Thursday, March 22, 2007

You're either Channing Tatum or Jabba the Hutt

One of the things I've discovered as I dip my toe into the big pink ocean of gayitude is that it's ruled by the principle of Hot or Not.

I like to think that there is a scale of acceptability when looking for prospective partners. At one end, the attractive, hot bodied sex god who is also charming, funny, good natured and kind hearted... and rich. At the other end, the ugly, smelly, disease-ridden mutant with an abrasive personality, countless neuroses and dangerously psychopathic tendencies... who has failed at everything he's ever done. Between these extremes lie everyone else. Finding the right partner involves recognising your place in the spectrum and looking around at others in a similar position.

But apparently this spectrum idea isn't popular. My experience suggests that while I'm bumbling along in analogue, every other gay man thinks in binary. Either you are The One or you are The Zero.

There appears to be a certain level of looks, personality and charisma that makes a man a One. If you are a One, then the world is your sexual and romantic oyster. If your relationship (or even your one night stand) falls apart for some reason, there are a hundred other men elbowing each other in the doorway trying to get your attention.

But if, for some reason, you fail to make the grade, then you are a Zero. Nobody wants you. Even other Zeros don't want you - they're all clamouring after the Ones. You're doomed to a lifetime of desperate loneliness and crushed hopes.

The weird thing is that there's no inbetween here. No one is "okay". You're either "great" or "terrible", and I'm pretty sure this isn't the case in the straight world.

At this point I don't know if I'm a One or a Zero. I do know that if I see an interesting-looking guy on GMM, or meet one at a party, I generally find myself being ignored. This would be understandable if these guys were Calvin Klein models, but they're just ordinary men with various pluses and minuses. That doesn't bode well.

I guess I just have to hope that I'm not the only one looking for someone who's "okay".

Monday, March 19, 2007

When good men make bad choices


Dear Mr Second From The Left,

Congratulations! You seem to have done very well for yourself, both in the genetic lottery and in the discipline to stick to a training regime. Your body is stunning; a work of homoerotic art. You could bounce a cannon ball off that stomach, and those arms look like they could bench press a Toyota. Even in a crowd of very hot men, the least of whom (Mr Plaid Shorts, I'm looking at you) would set gay hearts aflutter, you stand out as the hottest. You deserve all the attention that you no doubt get.

And yet I must point out that you are letting yourself down in your choice of clothing. There's nothing actually wrong with your dark blue board shorts, but they're not doing you any favours. By way of contrast, imagine what would happen if you stepped out in a pair of these:


Let's just say that you wouldn't have to travel to the beach any more. You could just go to a random patch of sand and swim in all the drool from any women and gay men in the general vicinity.

And if you think swimming in drool is gross... well, it is, but it's hardly the grossest thing gays have dreamt up to do with their bodily fluids.

Yours (I wish)

GTR

Friday, March 16, 2007

Another valued member of our team

Professionalism is creeping into many areas of life, even the world of sleazy anonymous gay sex. Witness this tagline from a bloke in Sydney calling himself man-lover on gaymatchmaker.com.au.

i have a profesional ass and am always horny

Note to self: create a Sex CV, then pull an excerpt from it to use as my tagline. Perhaps "I bring a sense of dedication and enthusiasm to every position" or "I am an effective team player".

What is a professional ass, anyway? Is it pin-striped? Is it more efficient than an amateur ass, or does it just get paid more? Is it required to hold to a higher Standard of Practice, or does it just have to be ISO-9000 certified? Does it have an enforcable Code of Ethics? Is it affected by anti-discrimination and equal opportunity legislation?

Personally, I question the professionalism of any ass that doesn't even know how to spell "professional".

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Re: Statement of Intent

Why am I starting this blog?

I dunno. I'm in my mid-30s, male, gay and in the closet - way, way back in the closet, so far back that it's snowing and there's a lamp post and I'm rappin' with Mr Tumnus. He says hey. It's quite nice here (Tumnus has a Playstation - woot!) and I'm in no hurry to step out. However, as I get older I feel the need to know more about what being gay means and what it's like for other people.

Before I made my first tentative steps outside my closet, I only knew a couple of gay men on the periphery of my social circle... and they were creeps. The only other gay men I knew were the obligatory gay characters on every groovy sitcom or drama show on TV, and I was beginning to suspect that they weren't really very accurate. Were all gay men really that straight-acting, good-looking and unsleazy?

So I set out to do some research. It turns out that the masculine, admirable sitcom gay from 2007 is about as realistic as the shrieking, feather boa'd sitcom gay from 1977. Thus the average person today is no better informed about what it really means to be gay than he was 30 years ago. All he's getting is the opposite extreme of PR.

But more of that in future entries.

On a lighter note, this blog is also a way for me to chronicle my adventures in that well-spring of unintentional humour, gaymatchmaker.com.au. There's nothing like horniness, desperation, poor communication skills and deep, deep vacuity for a really good laugh.