Addiction

Guy #168 – Meet some of my issues…

“The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
William Blake

Ever since I started 168guys.com, the question I get asked the most pertains to what I will do after I reach 168 Guys.

The answer is both simple and not so simple.

Let’s start with simple.

When I started writing this blog, the number 168 was just a ballpark figure of the amount of Guys I’d been with. I began writing in October of 2015. As I started chronicling my sex life, I recalled more and more of the Guys I had sex with. Eventually, I opened up an Excel sheet, wrote down every Guy I could remember and ranked them according to their chronology. As it turned out I was about 20 Guys shy of Guy #168 at the time.

So when people asked me what I’d do after reaching Guy #168, I’d tell them I’d be doing what I’d been doing for the 167 Guys that preceded him: Make a note of it in my Excel sheet and move on to the next Guy.

Which is what I did, so for those of you in fear of this blog coming to an end, my Excel sheet currently lists 260+ Guys and I’m still out there, every day, advertising my whorish selfies on Grindr, looking for Guys to connect with, Guys to get high with, Guys to write about and possibly someone to love at some point, although there’s a good chance I have issues prohibiting that last part from ever happening.

Which brings us to not so simple.

I have issues. Let’s meet some of them:

I don’t date Guys because I want a relationship, but I am constantly on the lookout for that one Guy who befits my image of what perfection should be. Being a bit of a narcissist 99% of the Guys I do I dispense with even before I wash my hands clean of them, and truth be told it’s comforting to know 99% of Guys couldn’t hurt me or my feelings even if their lives depended on it.

My relationships with Guys are mostly short-lived, yet each and every time I engage in conversation with someone on Grindr, in a bar or at an orgy, part of me hopes to find someone I can establish a meaningful, lasting connection with. Relationships lasting longer than one date are the exception however. Either I make the effort to invest more time in a Guy and this effort is not reciprocated, or the other Guy gets back to me and I dismiss him for being too needy.

I am good looking. I get stared at a lot when I’m in a gay sauna, flaunting my deceitfully youthful exterior for anyone willing to admire it. Being good looking is a blessing as much as it is a curse. Seeing beauty when I look in the mirror gives me a sense of entitlement bordering on the unsympathetic. I am polite whenever I reject someone, but on the inside I feel anger toward the many Guys hitting on me and resent them for not being more like those few hot Guys who are not nearly as generous with their attention.

I wasn’t always attractive. In fact, for a long time I believed myself to be irreparably weird looking. Having spent the first 24 years of my life in a closet, I have a lot of experience falling hopelessly in love with girls who would have made the perfect daughter-in-law to my mother, were it not for the fact they thought of me as their little brother they wouldn’t dare share their vaginas with. One can imagine what happens to someone when you stir rejection in a bowl of narcissism and let it simmer for 24 years: I was damaged goods even before people started touching mine.

Consider how happy I was stepping out of my closet and landing in a world where I was considered doable by practically everyone who lived there. To this day, every time someone compliments me on my looks, every lusty stare I get, every bit of attention, it all acts as a band aid, covering the wounds of being a 24 year old virgin, a dorky figure who at one point was convinced sex was only meant for other people. At 35 years of age, that failure of a human being still exists, occupying my subconscious like a Bond villain that just won’t die.

At first I wasn’t very picky when it came to having sex with Guys. If it felt right I would go for it, often with pitiful results, but still, the thrill of being considered attractive gave me a high I simply couldn’t stop chasing. It’s a high I’ve been chasing for well over a decade now.

However, the more beautiful Guys I catch, the more beautiful the next one needs to be. I’m a 35 year old narcissistic gay Guy who, with the right amount of effort, can still pass for a youthlike twink such as the ones I’m attracted to. Yet the older I am, the higher my standards become, the rarer I catch what I aim for…and what I aim for is perfection.

I’ve only been in love a handful of times. I tend to fall for people who are unsuitable relationship material. I can always tell they’re unsuitable, but my hormones usually stand in the way of accepting this as fact. Looking back, I’m thankful I never ended up in a relationship with any of the people I ever fell in love with. At the same time it makes me wonder if I should want a relationship with the next person I fall in love with, seeing as how I always crave someone I don’t need. The status quo is that love for me is like a mirage I stop chasing the moment it becomes real.

As you can probably figure, I’m not really the relationship type. I dabbled in relationships very briefly, with Guys #14. #143 and #144 to be precise. They all lasted only a few months. I enjoyed the intimacy of a commitment, but each time I was quick to point out the reasons why my relationship with a particular Guy would eventually fail. Once that happened, continuing the relationship would have been like walking all the way down a dead-end street you already know is a dead-end street. What experience in relationships I could have had I gladly traded for a life in the fast lane.

Said fast lane eventually brought me into a world where homosexuality is celebrated in all its extremities, a world where casual sex flows on waves of drugs that make the experience anything but casual. When I started writing 168guys.com, love and sex to me were inseparable. My issues aside, I firmly believed that anyone looking for sex is also looking for love. Even when I arrived at my first orgy, I figured all the people there were in it for the intimacy.

When I started 168guys.com, I thought I had seen pretty much everything there is to see in the world of gay dating. Then came the day I discovered orgy culture, XTC, GHB, ketamine or just plain old fashioned cocaine. Before all of this I considered myself an expert on gay life, gay culture and even gay relationships. One year and nearly a hundred Guys later I am more at odds with sex, love and dating than I was when I stepped out of my closet. And I’m 35, single and incapable of keeping a Guy around for more than one date.

Basically, I’m a narcissist, insecure to the bone, looking for perfection, and alone.

All in all I guess you could say I’m your typical gay Guy.

You see, the one thing writing this blog has taught me is that issues are what binds us more than perfection. The more people read my blog, the more people tell me they find it a very relatable read. It would seem confusion, insecurity, clumsiness, loneliness and a restless search for perfection are quite common in the gay scene. So instead of limiting myself to chronicling short snippets of gay life, over the past year the idea grew I could expand 168guys.com into a book, offering the world a peek into the world of gays, drugs, orgies, lust, despair, jealousy, passion, addiction, hurt, pain, joy, ecstasy and yes, even love.

So in addition to writing about all the Guys I ever had sex with and trying to figure out myself in the process, I’ve also been writing a book about gay life in all its glory and not so glory. It’s still far from completed, but I will of course keep everyone updated on its progress. Writing a book featuring my issues is a lot of work.

Fortunately, Guy #168 gave me enough material to work with.

Guy #144 – Having an actual relationship…

The closest thing I ever got to having a relationship was going through an actual relationship with Guy #144. More precisely, a relationship with Guy #144 and his mother.

The first time I met Guy #144 was on a sex date at his place. He lived with his mother as it turned out, who I first saw lying lifelessly on a couch, watching TV and smoking a cigarette. She politely greeted me when I walked in, as her son showed me the way to his room.

I won’t deny sex with Guy #144 was good, but I couldn’t shake the realization his mother was but one door handle away the entire time. And I knew she knew all too well what I was doing to her son.

Guy #144 having a sex date over for his mother to see is one of those things that gets weirder the more you think about it. Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought about it much a few months later, when Guy #144 and his mother moved to a new house that happened to be a mere two minute drive from mine. Living on a small sexually void island I suddenly found myself within reach of sex in the format of a magazine subscription.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I visited Guy #144 at his new home, where he and his mother entertained me for a good thirty minutes before Guy #144 took me to his bedroom to give me the sex I had come for. As the three of us sat down on their porch, it struck me as odd Guy #144 wore nothing but a boxer in the presence of his mother.

Still, Guy #144 and I hit it off nicely. I almost instantly knew this wouldn’t be the man of my dreams, but he was close enough to have a go at this ‘relationship thing’ I had already heard so much about. In that sense, it wasn’t even that odd his mother had been part of the relationship from the get go. In Guy #144 I didn’t only gain a boyfriend, I also got a stepmom. My own mother having passed away not too long ago, it was nice to have a mother figure in my life again. And if I’m being completely honest, my gut told me Guy #144 was in no way capable of truly hurting me.

I guess I always knew there’d come a day I’d end up hurting Guy #144, and his mother.

Life at my own place at the time was a bit of a mess, so being with Guy #144 and his mother offered me solace from my daily worries. It wasn’t long before I slept at their place every night.

Guy #144 didn’t only live with his mother. They were also colleagues. They drove off in the same car every morning and came back together every night, after which they’d let off their steam by getting into heated discussions about the finer ethics of their job as bailiffs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good argument every now and then, but these two found grounds for quarrel in everything, that’s how much they wanted the fight. And no matter what the fight would be about, Guy #144 always fought in his underwear, the contours of his testicles hovering over his chair for boyfriends and stepmoms to gaze at.

Our relationship was very much rooted in sex at first, but the more I saw of Guy #144 the less I got to do him. Also, somewhere down the line he had taken up drinking and was now at a bottle of Scotch every day, which didn’t do wonders for either of our libidos. Sometimes Guy #144 would trick me into letting me think we’d be having sex only to call it off and go to sleep, saying the alcohol had made him tired. As my sexual frustration grew, so did my annoyance over the fact it was his mother who went out buying him Scotch almost every day.

At the beginning of the relationship, I got about thirty minutes of stepmom followed by four hours of Guy #144. A good month in and I had to go through 4 hours of stepmom followed by a few minutes with Guy #144 in his room as he took his nightcap and complained about how his mother didn’t get his side of the ever so fascinating bailiff spectrum.

My boyfriend had a pet name for his mother: ‘Mumsy’, as in It is my duty as an only child to make sure Mumsy has financial stability after she retires. I don’t think I ever hated a word as much as I hated Mumsy.

When I first saw Guy #144 he had been very cute. His somewhat antiquated Grindr photos proved he used to be incredibly hot. Yet as our relationship progressed, I could see the sad glance of alcoholism take root in his face and posture.

Whenever I told my boyfriend he should maybe consider moving to his own place he would fall into a well prepared monologue about the financial risks of such an undertaking and how living with his mother solved so many of his problems.

About four months into the relationship I realized I was basically living with my boyfriend and his mother, so I decided it would be good for me to spend some more time at home. I told Guy #144 he and of course his mother were both welcome there.

As it turned out, Guy #144 had abandonment issues. Who would have thought?

The idea of me spending time away from their safe space did not land well. Guy #144’s anger imploded in on himself, rendering him barely able to talk for a few days. So instead I faced off with Mumsy, who explained to me how neither one of them blamed me for wanting to spend time at my place, but that they were ticked off I didn’t discuss my decision with them before making it. His mother and I discussed the situation for well over an hour, as her son sat a few feet away from her, silently suffering in his underwear as I calmly smacked his mother in the face with my each and every one of my arguments, until she eventually conceded her objections had not been what one would call reasonable.

Feeling victorious I was in the mood for sex that night. Guy #144 went along with some foreplay, but quickly lashed out against me and then proceeded to cry his guts out, practically begging me not to leave him, not even for my own home, two clicks down the road, for two nights a week, where he and his mother would be welcome. Guy #144 wouldn’t have any of it, took a drink and went to sleep.

Me slaying Mumsy would prove to be my last conversation with her. When I left the house the next morning, I said goodbye to Guy #144 without even looking at him. I instinctively knew I would not be seeing him again. I later texted him saying I would prefer to keep some distance between us.

It’s a distance I enjoy till this day.

Guy #144 did make one halfhearted attempt to get back in touch with me, but I was too busy enjoying my distance. I did encourage him to start living on his own life. I believe I said something along the lines of You will never find happiness if you continue living with Mumsy.

I hope for his sake his mother invites a sex date over for her son to see one day. I’m sure it would do wonders for his abandonment issues.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 4 months
FORMAT: An actual relationship
SEX SCORE (0 = “It rubs the lotion on its skin” <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8.5

Guys #114, #115, #116 and #117 – The most dangerous drug of all…

Drugs will forever be a part of our lives, whether it’s nicotine, weed, alcohol, cocaine, XTC, roofies, poppers, ketamine, speed or the most dangerous drug of all: Intimacy.

The high Intimacy provides is unrivaled by any substance, but like all drugs, Intimacy is only fun by the token of its risk: Dosage is key and I for one suck at dosing Intimacy. Go easy on the Intimacy and you can’t help but crave a little extra. Go overboard and you OD on your own misery.
Added to this, Intimacy is the one drug you can’t dose by yourself. At the very least it requires two people to get it right. Achieving a successful high on Intimacy is like walking toward each other on a high wire and exchanging a hug without plunging to your death.

On the surface dating is about finding ways to fit genitals into other people and the gay scene is unbelievably facilitating in that respect. Scratch the surface however and you quickly find people hiding behind their genitals, people like Guy #114, #115, #116 and #117, people whose genitals led their tepid quest for Intimacy.

Guys #114 through #117 all had one thing in common: I had nothing to offer them except my body. It’s not that I didn’t like them or that I didn’t find them attractive. I simply had no Intimacy to give. Not everybody you meet is someone you want to cuddle on a high wire. At the same time everyone – and I do mean everyone – is constantly on alert for someone willing to do Intimacy together. We say we’re not in it for the feelings the same way people read Playboy for the articles: We lie.

The result is a scene where everybody tries to maintain his balance and when sex becomes a commodity, people tend to plummet.

Guy #114 was a kindergarten teacher. I taught him a lesson by laying him down on my countertop for a good five minutes. It was fun, but all the while I couldn’t help but imagine this slutty piece of human standing in front of a dozen toddlers singing songs about Old MacDonald and his farm. Sure, kindergarten teachers can be greedy bottoms as much as anyone, but I’m not the type who enjoys thinking about toddlers during sex.

Guy #115 was a reclusive Asian who for reasons I will never understand neglected to shave his armpits. They were sweaty and disgusting. He contacted me many times after our first and only date, but his armpits were sweaty and disgusting.

Guy #116 had a gorgeous body featuring an interesting skin condition. He assured me it wasn’t contagious, but I wasn’t quite comfortable going to fifth base with someone who needed Vaseline literally everywhere but his fifth base. Still, when his skin condition indeed turned out to be benign, I met up with him a few more times, until he became irritated I couldn’t meet up with him every week. Irritation soon led to anger, to which I tend not to respond.

Guy #117 was unremarkably cute. The sex was unremarkably pleasant. He wanted to meet up another time, but I deemed him too unremarkable. The end.

If Guys #114 through #117 would ever ask me why I held off on seeing them again, I would tell them I was just in it for the sex, but it would of course be a lie. I lie as often as I’m lied to. We all know we lie, but it’s not like we have a choice: Intimacy is a dangerous drug. We all crave it as much as we fear it and when we find it all the strength in the world isn’t enough to prevent us from getting addicted to it. I didn’t reject Guys #114 through #117 because the sex was bad or because there was anything fundamentally wrong with them. They simply couldn’t give me the high I was looking for and I let them plummet the moment I realized they looked for it in me.

I’m an addict, willing to sacrifice anyone and anything in search of my fix. It’s what I do to people. It’s what people do to me. One day I might find an addict like me, someone equally bad at dosing Intimacy. It will be awesome, mind blowing, overwhelming and possibly life shattering.

I want it to be today, but I hope the day never comes.

“Ballad of the sad young men”

Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men, sitting in the bars
Knowing neon lights, and missing all the stars

All the sad young men, drifting through the town
Drinking up the night, trying not to drown

All the sad young men, singing in the cold
Trying to forget, that they’re growing old

All the sad young men, choking on their youth
Trying to be brave, running from the truth

Autumn turns the leaves to gold, slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old, that’s the cruelest part

All the sad young men, seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold, for just a little while

Tired little girl, does the best she can
Trying to be gay, for a sad young man

While a grimy moon, watches from above
All the sad young men, who play at making love

Misbegotten moon shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light guide them home again
All the sad, sad, sad, young men

(Frances Landesman)

Relationship summaries:

Guy #114
LENGTH: 15 minutes
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Waking up next to Darth Vader <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7.5

GUY #115
LENGTH: 2 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Waking up next to Jabba the Hut <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 6.5

GUY #116
LENGTH: 2 months
FORMAT: Occasional bootie call on speed dial
SEX SCORE (0 = Waking up next to Yoda <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8.2

GUY #117
LENGTH: 2 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Waking up next to George Lucas <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #25 – The man with the beard, the jaded lighting guy and the harbinger of glucose…

They say prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but porn must have followed suit soon afterward.

Porn lets us step into a world where our fantasies can become reality. That can make it a wonderful product. Granted, these are usually not the kind of fairytales you talk about during Thanksgiving dinner with family.

My mother and I once had a conversation about porn.
‘I sometimes wondered what it would be like,’ she said, ‘but I could never imagine actually doing anything like that.’
‘What would you say if I had done porn?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think I’d want to know. Mothers don’t need to know everything.’
I left it at that.

