Tag: Gay

Guy #178 – Matrix Me…

There’s two sides of me.

One is Matrix Lennard, cool, in control, super hot and capable of dodging bullets if only for showing off.
It’s the Lennard I hope the Guy of my dreams will see in me.

Then there’s just Lennard, my actual self, insecure, needy and incapable of dodging insults.

Guys I am attracted to are often a lot like Matrix Lennard. Whenever I run into a super hot Guy that has the slightest echo of a personality, I fantasize about the two of us living a perfectly sleek gaytopian fairytale in which we celebrate each other’s perfection.

It’s a pleasant albeit dysfunctional mirage, about as real as the Matrix itself.

The Guys that are attracted to me tend to be a far cry from the Guys I fantasize about.

Guy #178 was such a guy. He saw in me the super great awesome Guy I wish people will write books about someday. He expressed his admiration by becoming a saggy sack of compliments that got wetter each time we kissed.

Guy #178 was probably one of the sweetest Guys I ever dated. I could do no wrong. I could ignore him on WhatsApp a thousand times and let him rejoice the one time I didn’t. I could cancel a date at the last minute for the sake of going on a better looking one, and he would completely understand. I could tell him to continue doing oral even when his jaws started showing signs of old age, and he’d be happy to.

Guy #178 was without a doubt one of the most annoying people I ever dated. He idolized the worst in me, and reminded me of the parts I thought were even worse than that.

Yet I went on a date with him a total of 5 times. And each time I felt annoyed and regretted spending time with him.

My relationship with Guy #178 was like seeing Sharknado and then somehow investing in its 4 sequels, each time wondering why.

So why are there people who’ve seen Sharknado 1 through 5 and why am I one of those people?

The sex with Guy #178 was about as satisfying as the special effects in a Sharknado movie: silly but somehow rewarding, because you know you will never be as dumb as that movie. Likewise, the sex was as spectacular as an actual sharknado is likely, but it did make me feel like I was by far the coolest, securest and catchiest Guy at the scene. Guy #178 made me feel like Matrix Me, even though I resented him for being a nerdy sidekick that failed to live up to my own image.

My life at the time wasn’t going great. I was hopelessly in love with Guy #168, a gorgeous Guy I had met at this orgy this one time. He was everything Matrix Lennard ached for, and as such all but unreachable. Whenever I ran into him, I would lapse into endless monologues about how much I admired his personality, his accomplishments, his body and his personality. Guy #168 always got uncomfortable by me giving him the Messiah treatment, which I remedied by giving even more compliments. The harder I tried, the more he distanced himself from me.

Guy #168 was the perfect match for Matrix Lennard. Sadly though, Matrix Lennard failed to load each time I saw him. The only side Guy #168 got to see was my actual self, desperate, needy and highly capable of dodging hints from a Guy that appreciated his own space as if it was his to own.

Few things are more frustrating than being incapable of being more than you in front of someone you want to be more than you with.

During all of this I spent my days taking care of my ailing stepdad, constantly surrounded by illness, decay and steadily approaching death. I had no job, no social life to speak of and had gotten addicted to weed, spending large parts of my days in a haze Matrix Me couldn’t reach me.

A sharknado was just what I needed.

Enter Guy #178, someone who annoyed me to no end with his compliments, his never ending attention and less than perfect looks.

On our third or fourth date I had smoked a joint in advance to ease myself into it. Minutes after starting foreplay on his couch, the weed kicked in much stronger than I had anticipated. I got dizzy and made it to the toilet just when my Burger King dinner resurfaced. As I clung to Guy #178’s toilet, puking my guts out and silently resenting my life and everything in it, Guy #178 constantly hovered over me, asking if I was okay, if I needed a towel, if there was anything he could do. And then he just started caressing my shoulder, almost as if his mind was still on foreplay.

I believe everyone on Earth knows but a very few people they would like to be touched by when they’re coasting down a bad trip hanging in the aura of their own vomit while clinging to someone else’s toilet. Guy #178 was not one of those people. I was high, depressed, nauseous and could only think of Guy #168, and what he would think of me if he’d see me failing at my life the way I was. Instead of enjoying my gaytopian lifestyle with Guy #168, Guy #178 was occupying my space like a fly circling around my head, capable of dodging everything you throw at it.

Guy #178 reminded me of me a lot. Although Matrix Lennard has all the makings of a movie star, my self loathing self is actually a much nicer person, as was Guy #178.

