Insert lame pun about "camping" here.

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was going on an end of year camping trip with The Human Dynamo, KCG and their respective boyfriends, and I revealed that I was dreading it. So much so, in fact, that I emailed the Human Dynamo and told him that unless we could find some other singles to go with us, I didn't think I'd be able to handle it.

Fortunately The Virtuoso decided he'd like to join us, so I wouldn't be alone in my singleness. Then a couple of days beforehand, Mr Singular decided that he'd come down for a couple of days too. I was surprised, and a little trepidatious given that I thought he might be jealous of The Virtuoso, but I couldn't say no, and anyway it would be a good opportunity for him to meet my most important friends.

The rustic cabin we'd hired had three bedrooms. The master bedroom with a big double bed was claimed by The Human Dynamo, since he'd made the booking. The second bedroom with twin beds was claimed by KCG, who wasted no time in pushing the twins together to form a double. Mr Singular and I went into the tiny third bedroom, which had two sets of bunkbeds. Lastly The Virtuoso was banished to the living room, since his elephantine snoring would make it impossible for anyone else in the same room to sleep.

In the days prior to the trip I'd taken a vociferous position, only half jokingly, that there wasn't to be any sex on this trip. The walls were too thin, the mental pictures too gross, and my equanimity too fragile. KCG agreed, since he's far too shy to handle the thought of anyone overhearing his sexual exploits. The Human Dynamo just laughed at me and said that he would do whatever he wanted.

And so naturally, on the first night that we were both there, I had sex with Mr Singular.

It wasn't easy, in the lower bunk of a single bunk bed, while attempting to do it in near silence. But we managed. There was no penetration, given the space and noise constraints, but he rimmed me and I blew him until he came. And since there were no snide comments from The Human Dynamo or his boyfriend (who were in the adjoining room) the next morning, presumably no one was any the wiser.

The next evening we simply lay together while I stroked him, getting him so hard that his cock seemed about to burst out of its skin. I don't count that as sex, but he apparently did.

As for the other two couples... on the first morning I went bushwalking with The Human Dynamos, but the KCGs claimed they wanted to sleep in. We pretended that we believed them and made sure we had a nice and much longer than necessary walk.

Then on the third night, as we were preparing for dinner, I asked KCG where The Human Dynamo was.

"I think he's in the shower." KCG said.

"Oh, I though that was his boyfriend."

"No, I think he's in their room taking a nap."

I glanced into their room through the crack in the door, "No, there's no one in there."

KCG looked at me, I looked at him, our eyes widened, and we burst into scandalised giggles. Well, The Human Dynamo did warn me that he'd do whatever he wanted.

Because there should be the occasional post that isn't depressing.

I love a big, hot, dumb man.

failure with a small 'f'. Because capitals are for winners.

On Sunday afternoon I went to a summer outdoor concert with The Human Dynamo and KCG and their respective boyfriends.

It did not go well.

I have a new mantra that I am reciting to myself whenever I get mired in believing that I need a man in my life to make me happy - "I am responsible for my own happiness". No man will make me happy. Happiness comes from within.

Despite the fact that I recited it in my mind every minute or two, as we sat on the grass and watched a local band, I still struggled. This was actually the first time that the five of us had been together without anyone else, and without the distraction of other people, the dead weight of my failure was palpable. There's The Human Dynamo and his boyfriend whispering asides to each other. There's KCG and his boyfriend sharing a Coke. And here's me, trying not to swallow my beer too fast because it would leave me with nothing to do.

The music wasn't very good, so halfway through I told them I was going Christmas shopping. I left, reciting my mantra as if my life depended on it, and got a couple of things at some nearby stores. When The Human Dynamo texted me that the concert was over and they'd retired to a local pub, I wandered over there.

On the way to the concert earlier that day I had learnt that The Human Dynamo's boyfriend met the parents last week. It all went well, and another milestone of their developing relationship had been passed. When I got to the pub, I learnt that KCG and his boyfriend are meeting each other's parents over Christmas. So, isn't that cute? My best gay friends are racing neck and neck down the romantic path towards Happily Ever After, and they had so much advice and encouragement to share with each other.

Meanwhile I'm back in the starting stalls, all by myself. At this time last year we were all in roughly the same relationship position. Now, twelve months later, they've moved onward and upward, and I've gone nowhere at all. On the scale of gay relationships, where 1 is a fuckbuddy and 10 is a beloved and committed life partner, they're both already at a 4 or 5 and I'm at... 0.

Yep, that's right. I'm not even on the fucking scale.

I left early and walked back to my car alone, feeling like I'd been kicked in the chest. I was grateful for my mirrored aviators when the tears started to flow.

Here's hoping for mediocrity!

I'm still spending time with Mr Singular, even though we are, as far as I can tell, on break from a realtionship which has never been defined. We've hung out together, and we chat on email every couple of days.

We had dinner at his place last night, then went out to a jazz club. While we were queueing to get in, there was a 20-something bleach blonde gay guy in front of us. When I mentioned to Mr Singular that I'd forgotten to print out our booking number, Bleach Blonde overheard and made a friendly comment. He and I exchanged a few sentences, and then his party went in and I immediately forgot him.

However later at our table Mr Singular opined that he'd been hitting on me.

"Yeah, right", I responded.

"While I was standing right there", Mr Singular continued. "I was just about ready to punch him out!"

I made a noncommital answer, but I thought, Okay, what is this? We're not together. What do you care if another guy allegedly flirts with me? Is it because you're jealous that I was getting attention and not you? Or because he assumed that you weren't important to me? Or because you don't like the idea of me getting attention from someone else?

The more I know about Mr Singular the more I believe that he isn't in the right place for a relationship at the moment. He's filled with hurt and hate, originating in things that happened to him months or years ago. He is trying to find a therapist, although his work schedule requires him to find someone who consults outside normal office hours. Until he does, I'm afraid he's going to be stuck in a rut of impotent anger, blame and corrosive behavior.

I'm very attracted to him. I enjoy spending time with him. But do I actually like him? I don't know. In light of the fulfilling, monogamous relationships that KCG and The Human Dynamo are in, I'm painfully aware that my relationship with Mr Singular is below mediocre. Even if it kinda worked out between us, it would only rise to the level of relationships that KCG and The Human Dynamo have tried and rejected as being inadequate. Let me state that again: if my relationship with Mr Singular worked out, it'd still be a scenario that they'd reject if it happened to them. The best I can hope for... the best I've managed in seven years of trying... is still sub-standard.

On being a 5th wheel.

Now that KCG and the Human Dynamo have serious boyfriends, it's interesting to look at how my relationship with these new men is developing.

It's odd, but I think I have a high opinion of The Human Dynamo's boyfriend thanks to just one thing: he's made an effort to get to know me. Not much of an effort - just a couple of emails - but enough to make me feel as if he recognises that I'm an important part of The Human Dynamo's life and therefore a part of his life that needs to be important. One aspect of being in a successful relationship with someone is getting along with their friends.

By contrast, it seems that every time I talk to KCG's boyfriend, I learn something that makes me feel even worse about myself. I recently asked him, while we were out, to fire up Grindr and see who was nearby, just for our amusement. He gave me the condescending look that he habitually wears, at least around me, and said, "Oh, I deleted my Grindr weeks ago."

I had perhaps half a second of astonishment before I gleaned what he meant. People in fulfilling relationships don't need Grindr. Even so, a 21st century gay man deleting his Grindr profile is like a 1960s swinger throwing his Little Black Book into the trash - you only do it when you've found The One.

Then later, when a passing AIDS activitst gave everyone in our group a free condom, I internally reflected on my pathetic love life, heaved a sigh and said, "Well, at least you'll get to use yours."

He gave me that condescending look again, this time with a little smirk. "No, I won't."

Just like before it took me a moment to catch his meaning. He's been having purely monogamous sex for weeks - the time for condoms is past. Condoms are for players, not faithful partners.

Including The Tick Incident, I've met KCG's boyfriend exactly three times. If he has fine qualities - other than being young, rich and hardbodied (I gave him a friendly hug goodbye the last time I saw him, and it was like embracing an oak tree) - he hasn't thought it necessary to share them with me.

This was all much easier to deal with when I seemed to be on the cusp of having a boyfriend of my own. As it is, I actually find myself dreading the end of year camping trip that The Human Dynamo is organising. It will be KCG and his boyfriend, and the Human Dynamo and his boyfriend, and me and... nobody. Being a 5th wheel is almost as bad as being a 3rd wheel.

Ich war der Führer in einem früheren Leben

Tonight I was supposed to be on my first date with Guy Two. Indeed, by this point, if all had gone well, we should have been naked, sweaty and deep in the throes of things that are a lot more fun than Angry Birds.

But around four hours before our date he texted me to cancel.

Sorry GTR I won't be able to make our date tonight. I'm away on leave in Germany for a while and will be back in mid January so will call u to make a new time. Thanks. Guy Two

Typical. The date I'm most looking forward to, the one that seems to have the best potential, cancels a few hours beforehand, by text, with no explanation.

I wasn't going to beg for an explanation, or express my frustration. I simply texted back:

Shame. I was really looking forward to it. Oh well, enjoy your vacation!

