One year on...

It's been exactly one year since I last posted on this blog, so I thought it'd be worthwhile updating it.

The most important thing that's happened is that the cute 25 year old Brazilian mentioned in the last few posts went on to become my first ever boyfriend! We were together around six months, until a serious soccer injury forced him to return to Brazil for surgery.

Now before you clasp your hands together and sigh, "Awww, at last GTR has found true love!", there's a few things I need to make clear. 

The first is that although he initially planned to move back to Australia early this year... that never happened. Finances, family and work conspired to keep him in Brazil, where he now has a new (and more age-appropriate) boyfriend. So this relationship is definitely in the past tense.

The second is that I never loved him. I cared for him, deeply, and still do, but I never crossed the line into love. I'm sure he never loved me either, although I know he cared a lot about me too.

The third is that as far as boyfriend relationships go... it was pretty crummy. He was very demanding and seemed to seek drama for drama's sake. Nothing I did was ever good enough for him. Even the sex became an exercise in making him happy with little joy for me. If he hadn't left when he did, I'm sure we would have broken up within a couple of months.

But if that gives the impression that the relationship was horrible or that I regret our time together, it shouldn't. He was my first boyfriend and I was his first boyfriend. He was beautiful and affectionate and we had a lot of fun together. We even took a holiday to Bali together, just before he left, thus fulfilling one of my long-term fantasies. And let me tell you, he had a spectacular ass.

Best of all, though, is the fact that now when I'm out on a date and he asks me, "So, when was your last relationship?", I have an answer, and a breakup story that doesn't assign blame to either party. I can speak confidently about "my ex", rather than trying to avoid the question or apologise for being a loveless loser. That alone is worth everything I invested in the relationship and more.

So where am I now? The closest I've come to a relationship this year was six weeks of dating a sweet and funny guy who suddenly blanked me for no reason that I've been able to ascertain. 

Other than that, it's just the usual disappointments punctuated by occasional moments of hope. I've been averaging sex once a month - with the twinky boy visiting from Sydney whose world I rocked, with the Malaysian bodybuilder who lost interest after two encounters, with the hot but strange guy who desperately wanted me to pound him without actually pounding him, with the cute but repressed young guy who made such weird noises while we fucked that it put me off seeing him again, with the sexy MMA fighter whose sexual skills put him way out of my league (a fact he realised after one night together and never saw me again), and with the guy I could have seen a lot more of... but I was only visiting his city for a day.

So more of the same, really. But at least now I can no longer say, "I've never even had a boyfriend." It's kind of appalling how much comfort I take from that.

Too much to ask

I hear you honey.

This guy is perfection

How is it that some guys are so drenched in sexual appeal?

Seriously, I would commit actual murder to spend a night with this.

Is it this hard for normal people?

It's encouraging to me that I seem to get better and better at this whole gay dating thing, even if the improvement is glacially slow and the eventual outcome has inevitably been failure before actual "boyfriend" status is reached.

I've now been on several dates with the sexy 25 year old Brazilian soccer player from my last post, and things are going reasonably well. We're only seeing each other an average of once a week, but we text each other virtually every day to touch base.

The main problem seems to be accessibility. He is a complete and utter fail in terms of the GTR Test. He doesn't own a car, he only has a part time evening job (since he's at college during the day), and not only does he share an apartment with some Brazilian friends, he also shares a bed, because they are five people living in a three bedroom apartment.

His bedmate is a) straight and b) female, I hasten to add.

So we can't go to his place. And it's hard for him to get to my place on the bus. And he's either working or playing soccer most evenings. And I work all day. And when none of these other things is an issue... I get a cold sore. Or he has to go to the hospital following a soccer injury. Or my parents suddenly announce they're staying with me overnight while on a visit from the country. Or there's a fucking zombie apocalypse!

We can't even spend hours chatting on our phones, because English is something of a struggle for him and Portuguese is something of an impossibility for me.

This might all sound like a fool's version of a proto-relationship, but the thing is when we are actually together the chemistry is profound. We're vigorously attracted to each other, and he's sweet and talented and six kinds of adorable. He texts me to tell me he misses me, or how he's yearning for me to kiss him, or how he just wants to snuggle up to me on the sofa and watch TV. And hey, I feel the same way.

We just never seem to get much chance to prove it.

A bangin' weekend

With all of the sadness and relational failure I post on this blog, I may be giving the impression that my sex life is perpetually empty. But while it's not unusual for a couple of months to go by between encounters, they do occur with a reasonable frequency. Although like buses, there tends to be big gaps and then two or three come at once... pun intended.