When you sit through one half of a Sharknado movie whilst having no life to speak of, it’s easy to succumb to everything that’s wrong with a sharknado. My life was a mess, but at the very least it made more sense than a Guy dodging sharks with a chainsaw as they were falling from the sky.
So after I was done vomiting Guy #178 and I proceeded to have sex. Despite being a jerk to him, puking in his toilet and over his bathroom floor and resenting him for being so relentlessly nice and devoted, Guy #178 wanted me for the Matrix Lennard he saw in me.

I fought not to admit it, but part of me liked being admired by Guy #178. And in a way, I grew to respect him for staying true to his own character all the time, annoying as it was.

We stopped dating eventually, not because I didn’t want to give him more of my attention, but because he moved to another country.

Yet whenever I think of him, I know how irritating he was, but what I remember is him doing his very best to take care of me after puking through foreplay. And I remember me waking up next to him the following morning because of it.

When you watch a Sharknado movie, you can’t help but loathe yourself for wasting your time on something so obviously stupid. But when you remember that time you watched Sharknado, it’s impossible to hide a faint but definite smile. Somehow, for reasons as mystifying as life’s biggest unanswered questions, a sharknado makes you feel like Matrix You for a while.

Thank you, Guy #178, for being as annoying as I am.

Guy #176 and #177 – What is this whole sex thing anyway?

It is September 11, 2018, I am 36 years old and at this exact point in time I have had sex with about 305 Guys. I say ‘about’ because, among other things, this story will show you sex is not a simple yes or no variable.

When you’ve more or less had sex with some 300 Guys and counting, sex itself loses some of its mojo, especially when love is notably absent most of the time.

In my early days of sexual exploration dating sites (and later apps) were a source of excitement. It felt naughty, to expose myself and my body to the kind of pleasure I would not dare tell my mother about.

300 Guys later, I don’t go on Grindr to hunt for Guys. The only real reason I go online is to see how well my profile picture performs. Every day when I get back home from work, I open Grindr, alerting gays in a one mile radius of my presence. An hour later, I open Grindr again…and then I look at the profiles of people who hit me up as I was busy eating, watching Netflix and getting ready to go to the gym.

And then I ignore those people. I don’t even bother reading their messages. I hardly ever initiate a conversation on Grindr and the people that hit me up are almost always not my type. I simply can’t be bothered.

Because once you’ve been on one Grindr date, you’ve been on all. The details vary, but the formula is pretty straightforward: Sexual frustration + loneliness + social awkwardness = Grindr date.

It’s interesting the first 100 times. After that, you can’t help but get jaded. So after a while Grindr stops being instrumental in getting laid. It becomes an instrument in getting attention. Getting laid is something you can do in a gay sauna or a raunchy nightclub, where you don’t have to go through obligatory conversation to get some action.

At least, that must have been my assumption the night I met Guy #176 and #177.

Guy #176 was the type of Asian I could tell was into white Guys such as myself. He was too shy to actively chase me, but every time our paths crossed I could see his eyes light up. Added to that he was cute, generically cute, so a perfect fit for someone like me, who wasn’t looking for a layered person.

Guy #176 and I started our conversation in front of some lockers in a gay sauna. It was brightly lit, but the twinkle in his eye shone brightly regardless. It was not at all a surprise he reached for my parts. I was happy to let him: having a generically cute Asian Guy fiddle with my testicles was just the thing I was in the mood for. And by the looks of Guy #176’s face, he had found exactly what he was looking for too!

Things don’t get much better in gaytopia.

Except that when I leaned in to kiss Guy #176 he veered back. Our lips had touched, we had played with each other’s genitals: technically, this Guy was now blog material, but just when I thought we’d submit ourselves to some tender foreplay, Guy #176 started laughing uncomfortably, apologetically even.
“I’m sorry, I just had to feel you up for a bit,” Guy #176 said.
“Well, now you have,” I replied, hoping it would be quirky enough to glide our relationship into the actual stuff I wanted to do to this Guy.

It didn’t. Guy #176 said sorry one more time and then went off, ending our relationship as randomly as it had begun.

(I actually ran into Guy #176 at a clinic this one time as we were getting an AIDS test, where of course we pretended not to know each other.)