A few minutes later:

Same here buddy I have just moved into a new house and I have three days to get everything unpacked before going to Europe. Promise to meet u for a date when I'm back in late January.

Pfft. Whatever. Still, I texted back:

I'll hold you to that :-)

I won't, of course. If he doesn't contact me in January I'll shrug and chalk it up to karma (since judging from my history of utter romantic failure, obviously I was Hitler in previous life). You can't let these things get to you, even when you find that your evening consists of eating leftovers and playing computer games, when you'd planned on eating out and playing entirely different games.

Is this how normal people feel about every date?

Last night I had a first date with the man I classed as "Guy Four" in my last post, who has slipped into my December dating schedule almost surreptitiously. Now I think I'll call him OON, for Out Of Nowhere, because it feels as if he just popped up without any sort of preamble.

He's a few years older than me but blessed with good genes. Neither good nor bad looking, neither fat nor thin, neither rich nor poor. However he was friendly, confident, intelligent and just wonderfully, refreshingly NORMAL. When we talked I got no sense of haunted vulnerability or bitchy condescension or dysfunctional attitudes. I was just talking to a pleasant, interesting man. We had drinks at a cool bar I'd never been to before, then dinner at an inexpensive Vietnamese restaurant with wonderful food.

We parted with a handshake and an agreement to have dinner again. I don't have a burning desire for him and as far as I could tell he didn't have a burning desire for me... but we seemed to like each other so why not do this again? It's all so relaxed and civilised.

The loneliness of the long-distance fucker

After a reasonably long IM conversation on Sunday night, Guy One decided to drive up from his regional city to have dinner with me last night. I protested, but he said it was no big deal, and it seemed like a good way of establishing whether we were really interested in each other before we'd built up unrealistic mental images. We met at the coffee house at which I conduct a lot of my first dates.

He wasn't as attractive as he appeared in his photos, but then who does? Overall he was nice, but perhaps a little odd. Over the course of a couple of hours of conversation, I found out about his body image issues, his dysfunctional relationship with his ex, his frankly bizarre phobia about a common food group, and the fact that he has so enough sugar in his coffee to send a normal person into hypoglycemic shock. But he was intelligent enough to hold a conversation, and not unattractive, so we segued from coffee into dinner, and then from dinner into a walk.

It's a nearly nine hour round trip from his regional city to my capital one, and after all of our flirtatious banter over the last few days it seemed churlish to just have dinner with him and then send him off to find a hotel. So I invited him to spend the night with me. After all, it's been five weeks or so since my last sexual encounter, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. He followed me back to my place and after a Diet Coke we got down to it.

His kissing, when tender and tentative, was quite good. When he got more ardent it wasn't. It didn't help that his stubble abraded my lips and nose worse than usual, such that I currently look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Drag Queen. He also sucked on my neck so hard that there's a huge purple bruise there now. If I were a woman I could cover all of these things up with cosmetics, but instead I had to go to work looking like I'd been sandpapered and then smacked with a broomstick.

The sex was okay, but he's versatile rather than a natural top and it showed. He was also married for several years, and it showed too. At one point in the proceedings, as he was humping away in a missionary position frottage act, I thought, "This would be awesome if I were a woman with a vagina."

Credit where it's due; he did make me come, which almost never happens. In fact he managed it twice. The downside of this was that I experienced first hand the hormone drain that turns a horny lover dismissive within the space of a few minutes. To be honest, it was a little overwhelming in its intensity. I went from "Well, this is all very nice" to "Ugh, I'm trapped in a bed with this guy for the next eight hours! How do I get out of this!?" For half an hour I felt absoltutely wretched, so much so that I wondered if I was experiencing the first flutters of a panic attack. I had to literally fight the urge to roll over and keep my back to him.

But it wasn't like that when I spent the night with Mr Singular. Perhaps because I didn't come? Or perhaps because I felt a sense of connection with him that I decidedly didn't feel with Guy One?

This morning Guy One got back in his car and drove back to his regional city. He's already texted me twice, and I've responded in a friendly but noncommital fashion. Frankly I don't care if I never communicate with him again, but he seemed enamoured. From what I understand, he has a lonely life in this distant little city, with no lover and few friends, and that sort of loneliness can do strange things to a man's sense of proportion.

A whole wide world of marginal interest.

So, an update on The Three Guys mentioned in my last post:

Guy One - we IM'd last night, and he sent me some larger pictures of himself. He's tall and slim and defined, and he looks a lot better when he smiles. The flirtatious banter was getting quite pronounced, especially after he sent me the X-rated pictures. After all this if I actually meet him and find that there's something really I don't like, or he meets me and feels something similar, it's going to be a dreadful disappointment. We'll catch up if he's in the city over the next few weeks, although the sturm und drang of Christmas tends to overwhelm everyone's schedules at this time of year. I've even tossed around the idea of driving out to his city for a couple of days during the holidays, but I don't want to seem too eager or desperate.

Guy Two - I spoke to him on the phone last night, and even over the phone it felt as if there was a crackle of sexual energy between us. At this risk of sounding like a giggly schoolgirl, he has an amazing aura of potency. We've agreed to go out to dinner next Thursday, and, providing we don't hate each other on sight, it's been pretty much agreed that we'll head back to his place afterwards.

He may turn out to be a bit of a find. It would appear that the only reason why he's unclaimed is that he's more closeted than I am - add up the facts that he's rich, accomplished, intelligent, well-presented and rather sexy and under most circumstances you'd expect him to have either a harem of hot younger boyfriends or a life partner just as successful as him. Additionally for most of his life he's classed himself as bisexual, which actually has a couple of benefits: he's very masculine and he's used to treating dates with a certain deference and charm that women expect. With gay guys it's usually a matter of "Hey, you wanna hook up sometime?", whereas with him it was, "Do you want to go out with me for dinner?" Even though sex has been on the table (as it were) since the very begining, there's still a sense of something more romantic going on.

Of course it could be that once we've slept together he'll lose all interest, but he's already offered to take me out to his weekender sometime, so he is at least glancing at the future.

Guy Three - I offered him four different days for going out for a drink. He was busy on all of them. The odd thing is that he keeps encouraging me, rather than just giving brusque responses that would indicate his loss of interest. I wish he'd either make some space for me in his schedule or just abandon the pretense of interest.

And, as a bonus...

Guy Four - He's a bit meh, but we're meeting for a drink next Wednesday. He's older and not terribly attractive, but hey, he could have a killer sense of humour and a keen insightful mind. I guess I'll find out. And unlike some people at least he's willing to actually meet me.

Once, twice, three times a horny frustrated loser.

So I have three guys, mentioned in my last post, who are interested in me... but it's a vague interest. I exist in a twilight space in which I have a lot of potential but no actual activity.

I was supposed to have a first date with Guy Three last night, but he cancelled early that morning after waking up sick. This is the second time he's cancelled on me - the first due to work, the second due to illness - and while I believe his excuses to be genuine it's hard not to feel jerked around.

Meanwhile I'm hoping that Guy Two will get back in touch tonight, since he arrived home from interstate last night, but who knows if he actually will.

And Guy One had some minor surgery last week and hasn't been online much lately, so I have no idea what's happening there.

The thing is... I'm horny. Part of the sudden change in my attitude after Mr Singular rejected me has also ramped up my sex drive. I still don't want to go through the ordeal of No Strings Attached sex, which I can only see as sex with an unhappy ending. But I'm not demanding a partner or even a boyfriend. A Friend With Benefits or, at worst, a fuckbuddy would do me for the moment. I have three guys who would seem to fit the bill quite well, but between sickness, work, and a desire not to appear desperate we're simply not managing to get an introductory meeting, let alone a night together.

As for Mr Singular... I saw him on Saturday morning for a late breakfast, and as I was leaving I asked where we were at. There was forgiveness on both sides, yes, but did he want to get back togther or did he want to just be friends? He opted for friends, for the moment, with the door open for more. Although rather ominously he warned me that a few months down the track that door could well close.

I wasn't worried. It means I can pursue other relationships with a clear conscience.

However by evening we had arranged to meet at my place for drinks and a movie, and I found myself with his feet in my lap. I gave him a foot massage. He gave one in return, and then moved on to a hand massage. Is this something that "just friends" do? I wondered. What's he playing at?

I have a suspicion that he's trying to manoeuvre me into being his Standby Fag Fag: a sexually interested but impotent friend to entertain him when his Main Fag Fag is otherwise occupied. Needless to say that's not going to happen. But I also recognise that every suspicion I've ever had about Mr Singular has been utterly wrong, so for the moment I'm going to suspend judgement.

In the aftermath, potential.

So Mr Singular has broken his silence.

After he'd ignored my texts and emails for a week, I decided that I didn't want to end this on such a sad, vituperative note, so I sent him an email on Monday morning basically stating that I was sorry for hurting him, I hoped he would eventually forgive me, and wishing him well. I imagined him and his fag fag* snickering to themselves at my old-fashioned preciousness and the fact that it took me so long to realise I was dumped, but I felt I had to do it, if only for the sake of closure.

Half an hour later, I noticed an email in my inbox. From Mr Singular. Great, I thought, it will be some scorn thinly disguised as acknowledgement.

But it wasn't. It was a sad admission that he was suffering under a mound of guilt and inability to move on, and hating himself for not being able to forgive me. He said I deserved better, but he hoped we could still be friends.

