Sven's life in Oz

Imagine a gay bar where everyone stood around the edge of the room, no one spoke, and everyone judged you as you entered by how much skin you were showing. Then they would read your CV and only after that would the think about saying hello. If gaydar.com were a bar, this is what it would be like.

Like every self-respecting gay, I had a Gaydar profile. Since I became a single boy with an iPhone I also had the mandatory Grindr app, because it’s fun to see how far away the next gay man is in metres. As online presences go, mine was quite light: it’s not uncommon to have a gay.com, manhunt and dudesnude account as well. It’s the same guys on all these sites looking at the same photos of you, but it pays to advertise. Gaydar and Grindr were enough for me – I met a few nice people through them and made some friends – but after a while the novelty wore off and the return on my time invested began to wane. A few months ago I decided enough was enough, and ditched them forever. There were three main factors in this:

• Time-wasters. The whole point of online dating is that you will be taking it offline at some point. You’d be surprised how many people haven’t grasped this concept. I already empty my thoughts into the vacuum of the internet for people I rarely meet to read: it’s called a blog. I don’t need any more virtual friends. Online dating should be an introductory thing – if you can’t be bothered to get up and see someone in the flesh, your Gaydar membership is a just a digital ouroboros and you will die alone.
• Crazies. The opposite of the timewaster is the nutter. I can handle people who aren’t interested in me, and I expect you to do the same. I don’t want to log in and see yet another message from you when I’ve already politely said no. They’re never very original either: five messages on variants of “hello/hey/hi there” will not make me change my mind. I know I can block people but I shouldn’t really have to. However, the internet may be the safest place for this group of people – that kind of behaviour in public would probably get the shit kicked out of you.
• Do I know you? It’s fair to say that a lot of gay men sleep about. When you’re going home with someone different every weekend it’s hard to remember a face, especially since you spend a lot of the time looking everywhere else. Every now and again you’ll see someone out and get the “have I fucked you?” face, better known to the rest of the world as the “I know you from somewhere, but I’m not sure where” look. It’s awkward, but even more so when you know that you haven’t ever met them but you have seen them naked online, and you turned them down. Worse still is when they recognise you and think the same thing. It’s like rejection without the chase, and where’s the fun in that? (For the record, there are no photos of me naked anywhere online. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on anyone.)

It was this last one that really clinched it for me. Not so much the ego-crushing pain of being ignored in public by someone who is quite happy to chat to you via relay, but the realisation that it is all a total waste of time. The best times were not the ones where I sat waiting for a response from someone who would ignore me in the street. I’ve had far more fun when I was out and about seeing people in the flesh. What’s the point in sitting at home trying to meet people when you can just go out and do it for real?

Who have thought it? Sometimes the old ways are the best.

Oh, man, was I ever into him! “What happened?”, you may well ask. Well, he moved to China. There’s always something, isn’t there? After digging myself out of the iPhone debacle he went off and passed his exam, then decided to take a career break and travel around Asia for three months or so. I saw him once before he left. He told me in the first two minutes, and I spent the rest of the evening wondering why he hadn’t just told me over the phone and saved me $50 on dinner out. Naturally I was my charming, witty self throughout and by the end of the night I was satisfied that it was definitely his loss. Quite honestly, he was hard work.

How did I get so crazy over this guy? Yes, he’s hot with moments of fun and excitement, and yes, he had the most gorgeous fingers I have ever seen. However, I let all that go to my head: I put his timidity on our first date down to nerves, but really he just didn’t talk very much. He was a profound conversational recalcitrant; I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and ended up creating a complete fantasy personality. We had great dates because I didn’t actually go out with him – I was having dinner and drinks with my imaginary Dr Boyfriend-in-waiting. It was doomed from the start.

After the China revelation, I was working so hard on maintaining my enthusiasm for his trip that I couldn’t keep the make-believe personality going too – there’s only room for so much crazy in my brain. Without the pretend version, the real Dr Lego was exhausting. I’m not exactly verbose – I prefer to listen lots and speak when I have something to say – but next to him I was verbally incontinent. My efforts to keep the conversation going led me to more and more desperate topics. At one point I may actually have asked his preference of mattress manufacturer. Eventually I realised that my dignity was worth more than his comfort and I just gave up. I may never find out what material surgical scrubs are made from.