Up next was Guy #177. My relationship with him started online, where he hit me up saying ‘Hi’. I usually don’t respond to Hi’s, but a quick glance at his profile taught me he had a boyfriend and that the two of them were on the lookout for threesomes. Both looked reasonably cute, so I made a slight effort for a change.

Guy #177 and I chatted for a while, discussed sexual preferences and even pondered setting a date with the three of us, which then never materialized because we lived too far apart for me to be truly bothered. Threesomes top twosomes, but when you’ve done orgies, a threesome is about as exciting as Finding Nemo is to Finding A Fish.

Then came the day I ran into Guy #177 at a gay sauna. We recognized each other from our pics and awkwardly said ‘Hi’. I don’t remember how exactly, but we ended up sitting next to each other in a steam room not long after. He wasn’t as cute as his pics had suggested and he could probably tell my abs didn’t come with a contrast button in real life. Yet at the same time we had spoken about having vivid sexual intercourse. Giving each other a socially awkward handjob seemed weirder than not doing anything at all.

So Guy #177 jerked me off for a short while, while I did the same to him. As I bestowed upon him the pleasure of my left hand, my mind was stuck between upping the sex with oral or using my mouth to start a conversation.

In the end Guy #177 simply got up and left, never to be seen or heard from again. He didn’t even get to experience what my right hand is capable of.

Guys #176 and #177 make me wonder if Karma has taken note of my Grindr etiquette: Grindr me is not exactly a great Guy. I prefer getting attention over actually having sex and I dismiss Guys when they require the slightest pinch of effort. Guys #176 and #177 gave me attention, then dismissed me as I tend to with the Guys I meet.

My relationships with Guys #176 and #177 were a bit like this story. You make a little effort to get invested, hope it will lead somewhere and then it ends before getting off the g…

Guy #174 – The one with feelings. And cocaine. And gonorrhoea.

Some time ago I wrote the ‘story’ of Guy #168, except that it wasn’t much of a story, but rather an overview of all my personal issues standing in the way of me getting an actual, loving relationship with a Guy.

It’s not that Guy #168 is not a story I don’t want to tell:

Guy #168 was someone I met at this orgy this one time. For a while he was someone I wanted to be more with than just ‘someone I run into at orgies’. And when I say ‘for a while’ I mean Guy #168 was on my mind pretty much every time I had sex with someone, from Guy #169 all the way through #275, a good one and a half year of my life.

I have this habit of having dysfunctional crushes.

So when I met Guy #174 my first thought was This Guy doesn’t look at all like Guy #168.

Of course, being hopelessly in love doesn’t mean I become picky when it comes to picking Guys to have sex with. On the contrary: when I’m hopelessly in love I remedy my hopelessness by projecting all my feelings onto someone who doesn’t match my image of perfection, and then I resent that person for not being perfect.

Guy #174 was an exception in many ways, and I think the reason for it was feelings. His feelings.

I really wanted Guy #168 to have feelings for me, but instead I met Guy #174, a smart, funnily tortured cocaine addict who reminded me of myself in more ways than I was comfortable with. I say ‘funnily tortured’ because his drama was a great source of laughter for me. My life was far from on track at the time, but his issues dwarfed mine. We were similar in many ways, but Guy #174 seemed worse off in all dimensions. He was the embodiment of solace.

At the time I spent my waking hours at home, jobless, taking care of my stepdad. Guy #174 also lived with his family, his life lacking direction as well. He spent his sleeping hours away from his home as much as he could, as did I. He remedied his sadness with cocaine. I got high on weed every day.

We both lived life forgetting as much of it as we could.

When we first had sex Guy #174 made me forget about Guy #168 for a short while, like a few hours. It was like taking a new drug and discovering a new kind of high. Only the second time Guy #174 and I got together he gave me gonorrhoea, which is just the most annoying of all STD’s.

Like the caring person he was, Guy #174 joined me as we went to get our antibiotics. It struck me as hardcore to see him swallowing his pills with a bottle of champagne: this was clearly not the first time he had taken gonorrhoea meds.

I suppose it was in that moment I decided Guy #174 and I would continue as friends, something I instinctively felt he was willing to do: he’d seemed in awe of me from the moment we met, giving me nothing but compliments about my personality and the way I dealt with my issues, neither of which I felt were deserving of any praise.