I replied in a noncomittal fashion. He replied to that. I replied again. By the time we'd both left work we were discussing the issues, albeit obliquely. He texted me later in the evening, and, after several exchanges, he admitted that he'd forced himself to forgive me, and asked for my forgiveness in return, which I gave.

And I thought, "Dammit, you total bastard! What are you doing? And why are you doing it now?"

Because something odd had happened. I think he broke me. It's as if I'm suddenly a slightly different person. Once the awful realisation that he was rejecting me sank in, about a week ago, I'd decided to get my life back on track. I went back online and chatted to some guys whom I'd been keeping at arm's length because of my relatonship Mr Singular. Now that that was over, by Monday night I had set up dates with three new guys.

And the thing is I don't want to cancel. They are all interesting in their own way. More problematically, they are all sexually interesting in their own way. As things stand at the moment it's pretty much guaranteed that I'll fuck at least two of them.

Guy One is a government manager based in a regional city, who is only up in my big city sporadically. He wants a proper relationship but hasn't been able to find anyone who fits the bill, so as a second choice he's interested in a long-term, committed, respectful fuckbuddy relationship. Basically he wants to find someone he can stay with, and fuck, when he's in the city. He's fit, intelligent, not unattractive, hung, and apparently has the sex drive of a herd of wild stallions. I've enjoyed our online chats, so I'd be interested to meet him, at least.

Guy Two is a stockbroker who appears to have brushed aside my insistence that I'm not into casual sex, but in a friendly, direct, no-nonsense way that I find perversely attractive. He's fit, nice looking, and very masculine. His attitude - "Of course we'll have sex. It'll be fun. Quit your bitching" - is refreshing because it's so unsleazy. I spoke to him on the phone last night and discovered that we have a surprising number of things in common, so it will be interesting to actually meet him.

An odd additional aspect is that Guy One, Guy Two and I all have the same first name. When I realised this I jokingly thought, "Man, three guys with the same name... we should totally have a threeway." And suddenly the idea seemed irresistibly hot. It's too early to suggest it - hell, I don't even know if I really want it - but it's lodged itself in my brain and is just sitting there, waiting.

Guy Three is a nurse, and does not have the same name (which is good, because I don't think I could handle a fourway), but he seems like a nice guy. He's sort of odd-looking, at least according to his profile photo, but the layout of a person's face is often the least important aspect of attraction. The fact that he's a nurse suggests a caring, compassionate nature, and after all the stress and heartache of Mr Singular I could really use that.

*a gay male version of a fag hag - a non-sexual, somewhat codependent gay best friend. Mr Singular spends a lot of time with his.

Life amid the wreckage.

I didn't communicate with Mr Singular the next day, nor him with me. The day after I had to be up at 6.30am for an early meeting, a time when he's usually at work. I texted him, So this is what 6.30am looks like. I do not approve.

No response.

Later that morning I found a rubber band on a colleagues desk that looked hilariously like an erect penis. I snapped a photo with my phone, texted it to KCG, who finds these things amusing, and then to Mr Singular. KCG responded. Mr Singular didn't.

Friday passed without communication from either of us. On Saturday evening I went to the local Pride Parade. I took a photo and texted it to him, with Guess where I am!

No response.

When I don't respond to his texts for 48 hours, it's unacceptable game-playing and a deal-breaker. When he ignores me for almost a week, it's... well, who knows? But clearly I've been dumped. I stood there at the side of the Pride Parade, in the middle of a crowd of happy, laughing gay men. The one's who didn't have committed partners would have uncommitted partners within a few hours. And then there was me, unceremoniously brushed off by the only man he'd ever had serious feelings for. Despite the go-go boys in gold hotpants and brightly coloured drag queens swirling around me, I felt as if I was at the bottom of a dark hole. It was only though force of will that I didn't sink to the pavement and bawl my eyes out.

So instead of going to an afterparty I went home, and sobbed into my pillow.

In which it all comes apart like a cheap Ikea bookcase.

The last few days have been excruciating.

It started on Saturday. I had an all day sporting event to go to, Mr Singular had an all day family event. We agreed to meet up in the evening for massive amounts of sex. Well, perhaps not so specifically, but with my cold sore finally healed, and it being Saturday night after nearly two weeks of chastity, it was understood.

I went to the barber early in the morning so that my hair would be looking its most stylish and sexiest. I met KCG, his new boyfriend, and the Human Dynamo's new boyfriend and went to our sporting event. Over the next few hours I allowed myself to tell KCG about the new man I was seeing. I also allowed myself the satisfaction of knowing that now that KCG, the Human Dynamo and I were all in nascent relationships, we'd crossed a line and "made it". If we weren't up on the winner's dais at the Gay Olympics, we were at least competing successfully.

At around 6pm we were in the car heading home. KCG's boyfriend had exhausted himself and was asleep in the front seat, and I watched as KCG stole cute, affectionate glances at him as he drove. The Human Dynamo's boyfriend was texting little love notes to the Human Dynamo, who couldn't be there because of work. Suddenly my phone chimed, and I saw that it was from Mr Singular.

I have to cancel tonight. Will not be home any time soon. Sorry.

I felt... numb. He'd been a bit standoffish when I'd seen him on Thursday, but I'd put that down to a lingering fear of my cold sore. I'd asked him to make sure that he didn't drink too much at his family thing (his family are apparently massive binge drinkers) so that he'd be in fit state to deal with me. But it seems that wasn't enough. The message was pretty clear: I'm okay, but when it comes down to a choice of spending the night with me and getting hammered with the cousins he gets hammered with at least once every few weeks... the cousins won.

Understood, I texted back. Meaning, "Oh, I understand all right. Fuck you too."

KCG dropped me off at home, making a ribald joke about hoping that his boyfriend still had enough energy for the evening's activities. I smiled, but only on the outside. Later that night Mr Singular sent me another text. So yet another family event that's left me feeling like shit. Not sure why I go to them, actually...

"Whatever", I said to myself in disgust, and tossed my phone onto an armchair.

The next morning, around 9am, he texted, Sorry about last night. It was longer than I thought. What are you up to today?

"Yeah, I'm really feeling the sorrow", I muttered, and I went off to have breakfast.

Throughout the day I checked my phone to see if there were any more messages. There weren't. Any missed calls? No. Any suggestion of, GTR, are you okay? or Is something wrong? Apparently not. Just silence.

He really had tired of me. I'd known him for less than three weeks, and he'd already grown bored with me. I cleaned the house and fretted. I went out with some friends in the evening just to take my mind off it. Then I barely slept all night. The next morning, Monday, I checked my email... nothing.

On Monday evening I went to see my therapist and discussed the matter with him. I knew I had to be the mature one and resolve this one way or another. He made some conflict resolution suggestions, and when the session was finished I called Mr Singular and asked if I could come over. He agreed.

As per my therapist's suggestions, I took him a little gift (a cookie) and started with an apology ("I'm sorry I didn't respond to your texts"). Then I waited to hear what he had to say.

It was all my fault, apparently. After I didn't respond to his second text he decided that he was never contacting me again. It was playing games, and he hates people who play games. It was a deal-breaker. I apologised again, not abjectly, but sincerely, for causing him pain... all the while thinking, "Do you really imagine that this is all about you? That you're the only one who suffered here?"

Slowly, over the next few hours, the anger dissipated. We had a glass of wine. We sat on the sofa and talked. We watched more Will & Grace with him resting his head in my lap and me stroking his hair. He was less brittle but still withdrawn, and uncommunicative. We kissed a little - tiny, passionless pecks - and left him around 11pm. As I drove away I thought that our relationship had been damaged, and maybe it could be healed, but it certainly wasn't going to be as smooth as either of us had hoped.

Cut to the next morning. Full of hope for the future, I flicked him an email to his work address around 11.30. There's no reply, but I assumed he was busy or maybe away from the office.

Around 2.15, I sent him a jokey little text. He usually responds pretty quickly, but this time there was nothing.

And slowly, horribly, sickeningly, it dawned on me. All of his talk about not communicating being "game-playing" and "a deal breaker"... it was a setup. He'd been tiring of me and my little stunt had pushed him over the edge, but he couldn't leave it with me having the final say over the relationship. So he went along with the reconciliation. He let me think that we had talked it out. He sent me on my way thinking that things were okay, all the while intending to turn the tables and ignore my every attempt at contact from now on.

The hypocricy was staggering. The vindictiveness even moreso. He said goodnight to me knowing that the truth of what was going on creep up on me, humiliatingly, over the next 24 hours.

I called his mobile around 5.45pm from my office phone. It went to voicemail and I didn't leave a message. When I got home from work I called again, this time from my mobile. There's no response, but by this time I would have been surprised if there was one. He's screening his calls. I was tempted to leave a nasty message, but I just asked him to call me. I didn't expect him to, but it was the adult thing to do to give him the option to do the right thing.

How do I get out of this on top? I wondered. There's no point trying to salvage the relationship. After battling with fury and anger and soul-crushing anguish for a few hours, I had an epiphany. Humility. Apologise to him, sincerely and from the heart, and say goodbye to him forever. Acknowledge that, whatever his behaviour, I did the wrong thing and I need to say that clearly and properly and without any hope of getting anything out of it. Basically, be the better man and genuinely wish him well.