Late Friday afternoon I had a coffee date with a 33 year old mixed race engineer whom I'd originally taken to be African- American but turned out to be a more exotic mix of African, Indian and European. We both liked what we saw, so the coffee date segued into me taking him home and having a couple of hours of what can only be described as wild sex.

I'd never truly appreciated what a "power bottom" is. It was like fucking a hurricane. In the end I was so drenched in sweat that I've had to throw out my saturated pillows.

If I hadn't been in his company for the previous hour and seen him being quiet, I would have assumed that he was on drugs. But it seems he's just a guy who really, really loves sex, and specifically sex that involves his ass being pounded for hours by a big hard cock. I kept thinking that what he really needed was a couple, so that one could take over from the other when the exertion became too much.

Which is not to say that he didn't enjoy sex with me. It was interesting that he said he enjoyed the sex because he felt like he was being made love to, rather than just fucked. Apparently a lot of his encounters are blow'n'go scenarios, often with married men. Apparently I give good love.

The following night the second man, a 25 year old Brazilian student, came over to my house for our first date, to have dinner and watch a movie. We managed dinner, but afterwards I kissed him in my living room and any thought of watching 'American Hustle' went right out the window. From 7.30pm till about 1am we had sex. Then we dropped off to sleep. Then we woke up at 4am and got right back into it.

There was a lot to like about this sexual encounter. Being a shallow man, I enjoyed the fact that I spent an entire night banging a good-looking and very appreciative 25 year old Brazilian soccer player. He admitted that he wanted to kiss me from the moment he walked in my door, and he marveled at the number and variety of things we did together. He also gave me the most comprehensive blow job I think I've ever experienced.

But despite the fact that both dates went well, there is a troubling aspect. Almost every time I've topped over the last several months I've been unable to sustain an erection for the necessary amount of time. When I could stay hard both the African and Brazilian really enjoyed having me inside them, but it was over long before either of them, or me, were satisfied. I was in a position in all other respects to fuck them for as long as we wanted, but my genitals simply couldn't keep it together.

There's nothing quite so frustrating as having a hot, naked man in your bed, begging you to fuck his brains out, only to find that your cock is going, "Meh, I'm just not feelin' it" and withdrawing.

I still made both of them come - the African through mutual jerking off and the Brazilian through a blowjob - but in both cases I couldn't take them to the places they wanted.

The urgency of the need to get a cock ring seems to be growing. Which is kind of ironic.

In which I fail to make the grade, yet again.

Over the last couple of months I've had two contenders for First Boyfriend Ever. But needless to say, both relationships fell apart before the first hurdle.

The first was the more profound of the two, lasting for around six weeks. I liked him and he liked me. He was very demonstrative (we were holding hands by our second date) and he made me laugh. Sure, he smoked and sure, he drank too much and sure, he was on anti-anxiety and anti-depression and anti-ADHD medications. And sure, he had such a hairy back that being the Big Spoon was an ordeal. I could look past those things to the cute, sweet, affectionate guy behind it all.

But he grew bored and, I think, resentful that I was going away for a month's holiday in Europe, a trip I'd organised long before I met him. We were supposed to have a date on the Friday before I left and he cancelled because he was tired. So we rescheduled for the Sunday, right before I was flying out, but he stood me up and then claimed he'd fallen asleep. I figured I'd been dumped, but when I got back from Europe I reached out to him anyway. He responds to my texts, sometimes, and he did admit to wanting me once, at 1.30am, when he was drunk, but that hasn't translated into an actual meeting.

However just as this was happening, about two weeks ago, I was being determinedly pursued by another guy. He doesn't smoke or drink too much, he's attractive and sexy and goofy with a killer smile, and he can't get over how "beautiful" I am. Our first two dates quickly devolved into uncontrollable sex, but bookending the sex we both seemed to like what we were finding out about each other. It was moving fast but it felt right to both of us.

But we were supposed to have a date last night, and since Sunday morning he refused to answer my texts. Last night came and went without a word from him. Figuring he had misplaced his phone or something, I tried phoning it. I got a text soon after saying that, "there's nothing worse than speaking on the phone... it's traumatizing" and that there's "too much to handle in (his) head". I texted back to ask what was going on and offering my help if I could, but there hasn't been a response.

I should have known that anyone who thought I was "beautiful" would turn out to be mentally disturbed.

So I'm back to square one, yet again.

It's not that I don't have interest from other quarters - just nothing that's welcome. There's a friend of a friend who is desperate to date me. Sure, he's unattractive and tedious and demanding and we have nothing in common, but he wants me. Or rather he wants someone, and I'm available. And apparently I don't deserve any better than that.

