This was years ago, but in college I lived in a quad where four rooms and eight guys shared one bathroom. It wasn't a particularly large bath, but had an open, two-head shower, so we all got to know each other pretty well. The comfort zone was greater than when I lived in a traditional dorm, and all eight of us were friends to varying degrees.
Anyway, I was in one of my quadmate's rooms shooting the breeze one afternoon when he was trying to scratch his own back. He was contorting this way and that, trying to get at the itch with a pencil or whatever he could find, but to no avail. Finally I said, "I'll scratch your back if you want."
"Really?" he replied a little hesitantly.
"Sure, why not?" I said. "You're going to break your arm trying to get at it and you're not having much success."
He nodded okay and I moved from the chair I was in to the floor behind him, and proceeded to scratch his back while we watched something on television for the next several minutes. He was "oohing" and "yeah right thereing" while I did it, and there was a sort of intimacy to it for sure. We had a brief connection, although not a sexual one, but there was a sense of homo-eroticism.
After I finished he said thanks, then followed up with, "We can keep this just between you and me, you know." Of course that's what I did, but even the pseudo-secrecy added to the "otherness" of the experience.
I'm afraid that we men are typically a bit screwed up in our understanding of intimacy between friends and how to express it. Bummer.
