I’m not dead. I’m just in a relationship.

Dear reader,

It’s been a while since I last posted anything on 168guys.com and to those wondering what’s up with that I’d like to come out and say I am not dead or in any way incapacitated.

I’ve just been busy.

And when I say busy I of course mean I spent 2020 inside, endlessly binging on pop culture up to the point it’s now normal for me to dream of crossover episodes where the Golden Girls are revealed to be humanoid cylons who go by the name of Negan.

What set 2020 apart from every other year for me however wasn’t my newfound content addiction, or anything related to Covid-19 for that matter. What made the past year unique was that I spent it in the company of someone else, having a relationship, trading the gay lifestyle as seen on PornHub for one fitting mainstream streaming services.

Instead of waking up to check Grindr for compliments on my looks, these days I get out of bed to walk the dog we got a few months ago. Sometimes, when I’m feeling naughty, I pretend to sleep through our dog’s morning rumblings in hopes of my boyfriend walking him for me, granting me the comfort of a warm bed a little while longer.

168guys.com has always been a look back, with the latest entry (Guy #213) describing events that took place when Obama was still president and Ariana Grande didn’t have any R-rated material. Even though the stories I wrote described past events, they all pertained to the lifestyle I was still living at the time I wrote them.

That all changed in May of 2019, when seemingly out of the blue, I started dating a Guy and came to experience this whole “love” thing I’d already heard so much about.

Searching for love has always been a recurring theme of my blog. It’s never really been about me securing any. I suppose it was easy to write about the extravagant gay life while I was still living it. Writing about orgies, drugs and casual hook-ups didn’t come as easy as I started living the IKEA lifestyle.

Added to that, even before getting into a relationship I already felt the stories on my blog were becoming a bit repetitive and formulaic, the overall narrative lacking direction similar to the way my own sex life did. In that sense the blog was in need of a hiatus.

Since starting this blog a little over 5 years ago, I wrote the story of more than 200 Guys I’ve been with. Since I stopped writing I’ve been with one Guy I could write 200 stories about.

The fact of the matter is there are still more than 100 Guys I’ve yet to tell the story of, all of whom preceded my current boyfriend. It’s not that I can’t write another 100 stories about the ins and outs of Grindrtopia, but as my life shifted focus, so did my source material.

The life described on 168guys.com became one of the past, I guess because in the end there was nowhere for it to go to: one can spend years trying to emulate a night with Guy #168 and his 20 extras, but once you truly experienced the comfort of a warm bed on mornings your boyfriend walks the dog it’s easy to see what those 21 Guys were lacking.

And all the stories of the 100 Guys that preceded my boyfriend are pretty much me trying to get high on gay culture with Guy #168 and his stand-ins.

Add a busy job, active WhatsApp life, a pandemic and other lame excuses and a year passes without me being inspired to write yet another awkward sauna hook-up.

I know I’ll get around to writing about the remaining 100 Guys at some point the same way I can picture the heat death of the universe. I know it’s going to happen, but I’m not inspired to do anything about it for the time being.

This may seem a bit ungrateful to the people who’ve read 168guys.com. Before the pandemic nightlife was still common and whenever I visited a gay club of sorts, it was not unusual to have someone come up to me, asking if I’m that guy from that blog, who writes about sex and stuff. The fact that people in nightclubs approached me to let me know they like my blog is a compliment that still lingers, and it’s almost enough of a reason to plough through and write the remaining 100 stories.

However, to those who are still curious, the majority of those stories are no different from the ones I already wrote. That’s not to say I’ll never write them. It does mean I won’t write them until I’m inspired to do so, when I’ve found a way to make those 100 stories interesting.

To those who’d like more stories about clumsy Grindr dates, orgy culture and love in weird places, I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait a while for new material, but I can give away the ending: