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.