With apologies to Norman Bates

I've got a date tonight with a friendly, funny guy I met on GMM, and I just typed out the following email to him:

Hi, I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight. I don't think I'll be late as I'm coming straight from work. Feel free to text me if you run into any problems yourself.

Oh, did I mention that I'd be bringing my mother along tonight? Mother goes with me on all of my dates, to see if she approves of the guy and to make sure that we don't do any of the Devil's Dancing, as she calls it. It's very good of her to take such an interest in my wellbeing, and I'm sure you'll like her - a boy's best friend really is his mother.

Ha ha! I'm such a laugh riot. Content with my work, I pushed the mouse over to click Send, and then suddenly I remembered the most important piece of advice I have ever given to myself:

"DO NOT FREAK OUT POTENTIAL MEN WITH YOUR WEIRDASS SENSE OF HUMOUR!"

This advice is hard won and profound, if I do say so myself. So I deleted that last paragraph. If I like him there'll be plenty of time for him to discover the fathomless depths of my weirdness later.

Is that a 10-inch spanner in your toolbelt, or are you just happy to see me?

I've been chatting over email with a guy who contacted me through gaymatchmaker.com.au, and while we're getting to know each other we've fallen into the subject of hot tradesmen. As you do. His most memorable blue-collar lust object was his TV antenna installer:

"I had a TV antenna installed a while back by an absolute GOD! He was about 30, 6"2', tanned... the face of an angel and a body for sin. He was really chatty and friendly. After the installation, I gave him a can of coke and he saw my guitar. He picked it up and played a tune - he even sang to me - and I melted and nearly had to be scraped off the floor. I was so tempted to get on the roof and rip the antenna out so that I could call him back to re-install it."

I'm jealous; I've never been serenaded by a deity. The best I could manage was the delivery guy who brought me my new bed last year. He was a complete lowlife, but quite cute under all the mullet and checked flannel. Not to mention the fact that he could lift my double bed mattress over his head without so much as a grunt, while I could barely drag it across the floor. I was tempted to lay on the old GTR charm, pat my new bed and say, "So, wanna see what this baby can do?"... but then I remembered that I live in real life, not a porn video, so I thought better of it and let him go on his way unmolested.

Maybe my correspondent lives in a better suburb than me. I have a theory that the really hot tradesmen gravitate to servicing the wealthy areas of the city, where image is more important than cost. Obviously the trophy wives of the riverside precincts can't tolerate having ugly, flabby men digging out their koi pond or designing their coordinated garden lighting scheme. Put yourself in their position: what would your friends say if they've used 30 year old hunks in tight blue singlets to install their antique Italian fountains, and you've used a fat hairy 50 year old named Lou?

It scarcely bears thinking about.

If you have any hot tradesman tales of your own to tell, I'd love to hear about them in comments.

In which I get my bitch on, big time

Yesterday, while I was looking through an online shopping review site and thinking, "Who in this world really needs an electric wine bottle opener?" I noticed a banner ad for something called interracialgaydating.com.

It seemed rather specific, not to mention old fashioned. In these enlightened times who cares about race anymore, especially in the gay world, where possession of hard abs and a penis is more important than colour, creed or number of arms? But I was intrigued, so I had a look.

And I'm glad I did. If I were a cruel man I could make fun of interracialgaydating.com... and hey, since I am a cruel man, I will!

At best the tone of the site suggests that nobody should go there looking for love, but rather to collect the entire United Colors of Benetton Bedpost Notches. Black, brown, white, yellow - collect the whole set! Reducing a man to the colour of his skin rather than the content of his character is the sort of thing that should have gone out with segregated schools and smoking in hospitals, but it lives on here.

Of course this isn't the glossy high end of gay internet dating. If gaydar gets the gold medal in the Gay Dating Website marathon, and gaymatchmaker gets the silver or the bronze, then interracialgaydating gets the Tries Hard award. You remember, the award they gave to the Special Needs kid back in high school when he wheezed his way over the finish line half an hour after everyone else.

Excuse me for getting my bitch on, but I'm forced to this conclusion by the site itself. You only need to have a look at the membership, which is equally divided between unloveable losers and the ex-cons who prey on them. Old, fat weirdos with the social skills of an autistic toddler, versus hardened, skeezy men with cold eyes and bad tattoos. It seems to have evolved from an interracial dating site into Prison Pen Pals: The Inevitable Consequences.

I don't know about you, but I am so turned on right now.

In reality there are a few hotties - for example a hunky homeboy from Memphis with the sort of body that makes the average gay man drool. But if you read his profile you'll discover that he doesn't have a permanent address but does have a child, and that he works casually in "construction", and that he doesn't believe that age or looks matter in a relationship... all of which suggest a dim but crafty straight boy looking for a desperate gay man to exploit. From his perspective it probably doesn't seem like such a bad idea - you've just got out of prison, you've no job and nowhere to live, no woman with any money will touch you with a barge pole, but there's a number of gainfully employed gay guys who quiver at the thought of being your bitch. You could do worse.

And then, back on the other side of the equation, there are guys like this:

In my mind his name is Gunther, and he's looking for men who share his polymer glue fetish. Look at that creepy, unsmiling stare and feel your heart race!

It's enough to make you a) go straight and b) join the racial supremacy group of your choice.

Hey, I did warn you I was getting my bitch on big time.