It doesn't help that another friend, who is roughly the same age as me, is in the process of falling in love with an amazing guy, and he's been giving me a blow by blow account of it all. He has a knack for evocatively describing the delicious terror of meeting someone out of your league, fearing for the moment that the spell breaks and he realises he's too good for you, but then discovering that, somehow, magically, he's actually really into you too.

In addition, the sex is apparently epic. Of their most recent encounter, he said it was, "undoubtedly the most passionate and out there and enlightening sexual experience of my life"... and it seems his lover felt the same way.

Of course I am both jealous of him and hopeful for him: hey, I'm a human being and I'm allowed to have contradictory feelings about the situation. The cynic in me notes that he's tall and freakishly fit and a very engaging person... of course he's going to find love sooner or later. The optimist in me notes that if he can find love in his mid-40s, maybe there's the slim possibility that the rest of us can too.

An event not to be missed!

Hey everybody! There's a sale on gays!

You know, I've been looking for an attractive new top - something summery that fits me well. Hell, at these prices I might just get two!

Oh, to be the meat in this sandwich...

Just when I think that I couldn't be more turned on...

I notice that sexy, quizzical little lift of his eyebrow and the lust fires even higher.

Myth No. 3

Myth: There's nothing unusual about a child being raised by two daddies.

Fact: It's so rare that the figures barely register as statistics.

I was intrigued to read a factoid recently about the number of children being raised by gay couples. Despite what fashionable TV shows depict, the numbers are tiny - in Australia, fewer than three children in a thousand, or 0.3%, are being raised by a same sex couple.

Also interestingly, the vast majority of those children are being raised by lesbians, and the vast majority of those children being raised by lesbians are the biological children of one of the lesbian parents. It's hard to find definitive statistics, but it would appear that for every nine children with two mothers there is only one with two fathers.

As such, the popular image of two gay men with their adopted child is about as common as being struck by lightning. To put it into perspective: I live in a city of two million people, including around four hundred thousand children. Statistically, this means that in this entire city there are maybe three dozen children with two daddies... barely enough to fill a typical primary school classroom.

And furthermore, that three dozen is actually dominated by gay men raising their biological children from a previous straight relationship with a new boyfriend, not by two gay men choosing to have a child together.

There were some other interesting facts that came to light during my googling around. In the US, which has a far higher adoption rate than Australia, around 1 in every 780 children is being raised by either a gay male couple or a single gay male. But 1 in 234 is being raised by either a lesbian couple or a single lesbian. Given that lesbians can generate their own children without much fuss, while gay men can only get a child by taking it away from somebody else, this discrepancy is hardly surprising.

I found this graph fascinating too.

In the US, 22% of children in same sex parented households are not adopted or fostered, and are not the offspring or step-children of the householder. Which leaves... what? I assume scenarios like younger siblings being raised by an older brother and his boyfriend after the loss of their parents. Or a gay couple taking in a teenaged gay boy thrown out by his family. Or a high school student living with her gay uncle and his partner while she goes to a good school because her parents live in a one horse town in the middle of nowhere.

It's hard to draw any precise conclusions from these figures, since the data is ambiguous, reliant on a lot of self-identifying, and based on tiny sample groups. It's worth noting that in one study of the US census, it was suspected that nearly half of the same sex couples identified were in fact coding errors; that is, idiots in heterosexual relationships ticking the wrong box.

The other interesting observation I read was that since lesbians overwhelming dominate same sex parenting, most data about the outcomes of children raised by "homosexuals" is primarily about children raised by lesbians. Gay male couples who parent are actually so rare that there really isn't any specific evidence of positive or negative outcomes for the children in their care, despite the statements made by both gay activists or anti-gay activists.

Myth No. 2

Myth: Gay people want to be married to the person they love!

Fact: Gay people want other gay people to be able to be married to the person they love. As long as they don't actually, you know, go through with it.

In the Australian census of 2006, only 50,000 adults out of 17,000,000 (or 1 in 340) reported being in a same sex partnership. This compares to 203 in 340 reporting being in a straight partnership. If partnering rates were the same in gay Australia as they are in straight Australia, we'd expect to see at least another 200,000 gay couples flouncing about. But as it is, the rate is running at about 20% of all gay adults (assuming a very conservative rate of homosexuality at 2.5%).

There may well be a few militant gay couples who refuse to acknowledge their relationship until they are allowed to call it a "marriage". But they would be nowhere near numerous enough to explain this discrepancy.

