Saturday, August 29, 2009

Dismissing the loser.



Someone (I think it may have been Joe.My.God) once chronicled the phenomenon of the sudden cruising backpedal. You see a guy who looks mighty good, so you turn on the smile and the encouraging body language... then he changes position or steps into better light and you suddenly see that he's actually far from good. There follows a furious reversing as you try to undo the body language and make the smile polite rather than sexy.

This phenomenon is even more pronounced online. People tend to put their best pictures up on their profiles, where the angle of the head hides the double chin or cropping hides the big ears. They have also had time to carefully edit their text to hide the hints of neediness, bitchiness and/or stupidity that come out in spontaneous communication. It can be almost impossible to tell if a guy is worthy or not from such profiles, and you don't eventually find out until you've been chatting for an hour and he's sent you other, less flattering photos. Then you just want to get the hell out... but you want to do it with an element of dignity for everyone concerned.

So what do you say when a guy you thought was a 10 turns out to be a 1.0? From my experience there's a lot of remarkably ingenious psychology in use out there. Competently handled, a subtle dismissal can almost be a compliment. Observe the following true life examples, with ratings based on style and effectiveness.

1. (Following a date, in response to "Do you want to go out again?") "I'm all tied up this week, but maybe some time after that?"

I rather like this one. It pushes any possible communication far enough into the future to allow interest to cool (and realisation to dawn), but close enough to the present that it doesn't instantly make him feel completely unimportant. It allows for a gentle, gradual let down. Rating: A-

2. "Give me your number - I'm going out now but I'll buzz you when I get back."

A little amateurish, but still quite effective. It prevents a guy to whom you've given your number from calling you for at least a few hours, during which time he'll hopefully click that you regret showing an interest in him in the first place. Of course he might eventually call you, but if he's that clueless you're entitled to be a little more direct when you dismiss him. Rating: B-

3. "Well, I'm off to bed. I'll catch you again over the weekend."

"Off to bed" is a valid excuse - I've used it myself more than once - but frankly its effectiveness is a little blunted when you try using it at 9.30pm, as was the case with one guy who used it on me recently. The "catch you over the weekend", too, is not the best line. It's too specific in timeframe, and it's not specific enough in who'll take the initiative. Rating: C-

4. "I gotta go, but I look forward to chatting with you again."

I've used this one myself. I like to think that it validates the other guy (ie you're worth communicating with) without giving him any reason to think that I'm desperate to see him. Rating: C+

5. "I'm sort of putting all of my effort into someone else right now, but if that falls through maybe we can get together?"

Ironically I think this is unintentional genius. It's so completely clumsy, self-centred and clueless that you feel you've dodged a bullet in getting rejected. It's so idiotic that it's actually clever. Rating: B+

5. (dead silence)

This isn't a good idea. It doesn't say "Oops, you're worth less than I thought" so much as "You're worth nothing." And people tend to get cranky and vindictive when you say that. Go figure. Rating: F

Friday, August 28, 2009

Frot you talkin' 'bout, Willis?



I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought that "frottage" sounds less like a sex act and more like a rather sour French cheese. It must be one of the least onompatopaeic words in the English language. I'm also sure that I'm not the first person to have thought that it seems like a bit of a waste of time. It's basically an aspect of foreplay that's been inexplicably upgraded to sex in its own right, like an anonymous chorus girl who suddenly pushes the lead actress out of her way to grab centre stage.

Frottage as a core sexual activity has a reputation as something for those either in the closet or in denial. There's an element of blokiness to it as, to put it delicately, no orifice gets invaded. If necessary it can be dismissed as two curious guys having a bit of fun, in a way that other forms of sex can't.

Frottage has been brought to my attention as I've been chatting to a guy online who lists it as the self-imposed limit of his sexual activity. He gave me a link to the frottage website frotmen.org, and exploring it has been an interesting peek into yet another specialised sexual community.

First of all, never trust a website with clashing fonts, a lack of frames and less structure than a bowl of custard.

Second of all, never trust any sex-based group that feels the need to publish "policy papers".

Third of all, a minor activity cannot be used a define a larger morality. Symbolise it, yes, but not define it. I'm all for monogamy, fidelity and love, but these things are grandly out of scale with the act of rubbing one's penis against another man.

Fourthly, fifthly, and so on until well into the triple figures, frottage is not a "holy sacrament". It's not the act of a "warrior". It doesn't result in "salvation", unless of course the particular problem from which you need saving is not having a penis rubbed against you. And doing it rather than anal sex doesn't make you less gay.

My online friend is very excited about being a Frotman. I feel like saying to him, "Call it whatever you like, dude, but I know a cult when I see one." There's nothing particularly noble or warrior-like about any niche sexual activity. Sex is primarily an intimate act of love, not a philosophical statement.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Do the warning signs say Stop or Give Way?



Over the last couple of weeks I've been chatting to an interesting guy online.

On paper he looks bad. Not Charles Manson bad, but certainly Earl Hickey bad. He's unemployed and not entirely clear about his prospects. His writing suggets an education that sputtered and died somewhere in his mid-teens. He's suffered from depression and been through a range of therapies, from the professional to the quack. I can see that he's created a psychological coping structure to deal with his issues, which is good, but the fact that I can see it is bad: well-adjusted people don't need noticeable coping structures.

So as you can see, getting involved with this guy would seem to be a disaster.

But in spite of all that, he seems like a nice, genuine person, and nice, genuine people are rare in the sleazy and occasionally psychotic world of gay online dating. I get the impression that he needs a sane and sensible friend to be on his side, and it feels good to be able to encourage him and offer advice. In my breezier moments I think that it would be fun and/or interesting to meet him face to face and learn more about his journey. But then when I'm feeling a little more realistic, I wonder if I'm risking one of those toxic relationships that destroy lives. Especially if he turns out to be really hot, and all of my level-headed analysis gets flattened by hormones.

There's the rub, you see. Sometimes loneliness makes us ignore warning signs that would be pretty bloody self-evident if were viewing them objectively.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Pretty is as pretty does.



Early this evening I got a flirtatious message on gaydar from a very attractive man:



We chatted for a bit, and I got to see that this very attractive man has a very hot body:



I asked why a very attractive man with a very hot body was fluttering his eyelashes at someone sixteen years older than him and of rather more marginal appeal. He replied that it was his idea of community service, which made me laugh.

We swapped phone numbers and he offered to give me a call once he got back from the gym. And either he has the longest workout routine in the history of physical effort, or the gym he’s returning from is in Reykjavik. It’s been over three hours.

People are odd creatures. Maybe he enjoys the electronic flirting rather than the follow through. Or maybe he was messaging half a dozen other guys at the same time and in the end chose one of them. Or, most likely, maybe he bumped into friends while at the gym and went out for waffles.

I hope they were nice waffles.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Bring back the dignity! And the pool hunks!



The process of updating my gaydar profile has made me consider that particular website in a new way. If you've used it for more than a few months you'll know that they've recently overhauled their title screens. The hot yet G-rated hunks lounging around the swimming pool are gone. They've been replaced, as far as I can tell, by the contents of Jean Paul Gaultier's subconscious. Gym-honed clowns in fantasy sailor outfits and silly mirrored sunglasses. Three guys who look like rutting cavemen. An older man who seems to have dieted and exercised so much that his skin no longer fits properly. And a neatly dressed geek guy who appears to have accidentally wandered in from a generic clip art photoshoot next door.

The effect is one of bizarre randomness. The old design suggested snapshots taken at a hot pool party. The new one suggests that the web designers just threw up their hands and said, "Fine, gay stuff, whatever, just pull some images out of the file."

Gaydar is a funny old place. With the redesign it seems to be trying to reassert its identity as a gay swinger site; a resource for finding that particular variation of twink or bear you need to fulfill a very specific sexual fantasy. But I would have thought that, as society become more and more accepting of homosexuality and more willing to consider it as "normal", sites like gaydar would evolve into something based less on hardcore sex and more on love and relationships. After all, while there are heterosexual sex personals, they tend to be out on the fringe, while rsvp.com and match.com are in the centre.

But it seems that gay men aren't much interested in such things. Match.com and rsvp.com both have male-for-male sections, but they aren't worth the effort. I did some searches on them last night, looking for guys between the ages of 29 and 49 in my city... and the numbers speak for themselves:

match.com - 25 guys.
rsvp.com - 31 guys.
gaydar.net - 847 guys.

So it seems that when gay men write personal ads, they tend to be sex-based rather than love-based.

Forgive me if I'm out of touch, but aren't we supposed to be normal people? Haven't gay activists spent considerable time and effort telling straight society that we want the same things they want - solid relationships, marriage, families, and acceptance into mainstream culture? And yet in the places where straights don't go, where we can most be ourselves... we reveal ourselves to be the same sex-obsessed and shallow creatures that activists dismiss as hateful caricatures in the outside world.

