Anatomy of a Turnoff

I was idly catching up on GMM earlier, checking out the guys who had checked me out, and I discovered a guy with thirty four profile photos.

I've never come across a guy with thirty four profile photos before. For the record, I have two. Most people have one. Some have as many as ten. Nobody has thirty four. That seems a little overabundant. What, one may well ask, gives?

Perhaps it's just his way of showing his many moods, I thought. Such a large number of photos may give a more rounded impression of his depth as a person. So I started scrolling through them.

#1 - a photo of him posing by the window, looking blithe and contented.
Not much to look at, but not actively hideous either.

#15 - a photo of him standing next to a rainbow flag.
Just in case his presence on GMM wasn't enough of a giveaway regarding his sexuality.

#20 - a photo of him with his Waterford crystal collection.
His alarmingly comprehensive Waterford crystal collection.

#22 - a photo of his genitals, amongst his Waterford crystal collection.
Oooookay. We have confirmation of creepiness. Deactivate the benefitofthedoubterator.

#25 - a photo of his erect genitals, amongst his Waterford crystal collection.
If this goes any further, his cleaning lady is going to get the fright of her life tomorrow morning.

#33 - a photo of him sticking a bunch of roses down the front of his underpants.
I hope they're fake. Not to mention thornless.

Sometimes it's best if people don't get a more rounded impression of your depths straight away.

Wait, was I gay? I can't remember...

I was looking at this guy and wondering what, besides the obvious, was so appealing about him?

It took me a while to realise that he has a shaved head, and we all know how I feel about shaved heads. I'd just forgotten.

What can you say about a man who forgets what his own turn ons are? I am so lame.

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’.