I composed a message, right from the heart, but written down so that I didn't say anything stupid or give in to a sudden flash of hurt or anger. I wanted to do this right. I thought about leaving it right there and then on his voicemail, and get it all over and done with, but the timing seemed wrong so I decided to wait until morning.

Around 10pm, after setting up a date with a new guy on Manhunt, and with numbness starting to replace the hurt, I had a perverse desire to look at my last message to him again. I opened up the text app on my phone and suddenly saw the New Message light next to his name.

What the fuck?

The phone had been sitting next to me for the last few hours. It hadn't chimed. There'd been no icon for a new message. I tapped it open.

There was a response to my jokey little text, and then Wassup? Not at home and can't really talk.

WHAT THE FUCK???

What's he still doing out? I wondered. He works an early morning shift and he's usually asleep by now... I checked the timestamp next to the message. It's from three hours earlier!

WHAT. THE. FUCK???

MY FUCKING CARRIER HAS DELAYED HIS FUCKING MESSAGE FOR THREE FUCKING HOURS!!!

Working backwards, I determine that he must have texted me right after I phoned him.

I sent him a text saying that I only just got the message. A moment later my phone rang, so softly that it's barely audible even in a silent room. Somehow the ringer volume had been turned right down. It would explain why I didn't hear it chime, but not why there was no icon for a new message on the home screen.

"Hello?"

Hey, I just rolled over in bed and saw that you texted me.

"Uh, yeah. Fucking Vodafone. It only just gave me the message you sent three hours ago!"

It's shit. All telcos are shit.

"I know."

So what did you want to talk to me about?

All of my anger, my hurt, my hope, basically every feeling I have is crashing around my ears and I can't think straight. "I just wanted to know if you were okay."

Uh... yeah?

"Since you said you hadn't been sleeping well, and been tired all the time."

Yeah, I slept pretty well. Too short, but pretty well.

"Good. Good."

I ended the call as quickly as I could. I had no idea what to feel. This morning I had hopes we could start anew. This afternoon I realised he had betrayed me and was playing me for a sap. This evening I overcame my anger and hurt and resolved to end it with dignity and maturity. And then late at night I find out that everything I'd felt over the last ten hours was wrong.

Maybe.

I can't deal with this. Nothing has changed since I wistfully thought about how much I missed him this morning... but my feelings for him are dead. The stress has killed them.

The despair of a relationship in a straitjacket.

My mouth is still a wretched place inhabited only by the herpes simplex virus and my own sense of despair. It's healing, but I think it's still infectious.

It's only been ten days since I had sex with Mr Singular, but it feels like a month. I've seen him three times, including last Saturday night, and we couldn't do anything racier than hug and watch Will & Grace.

Sure, you could argue that we could have jerked each other off, or something similar... but this isn't about getting off. This is about intimacy and connection, and the natural expression of the attraction we feel for each other. We can't be close to each other in the way that we want to be.

I'm still finding it hard to read this whole relationship. On Saturday night Mr Singular seemed a little bit distant in some ways. When I wrapped my arms around him he responded, but he didn't initiate any contact. He fell asleep lying on top of me in front of the TV, then stumbled off to bed with a mutter that he couldn't stay awake.

Okay, I thought. Maybe this isn't as profound a relationship as I thought. He's happy to have me around and even happier to fuck me, but he's not going to make any effort to make me happy in return. Perhaps he's realising that I'm not going to be anything special.

But then all through Sunday and today he was texting and emailing, telling me how much he missed me, and being romantic and affectionate. "I'm watching people kissing on TV and thinking, 'I can't wait to kiss my man again...'", he wrote at one point, and I thought, "So you're thinking of me as your man, then?" When I admitted to feeling flat, he asked if it was anything he'd done, or if there was anything he could do to make me feel better.

Then when I spent Tuesday evening with Mr Singular, everything was peachy. When I was standing at the stove stirring a pot he came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled my neck. When we were lying on the couch watching bad British renovation shows on TV, he held my hands in his, or stroked my leg.

So perhaps he was just down on Saturday because after a week of waiting I still wasn't able to kiss him, or enjoy myself in his bed.

The cold sore is just about healed. We probably could have kissed last night without infection, but it seemed silly to risk it. Plus giving the ulcer an extra two days to heal will be more comfortable for me.

Still having to wait.

Last night I managed to catch up with Mr Singular - it's been three whole days since I last saw him, a record in our short relationship. We met at an invitation-only sale at a high end and extremely gay interior design store, and we spent a while looking at pretty things while sipping champagne. I was very gratified when we bumped into another gay friend of mine: as soon as Mr Singular's back was turned, gave me a split-second, wide-eyed "OMG HE'S HOT!" face, before he had to slip back into a neutral expression when Mr Singular turned to us again.

Afterwards we slipped off to a fashionable bar and just spent an hour together talking and enjoying each other's company. But I had to do some grocery shopping, and take a friend to the airport for a late night flight, so we had to part by 8pm. But for the rest of the evening we traded texts, ramping up the sexy banter until we were forced to admit that it wasn't really banter any more. I wanted him, and he wanted me.

We've had an arrangement all week to see each other on Saturday, and oh, the plans we had! Meet mid-afternoon and go shopping. Have dinner at a little Italian place around the corner from his house. Snuggle on the couch with a glass of wine. Go to bed early and tear into each other, releasing all the pent up sexual energy that we've been hoarding all week, voraciously, hungrily, creatively, late into the night. Wake up on Sunday morning and laze in bed, nuzzling and enjoying more langorously paced sex.

But... my cold sore is a very bad one - the skin across my whole face is dry and my eyes have a vague, constant itch. Despite the fact that I'm dilligently using the anti-viral cream it's only healing very slowly. I was hoping that it would be healed by tomorrow, but here we are the day before and it's still blistered. We're facing the horrible prospect of having to forgo sex even longer. I feel as if I'm letting him down. I feel diseased - here I am getting freaked out by unprotected sex, but I'm the one who's demonstrably infectious.

I'm longing for the touch of his hands on my naked skin, his lips brushing against my ear, his teeth biting just a little too hard on my nipple. I yearn for the prickle of his chest hair under my fingers and the soft downy fuzz of his shaven head on my cheek. And frustrated when we stop talking for a moment and just look at each other, and I see the flicker of hunger in his eyes.

A sore point.

It's odd how small things can change the course of a relationship in ways that'd you'd never even expect.

Yesterday morning I noticed a slight tingle in the corner of my lip, and I realised that, thanks to a combination of stress and sucking face with a stubbly guy, I was developing a cold sore. By the time I went to Mr Singular's house for dinner at around 7pm, it had blossomed into its full, itchy, annoying maturity.

But this was, counterintuitively, a good thing. An infectious cold sore on my mouth meant that the most intimate thing we could do was hug. In fact, it puts me out of sexual action for around five or six days. Faced with no sex or even kissing, we had no excuses not to sit down and talk

We snuggled on the couch and watched some Will & Grace DVDs, with my head resting on his stomach and him leaning down every so often to kiss me gently on the forehead. I stroked his leg, perhaps mischeviously, in a way that made him sporadically hard; I could feel his erection pushing against the nape of my neck through his shorts. We talked for a bit and eventually shut the DVD off because we weren't really watching it.

I decided to be bold and give him an opportunity to get answers to any questions that had evolved over the last week. I asked him, "We've been dating for a week now. Would you like to ask me anything?"

He asked me why I didn't have a sexual history until my mid-30s. I told him the truth. He asked me my opinion about gay marriage. I told him the truth about that too. Wrapped up in each other on a couch, full of wine and with no anticipation of sexual activity on the horizon, we could open up to each other and clear the air. We shared what we wanted in the bedroom (apparently my kissing is too aggressive, but the things I'm doing when I blow him are driving him wild). Unfortunately we aren't yet in a place where we can discern where all of this is going, but hey, it's only been a week and we are coming from very different places. He's eleven years younger than me but for every man I've shagged he's had six or seven.

As for my fears raised by the barebacking episode of the previous night, he swore that he only did it because he knew that he was completely clean. As for my other fears... well, it's a little low, but when he went to the toilet I flipped open his wallet and glanced at his credit card. The name on the card matched the one he'd given me. Later I noticed some mail on a table, and it too had the correct name. So I was reassured that he was telling me the truth.

I still want to physically see the results of his last STD test. But everything about what he says and how he acts speaks of the fact that he wouldn't do anything to put me at harm.

Gay sex is no walk in the park.

Last night I went for a long, romantic stroll with my new man, along the riverfront in the pink and purple glow of twilight. In a tiny park next to the highway, out of sight of the evening joggers and dog walkers, he grabbed me and kissed me with a sly little laugh and a twinkle of mischief in his eye.

When we got back to my place we had dinner, then lay on the couch and watched a movie, wrapped in each other's bodies. When the movie was over we kissed and he warned me that it was 10pm and he had to go home for an early start in the morning. I persuaded him to lie down with me for a while on the bed so that we could talk. We talked and kissed and caressed each other. We decided that he would leave at 10.30pm. We kissed some more, harder. We became entangeld in each other. 10.30pm came and went. He sighed and muttered "Oh fuck it", and had torn my clothes off within seconds.