I could tell he lamented the fact I wanted to be just friends, but he granted me full control of the relationship. For me, Guy #174 became someone I could talk to, about whatever I wanted to talk about.
“I am in love with this Guy I met at this orgy,” I told Guy #174, wanting to vent my issues as Guy #174 was often keen to let me.
“I don’t want to hear about that,” he said however.
I refrained from talking about my feelings for another Guy, until a few days later, when I brought him up again. This time I was allowed to. I could tell he wasn’t happy listening to me talking about a Guy I liked more than him, but he didn’t resist.

Guy #174 never explicitly said he had feelings for me. I suppose he knew me well enough not to.

I guess when we’re in love we prefer being tortured by the ones we love over not being with them at all. I didn’t resent Guy #174 as I would so many others who didn’t resemble the Guy I was in love with. Instead I appreciated him for allowing me to quietly torture him with my meanderings about this random Guy I met at this orgy this one time. It was what I needed, and Guy #174 was all too available to give me what I wanted, from laughing about his life, to whining about mine, to antibiotics, to just friendship.

Over the years I’ve been with a lot of Guys. yet as far as I can tell only a very few of them ever developed any feelings for me. With the exception of a few weeks with Guy #143 and a long distance fling with Guy #96, I never experienced much reciprocation. Likewise, the few people who ever fell for me…simply fell.

What can I say? I only fall for people I can’t have. People who fall for me I can have…so why fall for them?

Did I mention I only do dysfunctional crushes?

This one time Guy #174 and I went to a gay sauna together, where of all people we ran into Guy #168. It must have been an eye opener for Guy #174 to see me ache for attention from someone I barely got it from. I imagine it helped Guy #174 to let go of chasing me.

Usually when someone I had sex with isn’t perfect in each and every way I become dismissive toward that person.
Guy #174 didn’t look like the Guy I really wanted, he always complained about how not doing cocaine was such a drag, he had given me gonorrhoea. Yet despite all that I always enjoyed his company. His feelings didn’t chase me away as people with feelings so often do.

Guy #174 wasn’t perfect. Instead he was very much like me.

“We’re both stuck,” he once said, summing up both our lives in three words.

As time passed, we saw each other less and less frequently. My life gradually got ‘unstuck’, my need of solace fading away, hopefully not unlike Guy #174’s feelings for me.

We don’t really keep in touch these days. Of all the people I ever suspected of having feelings for me, Guy #174 was the one that made it the least awkward. Of all the people who ever gave me gonorrhoea, he was the only one kind enough to take our meds together. I feel sorry I didn’t feel for him what he seemingly felt for me, but if I’d ever get gonorrhoea again, I’d want it to come from someone like Guy #174.

Coming from a narcissist, that means a lot.

Thank you, Guy #174.

Guy #172 and #173 – Quitting smoking is easy. I do it all the time…

Gay saunas.

A lot of my stories take place in a gay sauna, even though I consider myself a sensitive person who prefers an intimate hug over an anonymous quickie. So why the many, many quickies?

To me, sex with strangers is a bit like cigarettes: every month you go without them is a good month. Every day you deprive yourself of nicotine a month feels like an eternity. It’s not that I’m a sex addict, but I do lack the patience to let life run its course. Sex tends to find me every so often. But if I actively pursue sex, I get it more often and I live life under the assumption that more sex is more good, even if it’s bad sex.

Enter gay saunas, the quick fix of gay sex.
The fifth cigarette of the day is not that rewarding, but the first one in a month is pure oral glory. On average, I probably visit a gay sauna about once a month, when I haven’t had sex for that long. Or when I have a free night with nothing better to do. Or when I think my hair looks good and I feel like showing off. Or when I just feel like showing off. Or when I just want to feel something.

When I go to a gay sauna, I hope to find someone I can talk to, laugh with, cuddle and penetrate. Finding guys to penetrate is easy. Talking, laughing, cuddling are bigger hurdles.
In part this is due to my narcissism: I only talk, laugh and cuddle with people that fit my image of perfection.
The other part has to do with the very nature of gay saunas:

I first met Guy #172 in some dark corridor. We pursued each other for a few minutes, passed each other while semi-accidentally touching our bodies and pretended not to check each other out. Penetration was on the menu, that much was clear.

Sadly, the sauna we were in was packed, meaning every cabin was taken. If Guy #172 and I wanted to have sex, we would have to do it out in the open, in the very corridor we met.