At the end of the night we went our separate ways and promised to stay in touch. Start submitting conversation topics now – I may end up needing them.

Mardi Gras weekend: the busiest weekend of the gay year and I had so much on I could barely catch my breath, yet I still managed to make myself look crazy with Dr Lego. As I type I am waiting to hear from him and fearing the worst. The image I am about to describe may make you think twice about visiting this site again.

Dr Lego is a busy man at the moment – he needs to focus on other things and a fledgling relationship may be slightly more of a distraction than he can handle right now. I like him, but I’m in no mad rush and I’m not going anywhere, so the ’slow, slow, slower’ approach suits me down to the ground. It’s win-win. This has been working pretty well for the past month or so, but this weekend I appear to have gone off the reservation and turned into Glenn Close in rugby socks. Please note that I only appear to have gone mad – circumstances and technology have conspired against me in the most villainous collusion. Nonetheless, it does make me seem like a raving maenad, and that’s not a good look.

Here’s what I thought was happening: I was being breezy, for want of a better word. I sent a very low-key “plans for Mardi Gras?” text and got a low-key “I’ll try” back, which was super. I responded that I would call after the parade and if he were about maybe we could meet. So far, so congenial. Post-parade I duly called, and this is where things start to go off-piste. My iPhone decided that it would route the call, but cut off my sound and then freeze so I couldn’t hang up. I doubtless left a message cursing and blinding as I hit the screen in a vain attempt to cut it off. I had to turn the whole thing off just to end the call, thus requiring a reboot. Once back online, I called again and left a sensible message that I was now free and to call me back. Not ideal, but explainable. I went off to the after-parade Carnival, didn’t hear from him, and went home around 1:30am – a respectable hour for MG weekend. In the morning I rang to see how he was, sorry we missed one another and yadda yadda yadda, but no response. A quick text later to confirm my plans for the weekend, if he wanted to come, lovely – if not, no worries. That’s it. Not too much, not too little. Yes, I’m keen: no, I’m not crazy.

What actually happened was slightly different, and this is where the bunnies run for cover. Original texts were sent and the post-parade iPhone fuck up occurred. However, after the reboot, the keypad lock failed to work properly and when I put the phone back in my pocket, my keys started knocking the screen just enough to register as finger touches. They started doing all kinds of crazy things like sending blank text messages to people, deleting apps, and ringing numbers from my recent call list. Including Dr Lego. Four times. So, when I decided to give him a friendly morning call to see how his night was, it was actually the seventh time I had called him in 12 hours. Since he didn’t answer, we can mark another one up to the missed call list. Follow that up with a text detailing my movements for the next 48 hours and we’re into restraining order territory.

Later in the afternoon, as I was playing with my phone, I noticed that the applications had moved and spent a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what had changed. When I eventually worked out which one was missing, I concluded that it was highly unlikely I would have consciously deleted it, and that something hinky was afoot. Too late – oh, so late – I checked the recent calls and discovered the awful truth: I was an inadvertent stalker. I’d love to say that the story ends there, but you know me too well. Things get worse…

If it takes ten men an hour to dig a hole ten feet deep, how long would it take five men to dig half a hole? The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing as half a hole: once you are in one, you are in one. Remember that, friends, when you think you are not in as deep as you could be. In my embarrassment, I decided that the only course of action was to ring and explain what had happened, and we can all see where this is going: he didn’t answer. Missed calls = 8. A couple of hours later I received a short text politely explaining that he was working the night shift and would have to call me tomorrow. I seized the moment, sent a text back straight away briefly explaining the error and cursing my own stupidity. What else could I do?

So now I am waiting at home for a phone call tonight telling me that I am far too high maintenance for him, and to seek psychiatric help. So that’s the end of that one, and quite honestly, who can blame him?

——

Update: we’re on for a coffee this Saturday afternoon. I’ll keep you posted.

A few weeks ago when I did the no-pants train ride, some of my fellow pants-free travellers and I all went for a post-ride drink which, as these things do, turned into a full afternoon of drinks, drinks and more drinks. One thing led to another and the long and the short of it is that when I finally made it home I wasn’t alone. Not bad work for a Sunday, I’m sure you will agree. When I told my colleagues at work this tale of drunkness and debauchery they all laughed, but I got a spank on the wrist from them all for being a naughty boy: my companion for the evening was pretty much a boy himself, being a mere 20 years old. It’s official: I am a cougar.