At 11pm we were both exhausted and naked with our heads hanging over the foot of the bed.

We talked for a little while longer... and it possibly wasn't our best conversation. You see - and this will no doubt raise a chorus of "OMG ARE YOU INSANE!?" - he'd asked in the final moments of sex if he could come inside me, and I'd said yes. Once he'd blown his load and we'd both collapsed gasping back onto the bed, I became aware of the alarm bells going off inside my head.

Normally I'm scrupulous about safe sex, on the limited occasions that I actually get to practice sex at all. But my relationship with this guy has developed so fast, and with such a unique level of feeling, that I've let my guard down. Up to this point, in the four times we've had sex, he hasn't worn a condom but he's pulled out before coming. By the cold light of day that sounds like a completely inadequate gesture at "safe sex", but as we all know in the heat of the moment it's impossible to think straight.

I spent the next ten minutes grilling him about the results of his last STD test and his sexual history since then, hating the awkwardness of having to discuss it at all. His last test was two months ago (and clean, apparently), and his only sexual activity since then has been once with a stranger (non-penetrative) and once with his ex (with whom he wore a condom).

That's lightens the weight on my mind, but I'm going to have to insist on safe sex from now on. And get myself tested, of course, which will be a milestone I'd have prefered to avoid. Profound feelings of attraction don't prevent HIV. And given that I haven't taken a dump since then, I'm horribly aware that his cum is still inside me, allowing plenty of time for infection to transfer from him to me.

This cold dose of reality has also made me look at him a little more critically. I got his surname from him to create a proper contact entry on my phone, and despite the fact that both his first name and his surname are unusual I can't find any trace of him on the internet. No facebook, no professional associations, nothing. There's one person with the same name in Geneva, and another one in Houston who is actually a woman. I tried his brother, who has an equally unusual first name, and there was nothing there either.

In itself this is nothing - I'm not with facebook either and apart from my work nothing comes up about me in a google search. However in light of my epiphany about safe sex and bearing in mind what I learned about BN2, it freaks me out a little bit. When I see him tonight I'm going to make sure I see a credit card, or a license, or something that shows his name. Just to reassure myself.

The Singularity.

Last night was my second date with the man I met on Wednesday. He needs a nom de blog, like KCG or the Human Dynamo, but I'm terrified of what to call him. He's already a profound episode in my gay life, but I have no idea what he will eventually be. All I know is that we're already connected in a way I haven't been with any other man.

I'll call him Mr Singular, because that's what he is.

We spent yesterday trading increasingly flirtatious texts. Some of them so charged with anticipation that when I read them I had to lean back in my chair and take a few deep breaths. We were meeting at my house to go out to dinner... but it was becoming obvious that we'd be doing a lot more than that.

He arrived. I brought him into my house. We kissed, as we'd been wanting to do since the bar two nights earlier, and he was confident and erotic. We had a pre-dinner drink and kissed again.

On the way to the restaurant he held my hand in the car, and as we sat, ordered, ate and got to know each other a little better, we were both clearly aware that this was just a necessary part of the evening, not something over which we wanted to linger. We were back at my place barely 90 minutes later.

We sat on opposite ends of the couch and had a cocktail. We talked some more, and drank our drinks. When I'd finished mine I put it down on the end table, got up, sat down close to him and kissed him, long and deep.

What followed next he later described as "a trail of sexual devastation". Couch cushions strewn across the room, my fine linen jacket crumpled up on the floor, shoes and other bits of clothing lost under armchairs. We stumbled to the bedroom, stripped off our remaining clothes, and spent the next four hours fucking as if our lives depended on it.

He's a masterful kisser, soft and then plunging. When he drifted down to suck my cock, he was a gentle as a butterfly, using just the tip of his tongue in a way that charged me like an electric shock. When he discovered that I was too tight - it's been months since I had penetrative sex - he took his time (almost an hour) with his fingers, his tongue and his cock to gently tease me open. Then once I was ready, he grabbed me tight and pounded me like a hurricane. He was even better than The Virtuoso - it felt so fucking good. He wasn't very vocal but I moaned and gasped and let him know, without a shadow of a doubt, just how incredible he was.

Around midnight, after our third round of bed-devastating sex, he asked if he should go, and I told him I wanted him to stay. I didn't sleep very much - this is only the second time in my life that I have spent the whole night with a man - but we spent the night wrapped up tightly in each others' arms. If he let go of my hand to scratch his nose in his sleep, he found it again and entwined our fingers.

When we woke at dawn, we whispered to each other how strange it was that we felt so comfortable together after having barely met. There was more kissing, more amazing sex. We eventually got up, got dressed, and went out to breakfast at my favourite cafe. When we came back, we went back to bed and did the same things fully clothed that we'd earlier done naked. If it hadn't been for another friend picking me up at 10.15am to go out, I've no doubt we would have shed our clothes and plunged back into it. Our first date was two and a half hours. Our second date was sixteen. Our third date will be tomorrow night, and who knows what will happen.

I'm dead tired from lack of sleep. My legs are sore from being slung over his shoulders or wrapped around his waist. My ass is sore from four rounds of hardcore sex. Nothing seems as important as seeing him again. I'm trying not to think too much, to overanalyse or project. But I like him so damn much. He's broad and strong, with a thickly haired chest and a sweet smile. He's intelligent and handsome. He's rough and passionate, and very, very sexy. Clearly I am falling for him, and hard.

Riding the World's Worst Rollercoaster.

Following the events mentioned in my previous post, last week was mostly bad for me: a rollercoaster that spent a lot of time in the pits of despair with occasional lifts up into basic normalcy.

But I'd mostly recovered by Sunday, thanks to a couple of occurances. On Friday evening I had dinner with KCG at the same smart restaurant I took him to for his birthday last year... only this time he was paying. I didn't mention that he'd been the trigger for my depression, but I shared that I'd been low and from his attitude and body language I realised that my distress on Saturday night wasn't as well founded as I'd thought: perhaps we really have bonded and grown closer over the last few months. He was caring and attentive, and when we went our separate ways around 11pm he gave me a long, lingering hug that made me feel better than I had for several days.

Then on Sunday I went for a pleasant evening walk with a guy I went out with a few months ago. He's from one of those passionate, impulsive middle eastern cultures, and although it's clear that we're not going anywhere romantically the first thing he did when he saw me was to grab me and kiss me intensely. We went for our walk, came back, had a drink and kissed again. When it came time to leave, as he walked out the door he grabbed my hand with both of his and tenderly kissed the back of it, in a gesture so sweet and courtly that it melted even my cold heart. We're not compatible, and we both know it, but hey, it's nice to be wanted.

The biggest mood lift came early this week, however. On Monday evening I started chatting with a guy on Manhunt, which moved on to texting, then on to a phone call. He was young, good-looking, intelligent and unusually interesting. So we arranged to go on a date on Wednesday night to a cool neighbourhood bar. In real life he was chunkier than in his pictures, but in an attractive, bearish way. He was wearing one of those T-shirts with a buttoned opening between the midpoint of his chest and his throat, and whether intentionally or not he'd left them all undone. The glimpse of his hairy chest through the gap was the sexiest thing I'd seen in a long time. The conversation was a little stilted at first but we kept at it, and it got better, especially after a couple of drinks. It started to rain, and we had to move from our big balcony table to a couple of chairs in a tight space under the awning. The space was so cramped that our legs were nearly entwined, and it was then that I started getting The Vibe from him.

We agreed to see each other again on Friday, and when we left a little while later (I had a previous engagement I had to get to), I gave him a little peck on the lips and a hug as I got into my car. Even as I did it, it felt a bit lame. As he lumbered off to his own car, I sent him this text:

I hate the awkwardness of the first date goodnight kiss.

Glad we did though.

Then I drove away. Down the street. Onto the main road. Through the shopping precinct. Left into another road. Up onto the freeway. Through the city centre. Over the bridge leading to the southern suburbs. All the while glancing at my phone sitting silent and dead on the passenger seat.

Oh crap. I thought. I've screwed it up yet again. Scared off yet another guy with my gaucherie and cluelessness. When will I fucking learn?

Then my phone trilled and lit up. Despite the fact that I was driving in the rain at 100kph, I tapped the message open. Yeah me too. Really wanted to pash you at the bar though...

To call what I felt relief would have been like calling a tsunami a gentle ripple.

That would have just made that ugly bartender jealous... I tapped back, once I'd reached my destination and could do it safely.

Him: Ah who cares, let him be jealous. I would have felt better. Trying to think what we should do on Friday...

Me: Frankly I like your pashing idea, but I suppose we need a more formal anchor event :-)

Him: I like my pashing idea too; even more now that I know you like it.

Wow. Note to self: do NOT fuck this up.

Nothing hurts like discovering that you're not happy, you're just a fool.‏

Yesterday KCG and I went hiking in the hills outside the city. It was a gruelling 9 hour, 28km trek but the scenery was spectacular and we both had a sense of achievement in completing it.

On the way back to the city around 9 - 10pm, I observed that KCG was brighter and chirpier than he usually is, singing along with the radio and hilariously shouting over-the-top abuse at the road workers who kept us sitting at a set of lights for several minutes. This is great, I thought. We've had a fun day, just the two of us for nearly 12 hours. We've bonded. We're becoming better friends. This is cool. Maybe you don't need to have a boyfriend to be successful in this world after all. I'm fun in my own right and people have fun when they're with me. I make people's lives better, just as they improve mine!