So what does explain this discrepancy? At first I wondered if the absence of a female in the relationship removed some of the drive to settle down and make a nest. But if that were the case, one would expect to see much higher partnership rates for lesbians... and they're not there. Partnership rates between gay men and between lesbians are roughly similar.

More likely, it would seem, is a combination of two primary factors. One, it's harder to find a compatible mate when your sexual orientation is limited to a tiny minority of the population. And two, homosexuals don't experience the same social imperatives to partner up and reproduce the families that created them. Sure, a mother might nag her gay son to find someone and settle down, but it won't have the same force behind it as her nagging of her straight son to marry his girlfriend and start popping out grandchildren. In the latter situation, she sees strong echoes of her own experience and priorities. In the former, the correlations to her own experience are more muted.

I use the mother here as an example, but the social pressure to follow the traditional familial and reproductive narrative comes from every part of our culture. And it's directed at the straights; it's merely coopted by the gays, and not, apparently, in large numbers.

Myth No. 1

Myth: 10% of people are gay.

Fact: No one can be certain how many gay people there are, but its a helluva lot less than 10% of the population.

It's hard to find objective data, partly because sexuality is a subjective thing, and homosexuality is something that people are often less than truthful about, even in anonymous surveys.

Homosexuality is also something that people are passionate about, and both sides twist the truth to suit their own ends. This article from Family Voice cherry picks data from a university study to support their anti gay-rights agenda. Meanwhile, Out in Perth accurately quotes figures on gay partnerships from the Australian Bureau of Statistics... then shamelessly inflates auxilliary data to make those figures appear more impressive.

But one thing that we can say for certain after even a small amount of investigation is that the figure of 10% is utter bollocks.

A recent study by LaTrobe University in Victoria found that 1.6% of anonymously surveyed men identified as gay, and a further 0.9% identified as bisexual.

For the 10% figure to be even remotely accurate, one would have to assume that for every man who identified as gay or bisexual, there were three screaming queers who claimed to be completely straight. Even allowing for the closet cases and those in denial, that seems unlikely.

The LaTrobe study DID find that 8.6% of men confessed to at least one incidence of either a same sex experience or attraction. But a moment of sexual ambiguation does not equal being gay. And even if it did - if every man who'd ever had any sort of sexual experience with or attraction to a male was really deep down 100% gay - it's still only 8.6%.

Supporting the 1.6% figure are studies in mainland Europe, Britain and the United States, which found similar percentages to those found in Australia. Over such wide samples, the possibility of the figures being so significantly underreported is small, to say the least.

Of course all of this "X% of people are gay" stuff comes from a very binary conception of sexuality, whereas many of the more nuanced social researchers recognise a fluid spectrum of sexuality. However it would seem that the percentage of men who are what we'd consider "gay" at any given point in time would be somewhere between 1.6% and 8.6% of men. For myself, the figure of 3-4% that's occasionally quoted seems the most rational... although I have no stats to hand to back that up.

Like Mythbusters, only with more penises.

Partly for my own amusement, and due to a vague sense that I wasn't getting the unbiased story, I've done some research into facts and figures about gays in the modern world.

After going over as much data as I can find, as objectively as I can, I'm made three discoveries:

1. It's very difficult to pin down solid demographic data on homosexuality.

2. Many assumptions we make about gay experience and relationships are based on false and/or outdated information.

3. I am a massive statistics nerd.

So over the next few posts I'm going to present some of my findings, in the hopes that they may give a better understanding of what's actually going on in the realm of gay relationships.

Basket of goodies

Damn it, why can I never find this aisle when I go grocery shopping?



The last time I went to the supermarket all I got was corn chips.

Turns out the GTR Test is even more depressing than the Bechdel Test

Further to my last post, about the difficulties of trying to date men with 1) a job, 2) a place and 3) a car, I've had a rather startling realisation.

I wrote down the names of my seven closest single gay friends, the ones I see at least every couple of months. Of those seven, only two had a job, a place and a car.

And if we redefine place to mean, "a place they can actually invite people back to", the number drops to zero.

Zero. Out of my primary gay social circle, I'm the only one with a job, a place and a car.

To really grind my face into the raw concrete of failure, I then ran the test on my coupled gay friends.

To a man, every one of them has a job, a place and a car. And, obviously, a partner.

W. Somerset Maugham once refered to himself as being "first among the second raters" as a writer. Apparently I hold a similar title in dating. I really am the King of the Losers.

The Bechdel Test for gay dating

You may be familiar with the Bechdel Test, a feminist metric by which Hollywood films are judged. To pass the Bechdel Test a film must contain 1) two named female characters who 2) speak to each other about 3) something other than a male character.