Actually, apparently I am a puma. Cougars are forties and I’ve still got a decade to get to that tickbox on the census. In any event, with ten years between me and this puma-bait it was fairly certain that it wasn’t going to turn into anything huge. We went on a couple of dates, had some fun and laughed a lot, and now that neither of us has called the other for a fortnight, I think it’s safe to say that the fling has been flung and it’s time to move on. So what have we learned?

Firstly, I’m hot! Who doesn’t love it when people mistake them for someone five years younger? And even if it’s all lies it’s always nice to hear. In either case, I was the one being pursued and we all like the attention, whatever the story that comes with it.

Secondly, I’ve still got it, baby! If I can pull a 20-year old, what else can I do? Whoever said that gay years were like dog years and thirtysomethings were really seventysomethings was obviously pig ugly and bitter about it. I may only be starting out in my thirties but that means I’m just warming up; I have no intention of spending the next decade winding down preparing for a lonely old age. (And just to be clear, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to be whoring it about like something straight out of Sodom; rather that I’m going to give life everything I have and see what happens.) I am a catch, and it’s only a matter of time…

But finally, 20-year olds are just not for me. Sure I had fun and if I could go back I would do it all again, but now that I’ve done it I realise that I’m not 20-years old myself, and I’m happy about that. This particular 20-year old was bright, charming, witty and handsome, but there was something about him that I can’t really put my finger on: I suppose he was just too green. When I was 20 I thought I knew everything; now I’m 30 I can confidently say that I don’t know a damn thing. The past ten years have been a greater learning experience than I ever imagined and as exciting as it was for me – and will be for him – I’m ready to move on. Whoever I move on with needs to be beside me, not ten years behind. But if he wants to tell me that I look 25, that’s fine by me.

Sometimes writing is good to get things off my chest. Other times, it can be good to put off writing about something until I have thought about it some more. At these times getting it down on paper is more like ordering my thoughts; like running them through a sieve to get all the crap out before I can make anything out of them. This is one of those times.

I am having a good time being single. However, lately it seems that the whole world wants to settle down and get married. Every man I meet is looking for a boyfriend, which is fine, but when I say that I’m not that guy things go decidedly sour very quickly. Most recently a guy actually told me off for leading him on because, I can only assume, I didn’t tell him right at the start that I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. (The idea of ‘looking for a long-term relationship’ is odd to me anyway – I always thought these things happened organically. It appears I was wrong.) This latest episode got me wondering whether everyone is looking to settle down, or if I am the cause of my own problems. Turns out it might be a bit of both.

Last week in the pub, I lamented my sorry tales to the NEC, who told me that my problem was being too nice. “You are friendly,” he said. Ordinarily it would be a compliment. “You need to be more shrewd. You can see why people get the wrong idea. Don’t text back straight away; leave them hanging for a while. They’ll get the message.” The problem is I’m crap at that kind of thing. I like to text back straight away or I forget – just ask my sister. I adore her, but I’m rubbish at keeping in touch. If I don’t do it immediately, you’ll be waiting till Christmas to hear from me. Whatever the relative merits of playing games, I hate it when people do it to me and I’m dreadful at doing it to anyone else.

When I discussed it over cocktails with my friend, Sarah, we came out with quite a different answer. “You’re not too nice: you just can’t help it. It’s not your fault you are charming,” she said. Of course people would want to settle down with me, the conversation went, I’m freakin’ fantastic. I’m a victim of my own loveliness, it seems. Whether it’s true or not (and there are days when I assure you it most certainly is not), friends who can take your crushed confidence and turn it into ego-restoring compliments like that should be treasured forever.

Finally I talked about it with James, and he looked at me incredulously. He often wonders what planet I live on, and this was definitely one of those times. He cut straight to the chase.
“People are looking for love,” he said. “Maybe you aren’t, but most people are. It’s what people do.”
He could always tell me what I needed to hear when I didn’t want to listen – in this case: “it’s not all about you”. I’m not too nice: if anything I’m rather selfish. But he made me see that there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as I remember that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily see things my way. So you want to date me? I’m flattered, not faulty. Thanks but no thanks, and that’s all there is to it.

Right, what’s next?