But no. It turns out that the truth was the complete and utter opposite.

I discovered later, quite by accident, that while we were hiking KCG had arranged by text to hook up with his new boyfriend late that evening, but hadn't told me. He wasn't in a bright and happy mood because we were at the end of a good day together, but because he was on the cusp of a great night with his lover. He wasn't pretending to be upset at the road workers holding us up - he was frustrated that every minute on the road was one he wasn't spending with his guy. And I hadn't made his day better - I was an obligation to finish up ASAP before the best part of his day could begin.

The worst part was the way that I found out. KCG didn't mention his plans - I assumed that like me he was going home to simply shower off the sweat and grime and rest his aching muscles. But after he dropped me off, I discovered that on our hike we had both acquired a bunch of ticks. I carefully tweezered off the ones of my legs and thighs, but there was one right in the centre of my back that I couldn't possibly reach. I couldn't leave it there until the morning, and it was nearly 11pm so most of my friends were out or asleep. But I knew that KCG would still be up, so I rang him, explained the situation and asked if I could drive over to his place (a 20 minute trip) and get him to tweezer it off. I vaguely noticed that he seemed put out on the phone, but I assumed it had something to do with the late hour.

Of course when I eventually got to his house I saw the strange car in the driveway, and I put two and two together quickly. He let me in and introduced me to his new man. The awkwardness hung in the air. It was clear that they'd been planning to get their boyfriend thing on and I was holding up proceedings. KCG got the tick off my back, and I left, being there all of two minutes.

So here was I; the weird, awkward loser friend who drives halfway across the city late at night to get a tick removed, and there was them; cool, good-looking young gay men in the most intoxicating stage of their relationship, about to do the sorts of things that normal, horny adults do, interrupted and having to patiently deal with the weirdo. KCG didn't have to go anywhere to get any unreachable ticks removed - he had a hot new boyfriend who had come around to do it... and a lot more besides.

Far from me not needing a boyfriend to be successful in this world, KCG's example was a harsh reminder than you really are nobody until somebody loves you. You can't even elegantly deal with a tick without someone special in your life.

Of course KCG did nothing wrong. He did everything that a good friend should do. I just misinterpreted his happiness as something that I'd contributed to, and when I found out the awful, opposite truth, I felt my sense of self worth get crushed like an empty aluminium can rolling along the freeway.

A vital difference between gay men and straight women

I was reading an interesting article by Michael Kirby, former supreme court judge and gay marriage advocate, and I came across an anecdote that actually, if unintentionally, supports my anti gay marriage stance.

The meat of the anecdote was that in the late 1960s Kirby was dating Johan van Vloten, the man who would become his life partner. A few weeks into the relationship, Kirby's first love, a gorgeous European boy named Demo, phoned him in Sydney to say that he was going to be back in Australia and in Melbourne for the weekend, and would Kirby like to come down and hook up? Kirby said yes, and duly went down to Melbourne for his dirty weekend, although he mentioned that Johan van Vloten was hurt by the abandonment.

Here's the thing: one of the pro gay marriage arguments is that there's no real difference between a love between a man and a woman and a love between a man and a man. It's all just love, right? Well, no. Change the genders and this whole scenario changes. If Kirby was straight, and he told a woman he'd been dating for some weeks that he was popping down to Melbourne for the weekend to bang his ex... well, it's pretty certain she wouldn't be waiting for him when he got back. As a general rule, women need to know that they are at the top of any potential mate's priority list. With gay men, the expections of fidelity, and the line between partner and buddy, are blurred.

This is just one example of how the core criteria by which a relationship is judged to be a success or a failure are different between straights and gays. So how then can the formal expression of both those relationships be defined as "marriage" without stripping marriage down to its crudest base?

When men and women partner up, it's more than just their genitals that fit together like a plug and socket. It's also their psyches, their psychologies. They are different but complementary, and it's those complementary differences that lock them together.

Marriage is a thing that a man and a woman do to create a dual entity as ancient as human civilisation. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is just a hissy fit by power-crazed gay ideologues.

Pride cometh (sorry, cummeth) before the fall.

Last Saturday afternoon I went to the local Pride Fair.

It was KCG's idea to go, and he sold it as having "stalls and entertainment and handbag dogs", and being set in a pretty park on a lovely spring day. In my mind's eye I envisaged it as your standard sort of street fair, with booths selling handicrafts and delicious little gourmet foodstuffs - two things gay men would do rather well - and crowds washing through as the mood took them, all within a carnival atmosphere. So I agreed.

The first bad sign was when I arrived at the park to find it fenced in, with a single entry point on the eastern side. There would be no anonymous wash of people for a closet case like me to lose himself in. They may as well have hung a sign over the gate reading "HOMOSEXUALS AND THEIR ENABLERS ONLY".

The second bad sign was the fact that it cost $15, each, to enter.

The third bad sign crept up on me as we wandered into the avenues of stalls. There was a stall promoting gay marriage, then one promoting safe sex, then one promoting STD checks, then one about the local Bears club, then an AIDS hospice, then another promoting safe sex, then one offering frendliness between Anglicans and gays, then another asking for yet more signatures on yet another gay marriage petition...

"Do any of these stalls sell anything cool?" I asked KCG with a narrowed glare.

"There's a donut truck over in the corner," he offered, obliviously.

Over on the main stage a choir of lesbians started singing renditions of camp classics - including 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow', naturally - and while we listened I scanned the people around me. The crowd consisted of friends and families of gay people wandering around with rainbow stickers and wide-eyed, "I'm helping!" expressions on their faces, and gay men with their heads down cruising Grindr on their iPhones. There wasn't even a lot of talent on display: just a lot of skinny, femme-y twinks in tacky outfits, a couple of leather daddies, a terrifying obese drag queen, KCG and me. The only eye candy was two hot shirtless 20-something PR bois handing out leaflets for some Pride festival activities... because apparently you can't advertise to gay men except through their groins.

After running into a couple of KCG's friends we fell to doing the only thing there was to do there: we sat down on the grass and drank. Nearby some lesbians, slaves to their sexuality, started playing football. We gay men, slaves to our sexuality, just sat around swilling pinot and looking fabulous.

I realised, as I sat on the lawn watching the lesbians run and lunge for the only ball they were likely to run and lunge for, that the Pride Fair was a holdover from an outmoded gay paradigm. Sure, it created a safe place for gays and lesbians to hang out and meet up... but there are dozens of safe places for gays and lesbians to hang out and meet up, and they're either cheaper or they offer better entertainment for the money. And you're probably less likely to meet someone new than if you just logged onto Grindr, Manhunt or Gaydar and did it from the comfort of your home. In 2011, with openly gay cabinet ministers, sporting heroes, movie stars and prime time TV characters, what's the point of creating a fenced off enclosure for gays? It's like we're here, we're queer, and we're not used to it.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Idiot.

From among the ranks of the fine young men of Manhunt:



Hypocrisy thy name is... Luke, apparently.

If you pride yourself in scorning both femme queens and Asians, then perhaps you shouldn't display a photo of you peering coyly out from behind a stuffed toy with a loveheart, like some cross between Justin Bieber and a giggling Japanese schoolgirl?

"But WHY do you want gay marriage?": some reasons you may not have considered.

I'm against gay marriage. The reasons why are complicated, but they boil down to a belief that marriage is about a lot more than love and commitment. It's about societal leadership, a balanced structure for children, reproductive stability, nurturing environments for both men and women, and a host of other things that form the foundations of our civilisation. It's true that in recent decades the institution of marriage has become a ridiculous farce, at least in some circles. But it is only pushed further into ignominy by offering it to same sex couples, and we as a civilisation should be trying to draw it back, not push it further.

Which is not to say that I'm against gay partnerships, enjoying the same status under the law. I'm just against gay marriage.

But that's not what this post is really about. This post is a reflection on why gay marriage is so forward in the minds of modern homosexuals. After all, the whole idea of gay marriage is a very modern one, dating back a couple of decades at best. So why has it become so gosh-darned important to gay men now?

There are a number of considerations:

Gay marriage as identity

Sometimes when one is denied something one has a vague inclination toward, the desire for that thing becomes more pronounced. If the reason why one cannot have it appears arbitrary or philosophical, this can accentuate both the desire and the stubbornness of refusing to take no for an answer. In extreme cases, it can escalate into full blown hysteria, in which one can sense nothing but an attack on one's sense of self-worth.

If you tie up your sense of self worth with a cause, whether it be gay marriage, the rights of asylum seekers, or the election of Barack Obama, then anything that threatens that cause is a serious blow to your self-esteem. Many gay marriage supporters have indeed tied their sense of self worth to their cause, so a rejection, however calm and rational, is a rejection of them as individuals. They lash out in response, describing disapproval as hate, or, more likely, “H8”.

Ironically if gay marriage is enshrined in law, many supporters may experience the same deflation and sense of emptiness that Obama’s supporters felt when he was elected. When you’ve defined yourself in terms of a fight for something, who are you when the fight is won?

Gay marriage as an exercise in power

Gays love power, possibly because they’re often excluded from traditional male expressions of it. There’s an element of “I am homo, hear me roar” in the calls of gay marriage. We can do and have whatever we want. We don't particularly want marriage, but we do know that you don't want us to have it... and if we force you to, then we prove that we are superior. We'll take a foundational part of your culture from you and screw around with it, and you'll be powerless to stop us. Eat that, bitches!

Gay marriage as a sign of tribal identification

Like many small and distinctive groups, gay culture is very homogenous, and highly intolerant of contradiction to internal popular opinion. This is understandable, since gays have to band together to protect themselves from the bigotry of the outside world. However this homogeneity can lead to certain ideas or philosophies becoming a lot more potent than they should be. To be pro gay marriage is to conspicuously identify yourself as part of the tribe. It may even inure you to criticism if you do something questionable - modern tribal cultures (for example evangelical christians, anti-war activists, or green groups) accept all sorts of awful behaviour from people, providing they parrot back a few important ideologies correctly.

Gay marriage as an elitist fashion statement

You may think I'm being facetious, but hear me out. According to the latest figures, only 6% of women who possess a four year university degree have a child outside of marriage. For women who failed to finish high school, the figure is 54%. Far from being the tool of male oppression as claimed by 1970s feminists, marriage is now a fairly powerful status indicator. The poor, the ignorant and the vulgar form common-law relationships… if they’re lucky. The clever, the rich and the classy get married.

This is not lost on gays, who regard being poor, ignorant and vulgar as worse than polyester. Gays are all about the icons of status, whether it be the Ben Sherman shirts, hybrid SUVs, Danish Modern furniture or the right brand of vodka. To be married is to claim membership in middle classes and up, which is exactly where most gay men want to be.

Now you may be thinking, "Gay men want to get married for the same reasons that straight people do - it's as simple as that!" But it isn't. Men and women are very different creatures. Take the woman (or the man) out of the equation of marriage and the thing is no longer marriage. Lacking one half of the biology, it's an entirely different dynamic. Pretending otherwise just drives the paradigm of marriage further into the mud.

You may also be thinking, "Marriage can be whatever I want it to be!" If so... I'm afraid I can't meaningfully respond to dim-witted, "all truth is relative" moral equivalency like that, so the argument must end there.

The Caffeine-Free Diet Coke of Love

As I mentioned in my last post, love is in the air!

Well, not actual love. Gay love. It's not quite the same thing. I've become convinced that gay love is just a combination of lust and desperation that's close enough to regular love providing you don't look too carefully.

What brings me to such a cynical conclusion? Let us look at the current relationship statuses of some of the main characters in this blog.

KCG is in the most serious relationship he's had since he broke up with his ex early last year... but the relationship with this new man is looking shaky. The new man has displayed some odd behaviour that suggests a slightly toxic personality and/or undiagnosed bipolar disorder - he's temperamental, unreliable and unempathetic. But given that KCG hasn't had a boyfriend in over a year, and given that the new man is pretty darn hot, I cynically suspect they'll patch things up.

Meanwhile the Human Dynamo was reaching a bad place with his love interest, in which they'd both reached a point where they couldn't see a way around their mutual obstacles. But apparently he's met a thoroughly delightful new man and they've been spending every spare moment together for the past week or so. The fact that they've been on several dates and communicate electronically every day without having had sex yet is about as close to the romantic ideal as gay love ever gets.

Lastly there's the Virtuoso, with whom I had dinner on Sunday night. Unfortunately for me, I've discovered that he's taking himself off my sexual menu because he's started seeing someone. They met at the gym, after their respective versions of Grindr introduced them. This new man is a) old enough to be the Virtuoso's father, b) a millionaire and c) still letting his psycho ex live in his house. Said pyscho ex is on worker's compensation following an indeterminate injury and threatens suicide whenever it's suggested that he might like to move out. When I raised an eyebrow at this, the Virtuoso merely heaved a sigh, as if to say that beggars can't be choosers.

But what of me, you may ask? In my own burst of lust and desperation I signed up to Manhunt.com over the weekend, after KCG assured me that it wasn't any sleazier than Gaydar.net.

If you've ever been on Manhunt, you'll know that KCG is, at best, delusional.

I punched up my standard profile to make it more aggressive, to match the tone of the Manhunt profiles I'd seen. And it got me noticed! On my first night I attracted interest from a weird guy 19 years my junior, a weird guy 18 years my senior, and a weird partnered guy who's been stalking me on Gaydar.

On my second night I had a brief conversation with one unattached, age-appropriate man who wanted to know about something in the background of my profile photo. He spent most of his time boasting of the number of hot guys he'd banged, with the heavy implication that if I couldn't match him shag for shag, I wasn't worth knowing.

Time to head back to Gaydar, perhaps? Well, back on Gaydar I got a several hundred word message from a guy who thought we were compatible simply because I am younger than him, shorter than him and a non-smoker. By that logic George Clooney and I are also soulmates. Even so, I sent him a message thanking him for his kind and effusive words. It must be gay love.

In which I share my sexy powers, fool that I am.

I had some very bad insomnia on Tuesday night, leaving me still wide awake at 3am on Wednesday morning. Which was kind of handy, since it was at 2.52am that my phone decided to trill to let me know that I had received a text... one that The Virtuoso had sent me, at a more civilised hour, three days earlier.

Yes, I am changing carriers when my contract expires.

But back to the insomnia. In searching for causes, I can only come up with one.

You see, earlier this year I hosted a fancy dinner party for some of my gay, unattached friends. There was five of us in total, and it was a lovely affair.

On Tuesday evening, following a catch up with one of them, I came to the sudden realisation that, three months after the dinner party, four of the five gay, unattached men who'd attended now had boyfriends.

AND GUESS WHICH ONE OF THE FIVE IS THE ONE WHO DOESN'T HAVE A BOYFRIEND! GO ON, GUESS!

I could view this as evidence that I have mysterious gay love guru powers, somehow magically granting the gift of boyfriends to all who fall within my social influence. But I prefer to simply regard it as further, ego-crushing proof that I am a loser.

Oh well. I have a second date tonight with the guy I saw last Sunday. I'm not excited, but I suppose it beats sitting alone at home.

At least guys are still asking me out.

Within five days of returning from a fortnight's holidays abroad last week, I had two dates with different men. Hooray for me!

The first date was with a man who just barely meets the old requirement that one can only date people half their age plus seven years. Still, he is very mature, intelligent, professional, easy company and not bad looking. He is one of these spontaneous, jump-in-feet-first kind of people, which sits a little unevenly with my careful, analytical personality, but hey, it could also be good for me to be around someone who takes chances.

He comes from a very conservative and repressive ethnic background, and occasionally he appeared to be forcing himself to break through some internal barrier to share personal information. His livewire personality and buttoned-down heritage seemed to be in uneasy tension. However, as I mentioned, he was intelligent, easy to talk to and engaging, and there did seem to be a mutual frisson of potential when we hugged and chastely kissed each other goodnight.

Spontaneous, jump-in-feet-first people have a tendency to declare things in the heat of one moment that dissipate in the cool of the next. So I'm trying to take his observations that I have a "beautiful smile" and "kissable lips" with a realistic mind. Still, it's nice to be admired, even if you suspect that the admiration is shallow and transient.

The second date was more problematic. I want to see him again, not because I think there's any romantic potential in the relationship, but because I'd like to finesse my psychological profiling. He was obsessed with controlling his identity, to the point of making me promise that I wouldn't talk about him to any of my friends. Not that I have a lot to talk about - getting simple social data like his living situation or his work was like trying to uncover an Egyptian tomb during a sandstorm. Despite this, he talked incessantly, leaving me little space to do anything other than smile and nod. Amateur psychologist that I am, I'd interpret this as bluffing behaviour - filling the conversation with white noise to cover the lack of anything real being said.

He'd complain about men misinterpreting his gaydar profile, and when I explained why they would have misinterpreted it (drawing on my own experience and a university degree in semantics and language signifiers), he didn't seem able to understand that tweaking the profile would be a good thing. I'm always delighted when people offer constructive advice on how to make my profile more appealing, but he seemed to feel that it would be an admission of failure on his part, or pandering to the failings of his readers.

I also wonder if this inflexibility explains why he listed himself as a pure top despite having some fairly swishy moments: he doesn't like letting another man in, literally or metaphorically. It's not so much a desire to be dominant and in control as a deep, fervent desire not to be open or vulnerable.

Oh well. They both seem eager enough for second dates, so we'll see where this goes in both cases.

When I like you more than you like me.

More misery, I'm afraid. This time centring around my friend KCG.

You see, KCG is evolving as a person. He used to be quiet, intellectual, and hanging out with a circle of friends who were generally older, more cultivated and philsophical.

But since he's fallen in with his new friend Sexy D (so named because his name starts with D and he's sexy as hell) he seems to have realised that there will be plenty of time for the life of the mind after he's dead (ie 40). His new circle of friends is younger, shallower, more extroverted and, from all accounts, hotter.

I say "by all accounts" because I've only met Sexy D once, and I've never met his coterie. I've only heard about them.

