But can I salary package this?

I just received the following email from my employers:

This is a reminder to all staff that the Security Department provides an after hours escort service to carparks and accommodation immediately adjacent to our offices.

If an escort is required please call the Security Department and a uniformed officer will respond. There may be a delay of 15-30 minutes before an officer is available so please plan ahead.

I had no idea that such a service is on offer. I suppose it's a good way for them to earn a little extra cash. And the uniform is a definite turn on.

I wonder if they do requests? What I'm really after is a brunette, 5'11" to 6'2", who makes particularly good use of his gym membership.

Eat Handsome Your Way

While checking my hotmail just now, I noticed that MSN had thrown up this picture to accompany a link to an article entitled “Eat Your Way Handsome”.

“Handsome”?

Perhaps handsome is in the eye of the beholder, but even so I think they could have chosen a better model. This one looks positively freaky… as if somebody bleached Grace Jones.

Stop taunting me with your agreeableness and nice ass!

Maybe I'm just one of nature's pessimists, but I hate it when I get messaged at my GMM profile by a really cute guy.

You see, if I'm messaged by an ugly guy, or one with so many issues that he almost seems to have "FREAK" written on his forehead, it's easy to say, "Hey, I may be desperate and dateless, but I'm not that desperate and dateless. Back to the loch with you, Nessie! Hell, this actually makes me feel pretty good about myself, comparatively speaking."

And off I go, whistling a jaunty tune.

However, if I'm messaged by an attractive guy, then I have to take the whole deal a little more seriously. Such a situation began a couple of days ago. When I opened the message and saw some photos of the guy who sent it, for a second or two I wondered if he'd sent it to the wrong person. He seemed too good to be true. He was just my physical type: tall and lean to the point of gangliness, and although he didn't shave his head he had chaotic chocolate-coloured curls that I could easily get used to. The photos showed a rugged, fun-loving, unpretentious guy... who seemed to find my profile interesting enough to warrant a comment.

Since then we've sent a couple of messages back and forth, and I'm finding him more attractive with every exchange. Somewhere at the back of my mind I suspect that he's too young and too extroverted and too rough for someone as old and introverted and soft as me... but I don't want this to be so. And besides, if I rebuffed every cute gay guy who found me interesting just because there was a probability that it wouldn't develop into pet names and snogging, when would I ever go out?

So now of course I'm checking my email every hour or two to see if he's been in touch, and suffering the pangs of self-doubt every time the inbox shows up empty, and questioning whether I'm ever going to find someone I can care about or just die alone and unloved. You know, the usual. It'd be so much simpler if he was just another ugly weirdo.

Maybe I should amend my profile. "No hotties please! Only losers whom I feel comfortable rejecting!"

Leave cuddliness for the fabric softeners

While browsing through online dating profiles last night, I was reminded of yet another one of my pet peeves...

Although, if I may digress for a moment, I have so many peeves nowadays that it's misleading to call any of them "pet". "Pet" suggests a beloved, cossetted individual, and nobody has as many pets as I have peeves unless they're one of those crazy old cat ladies. It would be more accurate to say that I have a vast herd of peeves, roaming proud and free across the wide open praries of my psyche.

But leaving that aside, as I was saying I stumbled across one of my pet peeves: gay men who think that "cuddling" is a good idea.

To my mind, a cuddle is not a laudable goal, unless you are a particularly clingy toddler. The desire to be cuddled is cute in little kids but rather pathetic in grown men. There's an element of wanting intimacy without any of the adult connotations, and a sense of neediness. And most of the time neediness is a very unattractive quality.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe it's just the word itself. Cuddle. It looks and sounds childish, like "Muggle" or "giggle". If you removed it from a profile and replaced it with "embrace" or "hold you in my arms", the idea would start to look a little more mature. "I want to hold you" sounds romantic; "I want to cuddle you" sounds wet.

Still, if I see a profile which states "I like cuddling and snuggling on the couch," I automatically assume that he is not the man for me. There's a chance I'm missing out in doing this, but there's an even bigger chance that I'm avoiding a whole bunch of girly flakes.

Watch out William Shakespeare, WH Auden and Russell Davies

I’ve discovered that if you run the taglines from gaymatchmaker.com.au profiles together, you get poetry:

Hi Mate…
howdy
horny all the time
seeking same…
Are you Game???
fill me up big boy

And that’s just the taglines from one week’s worth of new members. If I had the time I could probably compile a poignant masterpiece of verse... or at least the script for an episode of ‘Queer As Folk’.

Come for the smile, stay for the... er... nice sheets

Ahhhhh...

That sound you hear is me giving a lonely, pathetic little sigh of longing.

That other sound you hear is me giving a lonely, pathetic little sigh of longing significantly coloured with rampaging lust. AhhhhhGrrr!!!

Plus I really like those sheets and the matching pillowcases.

Hmmm. I guess I really am gay after all.

An update on my down dates

As much for my own benefit as the benefit of any (largely hypothetical) readers of this blog, I feel that I should post an update on my love life. Of course calling it a "love life" is like calling a stubbed toe a "life-threatening injury", but it is what it is and if I don't write it down now I'll probably forget the details sooner rather than later.

Firstly, the "friendly, funny guy" I mentioned nearly six weeks ago. We had a good time on our first date, and we met a week later for dinner and a movie at his place. Then I went on holiday for a week, and then was sick for a few days, and when I finally emailed him to say hello he blasted me for being "distant". Which I suppose was fair enough - he seems to like me, whereas to be brutally honest I'm fairly ambivalent about him. However I don't deal very well at all with highly strung people. I am a laid back person with possibly more sang-froid than is healthy, so any hint of passionate drama queeniness is a big turn off.

Still, we talked about it and I think we understand each other a little better now. We're still chatting every couple of days on email and we'll see what happens.

Secondly, BN2, the man with whom I had the most intense relationship in my short and underdeveloped gay personal life. Despite our promises to each other when we had this conversation, our relationship crumbled after that. I withdrew a little, he became somewhat aloof, and then he decided to take up a job overseas. I wanted to see him before he left, but neither of us were sufficiently enthusiastic about it so it just didn't happen.

I do miss BN2 more than I thought I would. But I don't regret calling things off with him. The things I miss about him aren't aspects like his sense of humour, or his intelligence, or his conversational skills. I miss the erotica and Adult Themes. He was a great kisser and an enjoyable partner in his very large, soft bed. So basically I miss the kissing and the sex.

Oh, and his cooking. Man, I miss his cooking. Best cook I ever met.

There may be some guys who read this and say, "Good food and good sex? And you gave him up? What the hell is wrong with you!"

To them I'd reply: Well, excuse me for wanting more depth in my relationships.