obsessed with Woman. While he might genuinely be attracted to Rachel physically, it doesn’t necessarily mean he would ever want to act too deeply on that attraction. For even though many asexuals can experience romantic love, they don’t want to “consummate” it on a physical level (lest it’s something more chaste like hand-holding). So, at best, Gunther appears heteromantic and friend-focused with his “crush” on Rachel. Perhaps, more than anything, wanting to have a group of friends of his own—because obviously Rachel’s group is way too annoying to deal with…and, yeah, they’re too self-involved to try to fully include him.
While Gunther is “shy” when it suits him, he has no trouble being, let’s face it, bitchy when the occasion strikes him. Like in “The One Where Richard and Monica Are Friends.” For just because Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) can’t bring herself to tell the guy she’s been dating that the shorts he’s wearing always show his balls, that doesn’t mean Gunther can’t as he approaches them after she breaks up with him in Central Perk to announce, “Hey buddy, this is a family place. Put the mouse back in the house.” The terseness with which Gunther conveys his wholesomeness is in keeping with a man who doesn’t bother with “foibles” like sex organs.
The only time Gunther does give in to a vice openly, it’s of the non-sexual variety, as he takes a serene drag from Chandler’s cigarette and comments, “Oh dark mother, once again I suckle at your smoky teat.”
In another disturbing moment, we hear from Gunther in voiceover format, “I love Rachel. I wish she was my wife.” The fact that his thoughts are just as creepy (and simultaneously “maidenly”) as we thought does little to make Gunther endearing. Least of all as an unwitting representative of the asexual community.
“Say Rachel, I was wondering if you’d like to go to a movie with me sometime…as my lover,” he recites to himself in another voiceover moment after Ross and Rachel’s first breakup. The one that sadistic Gunther himself catalyzed by telling Rachel that Ross fucked the copy girl. But before Gunther can say anything gross out loud, Mark (Steven Eckholdt), the co-worker from Bloomingdale’s that Ross was always so jealous of, expresses his own feelings for her. This sends Gunther into the back-of-the-house where a series of dishes proceed to crash and clatter indicating his further rage and repression. Somewhat fittingly, the vest he’s wearing bears the card suit of clubs. Those in the asexual community often call themselves aces and use the varying suits (diamonds, clubs, spades and hearts) to convey their romantically-oriented identity. It would seem, therefore, that he’s on the cusp of subconsciously admitting something to himself via this fashion choice.
The episode where Gunther faints at merely being touched lasciviously by Rachel further infers less a symptom of being “in love” and more a lack of familiarity with touch, as most “forty-year-old virgins” and asexuals are. Perhaps this was the true moment when Gunther realized that admiration from afar truly is preferable. For even if he was a sexual person, all that buildup in his mind to the moment of actually “being” with Rachel (a.k.a. having sex with her) would have resulted in the very thing Rachel feared happened to Ross in the museum when it turned out to be “just a juice box” the two rolled over during their foreplay.
