This blog post is about how to meet a single guy for dating, courtship and a long term partnership. Though hooking up with guys can be fun and exciting I’m in the “how to” find a Boyfriend/Soulmate/Partner/Spouse/Husband/ trade-- the love business, so to speak.
Four myths of dating.
First: “All the good guys are taken.” What a bummer this one is—I can assure you that not all the good guys are taken and in fact there is a great pool of adorable, smart men waiting to meet their future mate. Some of them are reading this post right now.
Caveat: I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV. This is all my opinion.
When that phone rang one dreary gray morning back in 2001, and it was my urologist calling with test results, I fully expected to be exonerated once again from a medical malady, as I’d always slipped by before, no matter what the test, usually with passing grades and a smile.
Not this time. The news as cloudy as the weather, the apologetic voice said that the biopsy results were positive for prostate cancer, and we needed to make an appointment to discuss what to do next.
I was in shock. Only 46 that year, my lucky personal experience with disease was limited to increasingly infrequent colds and flus, a broken collarbone at 6, and a nasty bout with Hep A. For me, the gold standard around which all health issues revolved was the yearly HIV test, and as long as I could keep passing that, nothing else would even come close.
As I did my research and discussed the options with the doctors, the more it occurred to me that prostate cancer (PC) was a numbers game. There was a number for the PSA (prostate specific antigen), a blood test you take, which when elevated, can be an indicator of PC. There was your age, also a number, a higher number (say, 75 vs. 46) being indicative of both the kind of treatment that would be recommended and the likelihood of surviving PC and dying of something else. Finally, there was the Gleason score, which was a numbering system indicating the aggressiveness of the cancer cells, a higher number being worse than a lower number.
I read in the NY Times magazine section today about how increasingly middle-school students as young as 11 and 12 are declaring their sexual-affectional identities to friends, family, and teachers. This is a welcome evolution of gay liberation that has resulted from decades of gay activism and the gradual inclusion of more accurate images of LGBT people in media. It is significant that young people with no sexual experience recognize their sexual-affectional identities at such young ages because being gay is more about whom and how we love and how this colors our experience of the world than about sex only. The article points out that parents never question their children when they admit to opposite-sex attractions at a young age, but they nearly always do with same-sex attractions. The common question, ”How can you know for sure at your age?“ is just another form of denial of their gay child’s reality that they would never think to impose on non-gay children. The article goes on to describe some support programs for gay youth, but it also reports what we all assume, that anti-gay bullying and harassment is still pervasive in schools and almost never challenged by teachers or administrators even in relatively liberal school districts.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, "Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity." Though not Jack's most eloquent moment (perhaps he had Marilyn or missiles on the brain), I know exactly what he means. After I modeled for the new Daddyhunt campaign, they asked me if I would be interested in writing a health and fitness blog. I accepted with a self-imposed mandate to approach writing about fitness in a JFK-approved fashion: from a cerebral and not a body-centric perspective, from a scientific and not superficial one. Thinking such a task might prove painless at worst (I have countless bylines in all of the major fitness publications) I set to reviewing the blog entries and member comments that had come before me, and discovered painless it was not.
Recently new hunky Hollywood it-man Gerard Butler was quoted as saying that he had dated men, as well as women, in the past, supposedly from a 1994 interview with Movieline magazine. It turned out the quote was bogus, and while there is something interesting in the fact that it happened to come out RIGHT while he was promoting his new romantic comedy, what really interested me was the reactions on gay blogs when the news broke. Peppered within typical variations of “I’d hit that” and musing about the “300” hottie’s body was something I hadn’t really thought existed… true bisexual bigotry.
What started as a standard dialogue regarding the questionable heterosexuality of Hollywood’s leading men (a common gay man’s pastime) quickly turned into a pretty heated, and nasty, debate on the truth of bisexuality in general. From the old thought that bisexuality is just a layover on the way to gay-town, to rage-full rants on the convenience of the life of the bisexual. That they get all the dick they want on the side, but when it comes to public fronts, they get to play straight and be part of “regular” society. And then a very emotional response, which really got the words flying, from a bisexual man who rarely “outs” himself as bisexual as he had been completely abandoned by all of his gay friends when he started dating a woman after a years-long relationship with a man ended. All of this got me thinking… do I really believe in bisexuality?