It's an elegant and beautifully damning critique of Hollywood, largely because it's so undemanding. After all, it's no great ask for a film to have just one scene, or even one shot, of two women who speak to each other about issues other a man. And yet the vast majority of Hollywood offerings, from every Star Wars installment to every Toy Story movie, fail even these low expectations.

I was reminded of the Bechdel Test when I recently noticed something about the quality of men I was seeing in my dating life. So I created the GTR Test.

To pass the GTR Test, a man must have 1) a job, 2) a place and 3) a car.

Now when I say "a job", it doesn't have to be a high-flying career... or even full time. It simply has to be remunerated enough for him to support himself.

And when I say a place, I don't mean a fashionable apartment... or even an utter hovel. It can be a sharehouse, providing he has his own space within it.

And when I say a car, I don't mean a sleek new car... or even an old clunker. A motorbike or a scooter is fine.

Oh, and when I say a man must have a job, a place and a car... actually, I'll settle for two out of three.

And yet, even by those disgracefully low standards, the majority of men I've dated lately have failed the GTR Test.

- The 37 year old who came close, with a car and a part time job, but it wasn't enough to support him, and he lived in his parents' garage. And even then, the real deal killer was the fact that he had a) a serious drinking problem and b) HIV.

- The student from Saudi Arabia who failed on all three counts: he lived on a stipend from his parents, resided with a host family, and got around by bus.

- The 25 year old from a suburb half an hour away by car who lived off a university grant, in his parents' house, and didn't even have a license, let alone a car.

- The student from Singapore who was in exactly the same situation as the Saudi guy... including the same emotional problems.

Only two guys lately have passed the test. The first has a great job, a nice house and a car (technically - it doesn't work at the moment). As such we've been out four times, but it's just one of those cases of there being insufficient chemistry.

The second guy lives in a sharehouse and only has a part time job, but it pays enough for him to live, and he has a brand new Mazda 3, so he passes. He's also gorgeous, intelligent, stylish and a wildly talented classical musician - I was smitten from the first moment I met him. But after two dates he used the deadly phrase, "you're such a nice guy" and asked if we could just be friends.

So it's back to dating the unemployed, the carless and the homeless, I guess. Maybe I should get off Scruff and Growlr and just hang around under bridges to meet guys.

Damned if you do...

Recently a friend of mine sent a message to a hot guy on Grindr (or some similar app), stating that his profile pic was stunning and offering some generic pleasantry.

The hot guy's response was, and I quote, "what about my profile gave the impression that I was interested in a fat ugly prick like you?"

My friend was devastated by this reponse, and I think it was a deplorable way to treat a fellow human being. 

And yet I must admit that at the same time, there was something about it that reminded me of a classic feminist dilemma.

Say you're an attractive woman, and you're sitting in a bar having a drink. Skeezy men keep coming up to you, offering to buy you drinks, wanting to chat you up. You're not interested. What do you do?

A) Smile politely, say "No thank you" and then get dragged into conversation by their insistence and your own politeness, or,

B) Tell them to fuck off in no uncertain terms, and then be on the receiving end of a huffy, "Well I was only trying to be nice!" and/or "No wonder you're alone if you're such a bitch!"

Basically however you respond, you lose. It's no wonder attractive women are often aloof or over-defensive.

My friend didn't deserve to be sneered at by the hot guy... but then again, I can imagine that the hot guy gets a dozen unsolicited compliments a day from guys with a far lower sexual status, each seeking, in a wheedling way, to get him into conversation. He can almost be forgiven for snapping at them...

Or maybe he's just a narcissistic, entitled ass, relying on the fact that in the gay world if you're hot you can be as cruel and rude as you like and men will keep flocking to you.

Who knows?

Two wins in the genetic lottery.

"Hello, I have a perfect body and a huge cock. Thus my success in the gay world is pretty much assured."

Yes, I'm just jealous because... well, look at him.

It's called "grooming".

Much as I hate to contradict Stephen Fry, I know plenty of homosexuals who are very interested in making other people homosexual. The phrase "ditch the bitch and switch" has been around for a while, and it wasn't made up by me.

But that's the gay movement in a nutshell, isn't it. It doesn't matter if a statement is actually true or not; it's okay as long as it helps the cause.

Actually that's the modern world in a nutshell. Truth has been replaced by pith.

Time to buy some strawberries and cream...

Perhaps I'm just horny or lonely or something, but this is the most erotic thing I've seen in a long time.

That kiss... it's a thing of beauty.

Family portrait.

Sigh.