To Love or Not to Love?
That continues to be the question
In traffic today, I made a list of my imperfections, the body parts that have been altered by surgery or injury, the skin issues that require a dermo, the hair growing in places that need a slender electric razor to to remove them. I was making a list of all the ways I might be less desirable in this modern gay dating world that I can now I hold in my hand, on what we call a stupid smart phone. Images of men flexing their biceps on came to mind, along with the men that have thick, dark, full eyebrows and beautiful white smiles. Those men are often not interested in me.
The men who are interested live in foreign countries (I’m very popular in the Philippines and Columbia, it seems), in faraway cities (I could be in a throuple by now if I lived in Toronto), and men who love Disneyland and rollercoasters (not that there’s anything wrong with that). That leaves a short list of single, local guys who aren’t half my age, want a sugar daddy, prefer gang bangs to coffee dates, or have a long list of offensive, annoying, and sometimes xenophobic statements in their profiles. In other words: it’s slim pickins.
But if you were to watch any gay romcoms today, you might still believe in romance, in love in at first sight, in the fluid dance of two men with perfect bodies having great sex the first time and never getting an STI, or monkeypox, or Covid-19. You might, like me, still believe in this ideal of love, despite everything you’ve learned. Can I still believe in love? Even when the best guy I’ve met recently feels like a buddy or a brother, when tall guys say I’m too short, or younger guys want me to be a stud that “takes them,” or beautiful men in Ohio or Wyoming or the Armed Forces say that want monogamy, and I want that too, but I have to wonder is that still possible in this time of porn as entertainment and sex clubs as spas? Sometimes I think I would have been better off as a straight man. Women love me, and I get along with them so well.
Maybe I should just give up, let it go, decide to throw in the rainbow towel. There’s so much more to believe in, isn’t there? Like the loyalty of dogs and the resilience of whales? There’s so much more out there that is so much more tangible than romantic love.
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The writing prompts that inspired this post were three “shorty-shorts”:
What’s not to love?
Imperfectly perfect
I’m starting to sound like a broken record