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.