What is love?

What is love? Have you ever been in love? I mean genuinely in love, as opposed to lusting after some guy at the gym or sighing over a straight friend.

To love someone, in the sense of being "in love", I suppose there's a mixture of admiration, attraction, agreeableness and value:

• If you love someone, you respect him - you look at his character, or his motivations, and you see traits that you wish you had more strongly in yourself.

• If you love someone, you like him - you think he's fun to be around, you enjoy talking to him, and he takes you in directions that you enjoy.

• If you love someone, you're attracted to him - you find that even if he's ugly or fat or under-endowed, there's still something about him that draws you in and makes you crave intimacy with him, physically as well as emotionally.

• If you love someone, you're valued by him - your feelings are in some way reciprocated, even if the reasons behind his feelings differ from yours.

If you don't experience all four of these things, can you really be said to be "in love"? If any one of them is missing, you merely have a good friend, an infatuation, or a fuck buddy.

I've never been in love, and I can't imagine ever saying "I love you" to anyone. While I can imagine that such a person might exist, I haven't met him yet and I doubt I ever will. Experience suggests that no one will ever manage to fill all four criteria, even though the criteria aren't that specific.

It doesn't seem fair. All around me I see people in love, even if something goes wrong and they fall out of love after a time. Why is it that I've never met a man whom I can admire, like, be attracted to and be valued by? It doesn't seem all that remote a possibility, but after 20 years of adulthood I still haven't met anyone who even temporarily fits the bill. Or, to utilise a cliche, it's not that I haven't met Mr Right... I haven't even met Mr Right Now!

One of these days I'm going to quiz my friends on what being "in love" means to them. I'll ask them about their partners past and present, and try to dig through the inevitable gush and platitudes to see what it really looks (or looked) like. Either "being in love" is a very rare thing and they're all deluding themselves, or there's something desperately wrong with me.

So much for my own grand designs

Maybe it's just because I'm not getting any, but watching Grand Designs last night I noticed, not for the first time, that Kevin McCloud is kinda hot. A little on the elderly side, maybe, but still good looking, passionate about his field of interest, and rather obviously gay.

So of course when I read a little about him on the internet, in order to find out what sort of boytoy he's shacked up with, I discovered that he's straight. And married. And father to five children.

A gay man with a wife might be simply maintaining a convincing beard. But a man with a wife and five kids? Nobody is that closeted.

Did I mention that I have the worst gaydar in human history?

I told you shaven headed guys were irresistible

The scary thing is that he sort of looks a little like my crush guy. Well, from the neck up, anyway.

They're called "crushes" because they hurt. Especially if you drop one on your foot.

I unexpectedly bumped into one of my crush guys on Saturday, at a party thrown by a mutual friend.

He really is too good to be true. He's friendly, gentle and engaging, but also tall, lean, strong and good looking. In addition he shaves his head, leaving just a bit of stubble, which I always find irresistible - you know that a guy who chooses to shave his head isn't going to be the sort of man who fusses about silly affectations like tinted highlights or fauxhawks or bad bleached tips.

We got chatting, and this was the first time I've actually had an opportunity to talk to him for more than just a few exchanges. We talked about football and jazz, the environment and coffee culture, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. He certainly wasn't trying to disengage and find another conversation. When we moved off in search of food, we kept talking. I was sensitive to any sign that he might want to end our conversation and move on, but I didn't detect any.

My gaydar is possibly the worst in existence, but I did pick up a few interesting details:

• He's in his late 20s and doesn't have a girlfriend, despite his agreeable personality and extreme hunkiness.
• He lives alone, in an apartment in one of the city's gayest suburbs.
• He works in a traditionally female job.
• He dresses better than most men his age.

These are all good signs of gayitude, and he's the sort of guy who would be closeted if he was indeed gay, but all that doesn't prove anything. Human beings have an vast capacity for projection, so I'm well aware that I might only see what I want to see.

When he left the party I invited him to a gathering I was having the following night. He didn't show, and although that can be readily explained, it certainly doesn't suggest that he's as smitten with me as I am with him. So for the moment I can't do anything more than sigh, pine, and remember the way a few of his chest hairs peeped over the top of his T-shirt, just below the hollow of his throat, and imagine the thrill of exploring downwards from there.

I know, I know, all of this is a total non-event, but since it's been two weeks since I posted anything, I thought I should make an effort to say something, even if it is just recounting an episode of unrequited lust.

We gays are all about tolerance and diversity

I pulled this out of an otherwise reasonable profile on GMM:

For the remaining person still reading, heres a quick way to see if we would be compatible: If you vote Labor, Democrat, or Green your probably in. If you vote Liberal, CDP, FF or One Nation -I'm probably not interested.

It's nice to see a man with an open mind. He'd probably get along well with another newbie whose tagline reads:

America visiting Perth (I hate George Bush)

Hopefully the two of them can get together, and end up snuggling on the couch before a roaring fire, gazing into each other's eyes and talking wistfully of Bob Brown and Hillary Clinton.

More internet filth!

Homosexuality is not the only love that dares not speak its name.

I'm not as together as I think I am

I've been lucky to have made a lot of close male friends over the years to whom I am not even remotely attracted. There are some others for whom I've had short, transitory attraction, which has calmed down over time and become something more realistic, comfortable and unerotic. I find that if you're patient the yearning dies down and you can get along on a satisfying platonic level. After all, there's no point in sighing over someone who is straight. There's no future in it. It's better to just be friends and save your interest for other gay men.

However there are some guys for whom the attraction just won't stop, no matter how hard you try.

I have a friend. He's single and in his late twenties. He has a good heart and a kind nature, and he smiles so much that he's developed early crows' feet around his eyes. He's cute rather than handsome, but that just means that his inner beauty has more opportunity to make itself visible. He's generous and patient, serious when he needs to be and fun-loving when he doesn't.

He's also as dumb as a bag of hammers, forever being taken advantage of by people who are smarter than him... which is most people. Perhaps because there's so little going on inside his skull, he's compensated by devoting himself to physical acuity. He's superbly fit, with the sort of amazing body that comes from endless training. Shave his chest and he could be one of the boys from the underwear packets.

So, he's a dumb, muscular, sweet-natured hunk... and every time I think I've managed to control my feelings for him I bump into him at a party and I instantly feel like I've been belted over the head with The 4x2 of Lust. I find excuses to touch him in acceptable ways, like a clap on the shoulder or a friendly nudge, and it takes all my will to let go and not let my hands slide down. It also takes me a day or two to get over him every time I see him, which fortunately isn't too often.

If it were just physical, it wouldn't be so bad, but he's such a nice person that I could easily fall in love with him. I could imagine being with him, living together, sharing everything, caring for him and being cared for by him... and then of course retiring to the bedroom for long, long nights of sweaty, wild, wake-up-the-neighbours sex.

But it's not going to happen, because he's as straight as they come. I know him well enough to know that. I'd love it to be otherwise, and I could pretend that it was, but that's the way it is. Yearning for people to be something other than what they are will not make them so, and that's something that everyone, gay or straight, male or female, needs to learn eventually

It's just really, really hard.



(No, that's not him. That's just someone who causes a similar amount of wistful sighing.)