I’ve been recently chatting with a very nice guy in another city who is eager to meet someone available, honest and into the same things that he is. I understand all too well the process of weeding out potentials from online, especially when you have a huge desire to be with someone.
During one of our chats, he mentioned how he was going to be traveling to meet someone he had been chatting with online, and that the fella had offered to "buy" him a flight back if he could get himself out there. Just the whole idea of it, put me on edge (maybe its the Daddy in me coming out...) but I began to think about what are good boundaries to have when traveling to meet a man in a different city. Questions like: Who pays? Where to stay? And how to stay safe.
A few thoughts to consider before you hop on that plane;
1) Make your own arrangements. If you can’t afford the entire airfare or travel money to get to him and stay on your own (with friends or a hotel) the first time – then it might not be a good time to go.
In this article I invite the reader to a depth and breadth of philosophical reflection than is unusual for this forum. I hope that readers who accept the challenge of this invitation will be stimulated to think about themselves both as individuals and as a community in possibly new and transformative ways and thus be rewarded for the effort.
“For our own liberation and for the benefit of the world.”
Dear Kirk,
My Name is Larry and I'm 19. I have been with my boyfriend for over 2 years now and he is 37. Like most relationships we've had our ups and downs. We've argued and we've made up. He can be really sweet sometimes, leaving me little notes everywhere...he likes to surprise me with little gifts, no matter how small. But he also can be a complete ass. He has this amazing gift of saying the wrong thing at the absolute worst time for it. Like "I don't understand why you're stressing over exams...they're not important."
I've also just realized how controlling he is, when he'd ask me every day to go upstairs and get his laptop for him, or get him a drink etc. If i ask anything of him he tells me to "get it myself and stop being so lazy.”
We'll be in bed, having a nice hug when he grabs my cock. So I'm guessing it wouldn't be wrong for me to assume he wants sex. So I try and start something and he slaps my hand away and tells me to go to sleep, leaving me with a huge hard-on and a damaged ego. He does this a lot. He'll grab my nipples because he knows it gets me hard...then if I try and start anything he'll slap my hand away and say later. We hardly ever have sex and sometimes it's months before I get any.
Dear Kirk,
The guy I fell for this summer turned out to be an absolute disaster. For starters he is uncut and due to horrific past experiences of gay men who did not value cleanliness or had a fear of water, I vowed NEVER to be with someone who is uncut. This guy turns out to be one of the cleanest guys I have been with - cut or uncut for that matter. I kept forgetting how sensitive uncut men are and how fragile the loose skin can be. I am not sure if he felt I was being rough intentially or insensative to his needs. Not only did I feel like his trick every single time, but he made sure I did not perform any sensual acts of affection thus stating that he hates being tickled and that he finds it irritating. I was afraid to touch him let alone attempt to give him a blow job.
When I massaged him for the first time he lectured me on how to give a proper massage (I massage for a living). At times I made the mistake of asking him if he was ready for me to top him and his response would be, "Don't ask me - JUST TAKE IT !”
Needless to say we argued incessantly in the brief 2 months we were together that seemed like 5 years. I took care of him fiscally and he had the luxury of getting high, sleeping a lot, and being miserable. One of the main arguments is that he never felt the need to respond to any of my text messages or voice mails. He sucked at communication. I valued communication and he valued sex and porn. We partied hard with Tina and GHB.
I partly blame it on being naïve and only being exposed to what the media had fed me at the time, but growing up I thought that all gay men were queeny. That was just the way it was. I soon realized this wasn’t true but there is a school of thought, even within gay men, that the “new” masculinity that has penetrated itself into gay culture over the past couple years is false, that part of being “gay” is to accept the fact that we are not masculine… and therefore all the facial hair and “straight acting” just cover up for… well basically acting girly, sipping Cosmo’s, and learning the latest Madonna choreography.
Well, for the most part, I find this absolutely ridiculous. Mostly because I don’t swish into a room, enjoy shopping, or enjoy acting “bitchy.” But there are also two sides of the coin. And besides, the latest round of homo “new masculinity” is just that… another round. If you counted all the mustaches in the West Village from 1974 to 1979… my point would be made. So while you may (or may not) roll your eyes when someone quotes “Sex and the City,” calls you “giiiiiirllllll,” or does a finger snap un-ironically, I may (or may not) roll my eyes when you grow that full beard, re-discover flannel like it’s 1991, or think ripe pits are hot. See the dichotomy? And also, hasn’t it all been done?