Yet the vast majority of people I know are fully aware of the fact I did gay porn once. Well, six times, but all within a very short time span. I never received anything but compliments, mostly from those who hadn’t even seen the actual product. Most people would admit to me that they too had once fantasized about being in a porn movie.

To all the people still in the closet out there, now that you have read all this: I know what it’s like coming out of a closet. It’s like suddenly the whole world knows about your dirty little secrets.

And that’s okay:

In one of those dirty little secrets I found myself in a 24^th floor hotel room in Toronto’s gay district, quite naked, having actual sex with a guy, surrounded by a bearded guy with a camera, a guy moving lights around and another guy who I mostly remember as being the one who supplied us with brownies in between takes. Occasionally, I heard the sound of a family with children passing down the hallway.

Earlier me, Guy #25 and the crew had passed the lobby with filming equipment in plain sight. I remember looking at the receptionist, realizing he knew exactly what I was about to do. This wasn’t the first time he had seen that bearded guy, the athletic guy carrying all the lighting equipment and a guy with brownies pass by, accompanied by two young men.

But in porn, making it past the lobby is only the easy part.

Doing porn is hard work. It was definitely a fun experience, but not much of a sexual one. Guy #25 wasn’t my lover. He was my colleague. There was never a moment I forgot I was part of a product.

Humanity consumes a lot of porn. I have a lot of respect for people who make porn for a living. I for one couldn’t imagine ever paying for porn these days. It’s like paying someone to press enter on your laptop.

If there’s one thing I regret, it’s that I didn’t make a better porn movie. The people I worked with were extremely professional, funny and comfortable to be around with. It just wasn’t the kind of movie I would ever watch myself. And till this day I haven’t, by the way.

Maybe it’s my feminine side, but when I watch porn I am also in it for the story. Of course I know what will happen when two or more guys enter a ski cabin together, but still, the opening shots of them playing outside in the snow, having fun and joyfully throwing snow balls at each other makes for a nice back story. I wouldn’t mind being part of a group of gorgeous guys for a weekend in and around a remote ski cabin.

My back story was two guys enter a hotel room and have sex during a job interview, with the sound of a family with children in the background.

Had I felt as beautiful then as I do now, I would definitely have pursued my attempts at doing gay porn. But I would have aimed a little higher. I would have tried to make something I knew I’d enjoy watching myself.

That’s not to discredit the man with the beard, the lighting guy, the harbinger of glucose and least of all Guy #25, all of whom had passed the lobby boy dozens of time before me. People that have seen my movie generally consider Guy#25 hot. He wasn’t exactly my kind of hot, but he was very pleasantly professional. At one point in between takes he talked about how he had read on the internet that CERN in Switzerland was going to collide some particles that would create a black hole and suck up the Earth, sometime in 2015.
I like talking about quantum physics during sex.

The people I worked with all put a lot of effort into their work. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room full of work related people where everybody was so professional. There’s not much ego going around when there’s so much nakedness going on. These people create a product most of us want to see for free in ever increasing quantities. I met the lighting guy in one of Toronto’s shadier gay clubs one night. He complained about how nothing in the city excited him anymore. He said it, while in the background there were two guys on a stage engaging in not so tender foreplay.

To be honest, those two guys on that stage didn’t do anything for me either. It can be fun making the product, but you run the risk of overconsuming. In cities with gay districts, a lot of people overconsume on sex.

Guy #25 had made dozens of movies before me, as did everybody else in the room. He had a very good body, but I could tell he had consumed a lot of glucose for his age.

I was glad I could put porn on my list of experiences, but I couldn’t imagine ever making a career out of it. It’s a lot of work for very little reward: Five hours of having sex under scorching lights when all you can think about is when you’re going to get your next brownie. It’s exhausting.

When someone writes you a check after you had sex with someone, you can’t help but feel a little bit like a prostitute. You just had sex for money after all. At the same time I also realized there would be a lot of people that would appreciate my product. Is it wrong to sell your sexuality if it empowers you somehow?

Or was I overconsuming?

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 5 hours
FORMAT: Collegial
SEX SCORE (0 = 99 bottles of beer on the wall <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 5,5
HONORABLE MENTIONS: The man with the beard, the jaded lighting guy and the harbinger of glucose.