This is not unusual for gay saunas. Whenever I’m there I see people having sex all the time. I prefer having sex where no one can see me, but gay saunas are an orgy of compromises. Guy #172 and I didn’t have the time or space to talk, laugh or cuddle, but darn it, I had captured him as my first prey of the evening and I wasn’t going to let him off without me giving it to him.
We had but a wall to lean against, so that’s what we did, in full view of everybody who was there.

Here’s the thing with having sex in a gay sauna where everybody can see you: everybody can touch you there as well. To some people this is seen as an invitation. And for some reason it’s always the fat sweaty hairy old nasty Danny DeVito lookalikes that pick up on it.

If you’re a Danny DeVito lookalike who frequents gay saunas and thinks it’s okay to grope people just because they’re engaged in sex, stop doing that! You are the Bill Cosby’s of gaytopia. Nothing is more annoying than putting on a condom while a pack of Danny DeVito’s disrupts your balance trying to get a sense of what your testicles feel like.

Because that’s what happened as I pushed Guy #172 up against our wall and rubbered up to do my thing to him: people started touching us, wanting in on the fun. Guy #172 and I were more engaged in shoving other people’s hands off our bodies than we were with each other. At one point we even had to shout at someone to leave us alone.

Okay, granted, you don’t go around raping people like Bill Cosby, so let me take it down a notch: you’re the gay sauna equivalent of crying babies on an airplane. Imagine sipping on your first cigarette in a month time. Now add Danny DeVito grabbing your balls to the picture. That’s you – and I know you know who you are.

Frustrated by the people around us, Guy #172 and I moved around a bit in hopes of finding an empty cabin, or at the very least to get away from our intruders. Yet everywhere we went, we were denied the joy of consensual penetration by the hands of people who were even more of a stranger to me than Guy #172.

The bond Guy #172 and I had was mostly the sentiment we shared toward the people around us. Eventually, we more or less gave up and went our own way.

It left me feeling empty inside, but not undeterred, as it wasn’t long before Guy #173 and I started pretending not to check each other out. Within minutes we were all over each other.

To my surprise we managed to find a cabin, a space where no one could impose on our little romance. I could freely penetrate, and if that went well maybe follow up on it with some nice talking, laughing and cuddling, something narcissist me is in the mood for about 10% of the time after climaxing with a stranger.

Guy #173 and I quickly worked through the three stages of gay foreplay (kissing, oral and tentative humping), and then I grabbed a condom.
“I have this allergy for rubber,” Guy #173 interrupted me.
“And I’m allergic to HIV,” I told him.
It’s not that I never take risks or that I don’t hate condoms as much as anyone who’s never had AIDS, but like any sensible gay Guy, I only take risks with extremely cute people. I simply wasn’t high enough to consider Guy #173 that cute. I knew that if I would bareback him, I would only feel regret afterward, and that I wouldn’t want to talk, laugh, let alone cuddle him.
“I’m clean though,” Guy #173 assured me.
“Sorry, I just never have unsafe sex,” I lied as if I was Bill Cosby offering a woman a drink.
Guy #173 reiterated just how clean he was. It was hard not to believe him, as I really wanted to get my fix.

That’s another thing with gay saunas these days: back in the 80s, Bill Cosby gave us a laugh and HIV was scary. How the tables have turned. As such, Guys in saunas dispense with condoms more often than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Guy #173 only seemed concerned with convincing me he was clean. He didn’t even ask about my status. As we talked about him being so clean, I noticed the mattress we were on still contained the sweat of those who had used it before us. It made me realize I was pursuing a fix in the easiest, but far from the best place to do so.

Guy #173 took off after he realized barebacking was off the table.

I was left feeling frustrated, but nevertheless relieved. I was unsatisfied, but took comfort in the fact I wouldn’t have to spend the next month on the lookout for symptoms of acute HIV infection.

So I celebrated my little victory. With a well deserved cigarette. My first one in well over a month.

Guy #170 – Oprah on a bad day…

I don’t like fat.

It’s why I prefer walking over public transportation, why I have a gym membership I don’t use as often as I feel I should and why I have to digest guilt each time I eat ice cream.

So when I meet a Guy and find myself confronted with the decision whether or not to have sex with him, the amount of fat this Guy carries is a very determining factor in my decision making process.

Which doesn’t mean fat Guys don’t stand a chance. They simply need to put in a little extra effort.