Sexy D is a white collar worker but he has no interest in philosophy, theology, psychology or any other the other -ologies that KCG and I used to discuss. He's clearly intelligent but no intellectual. He's good with his hands, he has a great body, and he likes drinking, clubbing and fucking. His friends are, apparently, just like him, only moreso. From what I've heard, from both KCG and the Human Dynamo, they're a bunch of loud, buff, venal queens... Sexy D is the quietest and most introspective of them.

A year out from his breakup with his ex, KCG is either throwing off the last shackles of his old life and becoming the man he always should have been, or he's experimenting with a new and different persona, like a teenager who goes goth for a couple of years before settling down into polo shirts and jeans. There's hope for our relationship if it's the latter, but not if it's the former.

That's the sad thing. If he gets free of the neuroses and inner conflicts that have plagued him his whole life, KCG has the charm, the humour and the boyish good looks to be a very successful gay man. If he plays his cards right, he could have the fabulous life partner, the inner city designer terrace, the cool interior design, the luxury mid-size SUV, the chocolate labrador, the Saturday morning couple trips to the gourmet bakery for croissants... basically he could be living the cookie-cutter modern gay dream.

I could never achieve that - I'm too old, too fat, too lazy and too uncharismatic. And people who CAN manage that don't have people like me in their social circle, so I can't even expect to be invited to the occasional dinner party.

I had such high hopes for KCG. I thought that, if I played my cards right, he could be my introduction to a life that would be a dream come true. But even though I have played my cards well, it turns out he's been playing his own cards, and is moving on up to the sort of gay elite that simply isn't for the likes of me.

I miss him. Any idea of a romantic relationship between us has dissipated, but I really like having him as a friend. When I discovered BN2's cheating ways, KCG was the only person I felt I could call to talk about it. The sad truth is that he can do better than me. Our friendship is looking increasingly like a momentary aberation - a lucky confluence of spare time, need and low expectations on his part.

When high maintenance isn't worth it.

A few nights ago, when I logged onto gaydar to check my messages, I had a brief exchange with a new man. Like Tania Zaetta Man, the subject of my last post, this man's glasses were hideous, but he had a refreshing ability to joke about them, and thus didn't seem like a bad kinda guy.

It still wasn't smooth sailing. He asked to see a "full-on" picture of me, and when I replied that I'm not that sort of boy he clarified that he meant a more obvious face photo. This misunderstanding made things a little awkward, especially when he sent me a "full-on" picture of himself. When, I wonder, will gay men learn that a webcam picture of yourself staring unsmilingly at your monitor is not the most attractive look? Team that with the creepily out-of-date hairstyle (I remember wearing something similar in 1991) and the aforementioned hideous glasses, and you'll understand why I didn't hold much hope for the relationship. When I tired of browsing and exchanging messages with a couple of other people, I simply logged off and went to bed.

The next night, when I logged onto gaydar, there were SEVEN messages waiting for me from Mr Full-on. Begining with a normal statement, then a Why Haven't You Responded?, then Seriously, Why Haven't You Responded?, then Did I Say Something Wrong?, then Is There Something Wrong With Gaydar?, then FINE, BE LIKE THAT, BUT I THOUGHT WE WERE REALLY CONNECTING!, then a Let Me Know If You Change Your Mind.

Sheesh.

I did message him to say that I'd logged off the previous night (which you'd think he'd have noticed) so I didn't receive any of his messages. Then we chatted for a bit before I pointedly excused myself to go do some exercise... and I've avoided gaydar ever since.

Win versus Fail

Here's a little comparison that sums up my current dating life:

Over the weekend, KCG went out and had a beer with a man to whom he'd been talking on gaydar. Despite being from a hardscrabble industrial suburb, this man had a conversational knowledge of Jung's collective consciousness and Nietzche's will to power. He was also, apparently, even hotter in the flesh than he is in his profile pictures... which are pretty damn hot. And he's all of 23 years old.

By contrast, last night I got into my first conversation in weeks with a gaydar man. Bearing in mind that my profile mentions that I have a deep aversion to guys who wear oversized, femme sunglasses, here's a rough idea of how the conversation went:

Him: Hey, read your profile, liked it, check me out and see what you think.

Me: I don't know... the sunglasses might be a bit of an issue... (smiley icon)

Him: Er... you're joking, right? They're perfectly normal sunglasses.

He seemed to be dead serious. At this point it should be noted that in EVERY ONE of his profile pictures he's wearing huge, rimless, smoky brown sunglasses with thick gold arms, making me think that somewhere a trophy wife is searching under the seats of her Mercedes SLK200 and muttering "Where the hell did my sunglasses go?"

Me: Um... yes... just my little attempt at humour... ha ha ha...

And then I quickly logged out before I said anything even stupider.

So while KCG is flirting with a 23 year old philosopher-hunk, I'm getting interest from a 51 year old man with Tania Zaetta's sunglasses.

I hate it when problems don't have clear solutions.

The business with BN2, as covered in my last post, has thrown me off more than I could have realised. I've been cheerfully asserting that 2011 will be my year, the year in which I meet many new men and attain many milestones in my gay relationship journey... but I'm starting to realise how tenuous this can be. It doesn't take much - an unanswered text, a "postponed" date - for my self-confidence to be rattled.

Beyond my friends KCG and the Human Dynamo, up until recently I had six men whom I was seeing in some sort of capacity. I was rather excited by this, but it seems that they are all dead ends. I'm only attracted to half of them and I'm not hopeful about any of them. And I get the impression that none of them are terribly fussed about me either. This may simply be in response to my own inertia, but there it is.

In the last few days, I've discovered that one of them has reunited with his ex, another is seeing someone else, and a third has turned down my last two suggestions for dates, which implies that he regrets his initial interest. Of the remaining three, one is a very poor match who seems to be communicating with me largely because he has nothing better to do. Another is a lovely guy with whom I have much in common, but he's a little strange and occasionally off-putting and there's zero sexual chemistry. And finally there's The Virtuoso, probably the best dating relationship I have right now... whom I haven't seen for more than two weeks.

Combined with the fact that KCG and the Human Dynamo are both seeing new guys (KCG claims that his new man is just a friend, but I'm sensing vibes), and I'm suddenly feeling very lonely and depressed. I've realised that while I was supposed to go out on five dates last week, none of them actually resulted in me and another gay man being in the same room together. A couple got held up at work, two guys were ill, and one had to do emergency babysitting. Or at least those were their respective stories.

In short it seems that everyone is, very suddenly, having more success than me. And I was doing so well there for a while.

Disconcerting, to say the least.

Things have been going well lately. I've met a lot of interesting guys through gaydar. My social and dating life has been too busy rather than not busy enough. I'm getting as much hot sex as I want thanks to The Virtuoso. However my feeling that things are finally coming together for me has been dealt a fairly hard blow.

It all started with a date on Monday night. He was a nice guy, professional, intelligent and easy to talk to. He mentioned that he'd broken up with his partner a couple of months ago, but that they were still living in the same house before the partner moved to another city. Over the course of the conversation he mentioned the partner's first name, ethnic background and profession. It rang a bell, so I asked what his surname was. And that clinched it. His partner was none other than my first lover, BN2.

This sort of thing doesn't happen in normal heterosexual relationships. A straight man doesn't go out with a straight woman only to discover that they share the same ex. It certainly makes things a little awkward, and you just need to put it aside and keep concentrating on what's happening here and now.

However there was an added complication in this instance. My date mentioned that he and BN2 had been together for three and a half years. But BN2 and I were deep in the throes of our short relationship just a little under three years ago.

Cue record scratch sound effect.

Now I never had even an inkling that BN2 was so much as seeing anyone else when we were together, never mind being in another relationship. But my date mentioned the figure of three and half years a couple of times, so the overlap is undeniable. Fortunately my only mention of my relationship with BN2 was that I'd been seeing him "a few years ago", so my date evidently assumed that it was more than three and a half years. Frankly, revealing that your date's ex cheated on him is not something you want to do on a first date.

Of course it's possible that my date misspoke. Maybe he meant two and half years, which would place the begining of his relationship about three months after BN2 and I parted ways. But that's still bad news for me. Back then BN2 told me that he was taking a job overseas. He'd even bought a house. He was leaving within a month. But even if I assume that my date's relationship was two and half years rather than three and a half, that means that the whole overseas job/house/life thing was a barefaced lie.

Of course if my date didn't misspeak, and it really was three and a half years, then BN2 was lying to us both, which is even worse.

There may be some innocent explanation for everything. Maybe it really was only two and half years. And maybe they were only friends initially and my date counts that as part of the relationship. And maybe BN2's overseas job fell through at the last minute or after a very brief time.

But Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest answer is usually the right one. Most likely he was just a dirty dog, chewing on two bones at once.

Of course that hurts, just as you'd expect, but it actually goes a lot deeper than that. I'd always recalled my relationship with BN2 with fondness. I occassionally had a vague little fantasy that he might pop up out of the blue, and we could try again and, with the benefit of a little more maturity on my part, see where our relationship might take us.

But now I discover that he's been around this city for years, he may have had a boyfriend for all of the time that I knew him, and basically he lied to me about his life, his job, his plans and his relationships. In even the best scenario, he wasn't the nice guy I thought he was. He was, in this best case scenario, a manipulative liar.

Have you any idea how devastating it is to be confronted with the fact that the closest thing you've had to a boyfriend was really just a dishonest dude enjoying a bit of fun on the side?