Go figure.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Working to my strengths isn't working.



I always tend to feel lonlier in the cooler months. It's the long dark evenings, I guess. In addition while the spark of hope ignited by my colleague at work didn't come to anything, it does seem to have reawoken my need for love.

So I've renovated my gaydar profile. I took some photos with my new camera, chose the best one, and after a bit of careful cropping and colour balancing I got a result I liked. I looked good. The structure of the picture makes it stand out, and if I saw it online, amidst the photos of bare decapitated torsos with sucked in stomachs and skinny naked asses, I'd think to myself, "Hey, there's a good looking guy I'd like to get to know."

I tinkered with the text but only barely. It says all that I want it to say, and let's face it, the text is only an adjunct to the picture. The picture is what draws guys in, and it's generally all they need to decide if they're going to contact you or not. In my experience the text only reinforces impressions made by the picture.

I put the revised profile up late on Monday night, then checked in 24 hours later to see if it had generated any interest.

Cue crickets chirping, and the occasional tumbleweed rolling across the pages of gaydar.

Eventually, after spending a few hours online and leaving my virtual footprints everywhere, I got a few twinges of interest. Hey, nice picture, said one. Another gave me the old "I think you're nice" tag. A third engaged me in a brief conversation about our favourite authors, but it didn't particularly go anywhere.

Why was no one interested? The picture made me look attractive, masculine and confident, with a warm smile and a spark in my eye. What else could men want?

I got my answer while browsing some of the other profiles:




Well that explains a lot. How in the hell am I supposed to compete with this?

My attractive, interesting headshots are all very good, but when there's plain photographic evidence of a young man's gymnastic flexibility and spectacular ass available elsewhere, the headshots don't stand a chance. Given the choice between a date with this and a date with my headshot, even I'd go with Bubble Butt Boy. I'm only human.

My ass is never going to look that good. I'd better get used to crickets and tumbleweeds.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

What doesn't make a man gay?



Almost all of the traffic that this blog gets from Google searches comes via one specific search: "what makes a man gay?" The traffic comes to me because of this post, and because it's a question that few blogs bother to consider. This is odd, when you think about it, because it's a question that every gay man asks himself as part of his search for identity.

Of course my blog isn't the only place that this Google search identifies. While checking my stats the other day, I clicked on this link to a Times review from 2007 of Desmond Morris' book 'The Naked Man'.

Desmond Morris is best known as the author of the seminal 1967 anthropological work 'The Naked Ape'. His theory, as outlined in the review, is that homosexuals are men who do not break away from the all-male bonding that boys seem to prefer for a roughly ten year stretch between toddlerhood and puberty. For some reason - possibly a misfiring of hormones - they stay stuck in a preference for the company of men, even as their interests turn sexual.

This is, of course, utter bunk.

I've met several little boys who couldn't be more proto-gay if they minced around wearing pink feather boas singing Liza Minnelli medleys... which they occasionally do. We've all met such boys. Their homosexuality isn't an upcoming failure to make the leap into an interest in girls. It's already part of who they are, something they started expressing from the very first moment they could express anything. Puberty does nothing other than ramp up the testosterone and supercharge their orientation with horniness and lust.

Reading this review makes me suspect that research into the causes of homosexuality is a young person's game. When looking for reasons and influences, it seems that every generation of researchers latches onto the scientific discipline du jour and clings to it, like a barnacle on a ship's hull, for the rest of their days. It's kind of alarming to witness otherwise impeccably-credentialed scientists supporting theories that are about as scientifically rigorous as phrenology and perpetual motion. It seems that young researchers are the only ones who have any chance of coming to the issue with open minds.

Desmond Morris was 80 years old when 'The Naked Man' was published. Candidly, he may be too old to be able or willing to consider fresh ideas or advancements in other fields. He's viewing the world though the mindset of his 1967 heyday, when homosexuality was still considered a psychiatric disorder. Weighed down by the baggage of more than half a century of misinformation and misinterpretation, he fails to grasp truths that are self-evident to any gay man.

Apart from being set in his ways, why does Morris support such a ridiculous theory? Part of the answer, I think, comes from the comment thread following the review. "Why are you even asking this question", demand several commenters. "Stop trying to put me in a box. I am who I am and I'm fabulous!" To which I can only reply, "Well good for you, honey, but if scientists listened to you and stopped trying to find out how the world worked, we'd still think the earth was flat and cower in terror during every thunderstorm."

There's no use in pretending that people don't want to know why some men are gay. It's probably for the best if gay men themselves look into it, tell scientists when their theories are off-kilter, and try to get to the bottom of the puzzle. Knowledge is always a good thing.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Another mirage



Around three thirty on Friday afternoon I had a phone call from the guy mentioned in my last post. Friday was the last day of his project with my department, and he had some final pieces of paperwork to give me. He wanted to make sure I was still going to be there at five o'clock. I was, as I had some extra work to do, but everyone else was leaving at four so I'd be there by myself.

I hadn't expected to hear from him again. I'd thought that he'd already given me all the documents I needed. Was this just an excuse to see me at a time when the office wasn't crowded with people?

After the blushing episode I was filled with trepidation. I concentrated on my work and did a lot of deep breathing. Every time I heard someone walking up the hall outside my office my heart started beating faster.

And finally, just before five, he was there. Looking good in a snug blue sweater. He gave me his paperwork and we chatted about the project. I managed to keep my side of the conversation rolling along. I leaned against my desk. He hooked his hand over the top of the doorframe and leaned against it in a relaxed way. I kept the papers and a pen in my hands, because I found that if I put them down my hands started to shake. I smiled, I chuckled, I made jokes, and most importantly, I didn't blush. I gave every impression of being a normal person, which under the circumstances was something of an achievement.

And then the conversation finished, we wished each other well, and he left. I listlessly banged away at some work for ten more minutes, then I went home.

I'd done my best. I'd given him an opportunity, and he'd decided not to take it. If you're wondering, "Why the hell didn't you just ask him out?", well, there are two answers. One, it's not my style to be so forward. And two, technically I'm one of his supervisors (a kind of adjunct to his boss), and I'm pretty sure that asking an underling out on a date is frowned upon, perhaps even an outright offense. If he initiates, on the other hand, it's probably okay. Which is a moot point, since he didn't.

I'm satisfied that I did the best I could. As I drove home that evening I didn't have any of those "Damn, that's what I should have said!" moments. But it seems my subconscious wasn't as satisfied. All through the weekend it seemed that everywhere I looked there was a happy gay couple - in the checkout line at the deli, having breakfast at the coffee shop, browsing the shelves at Blockbuster. At several moments across Saturday and Sunday I realised that I was 90% of the way to bursting into tears. Who are these people? For what secret source did they find these significant others? Why haven't I been told about it?

I suppose my point is that it's easy to tolerate loneliness when you don't have your nose rubbed in the possibility of making a connection. But when everyone around you seems to have achieved what you want without all that much effort, it just hurts.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Thwarted by my own hormones and blood vessels.



There's a guy who has had reason to come into my department at work about four or five times in the last couple of months. Other than setting my gaydar off every time he came in, he didn't make much of an impression on me. About my age, average looks... I treated him with the same professional amiability that I treat everyone.

Then a couple of days ago he dropped by the office to give me some paperwork, and instead of a suit he was wearing casual clothes. The top three buttons of his light cotton shirt were undone, and as he handed me the documents I got a momentary glimpse of the curve of his pecs, the light dusting of hair on his chest... and it was if someone had flicked the sexual attraction switch in my brain and set off an alarm.

I was trying to answer his question on some point of bureaucracy but all I could hear was CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! I struggled to look him in the eye, much less give a smooth and professional answer to his question.

The next day he dropped by to give me another piece of paper I needed, and it was terrible. As soon as he walked into my office I felt myself starting to blush. I'm pretty sure that my ears were turning so red that they could have been used as traffic lights. As a result it was all I could do to say the right words like "good morning" and "thank you", rather than turning on the old GTR charm and delicately probing to see if my gaydar was reading true. Maybe it's my imagination, but he seemed quite happy to get out of there, no doubt wondering why this GTR guy was blushing furiously while discussing quarterly reviews.

If this were television he'd come back later, even after I'd made a fool of myself, and quietly ask me if I wanted to go out and get a drink sometime.

But unfortunately this isn't television. This is life, and it's a bitch.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Suddenly I'm feelin' it.



Number of days since I went on a date: 346

Number of days since I kissed a guy: 346

Number of days since I had sex: 392

All of these things were so long ago that I don't actually remember the exact times. It's a good thing I wrote them down in my blog.

You what would be an even better thing? If the numbers were a lot smaller.