Fatwise, Guy #170 was like Oprah on a bad day. Like Oprah, he didn’t make an effort to hide his lack of abs. Instead, he initiated a conversation about his body and freely acknowledged it wasn’t the best thing he had going for him. Like Oprah, he too talked about things he was doing to shape up, one of which included a diet that consisted of less than 1000 calories a day.

I don’t like fat, but that doesn’t make me heartless. Although I was well aware Guy #170 was playing on my empathy to find him attractive, I couldn’t deny his tactic was working. The more he spoke about his struggle to lose weight, the more I saw in him the Guy he could be if he stayed in Oprah-mode long enough.

Personally, I’m not very smooth when it comes to hitting on people. I more or less have my looks to offer. Beyond that, I lack the ability the steer a conversation in the direction of sex. I simply have no idea how to talk people into sexual contact. The art of seduction, reading people, playing into their weak spots, figuring out what makes them tick. I lack those skills. For me, hitting on a Guy is simply a matter of going in and hoping for the best, an on and off successful strategy I intend to keep using as long as I don’t have any fat forcing me to make a real effort.

Guy #170 however was smooth to the bone. He knew that if he wanted to have sex with me, he would have to work me. At some point in time he must have figured empathy was to be his weapon of choice. Instead of hiding his fat, he made it the center of his campaign.

In addition to infecting me with his highly contagious Oprah positivity, Guy #170 was also assertive. His intentions of wanting to have sex with me were clear well before he opened up about his diet, as he repeatedly touched me in places fat people usually don’t get to touch me.

Even though I remained hesitant throughout the sex, it was far from unpleasurable. Guy #170 knew what to do and was good at what he did, a combination that made up for most if not all of his fat.

“Thank you,” I said after we were done.

“You’re a dumbass,” Guy #170 laughed as he gently slapped my face. He implanted the idea that maybe I tend to be too much of a kiss ass toward people who give great blowjobs.

Seconds after I extended my gratitude Guy #170 walked off, though we would later meet up again and talk some more.
I still run into him occasionally and when I do it’s always nice to see each other again. Sex however will never again materialize between the two of us. Every time I see him I can’t help but feel I was tricked, even though I liked it enough to say thank you.



Guy #169 – When being yourself is easy…

Being yourself is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. And usually, we opt for making it hard on ourselves.

I for one am way too much of a people pleaser. It’s rooted in my innate desire to be liked and/or eternal fear of not being loved. The easiest thing would be to just ignore it, be nice to people and live life while you can. Instead I aim to resolve my conflict by being nice to people for all the wrong reasons.

Sexwise, I am usually the one who does most the work. When I’m having sex I go into please mode. Generally speaking, I aim to please more than I please to aim.

I would love to completely let go, because few occasions taught me it’s awesome when I do, but most of the time a big part of me is consciously making sure the other Guy is enjoying it at least as much as I am.

Guy #169 was a notable exception and the reason for it was food poisoning.

I first met Guy #169 a few hours after I had eaten what could have been bad anchovies or undercooked chicken, neither of which bothered me yet when Guy #169 and I started talking. He had a job, I did stuff, he wanted sex, I went into please mode.

Until I started getting dizzy. It instantly rendered me incapable of doing any pleasing. Guy #169 wanted to continue what we were doing, but I intuitively felt I was about to vomit. I told Guy #169 I needed to be by myself and quickly made my way for a toilet, which I was lucky enough to find just in time.

In just ten minutes I had gone from feeling great to hanging over a toilet with a fever and the weirdly familiar taste of chicken and anchovies in my mouth. Hovering over your own vomit in a toilet in a gay sauna alone with a fever sending all your thoughts into overdrive, it’s easy to get philosophical and wonder about where your life is going, and if hanging over the toilet at 3AM in a gay sauna would have made your mother proud.

So when I ran into Guy #169 a while later, I was still feeling queasy and not at all in the mood for sex. Also, I would feel bad for letting Guy #169 kiss me, because I had literally thrown up minutes earlier and had taken but a menthos to remedy it. Guy #169 however wanted me really badly, so I made a decision. Either I would sit out my little flu alone and miserable, or I would treat Guy #169 as my massage therapist and let him do the pleasing.

It struck me that the great thing about feeling sick is how it makes being yourself so much easier. You simply don’t have the energy to engage in appearances.

And so it happened I ended up getting an intensely erotic massage that allowed me to more or less enjoy the flu wave.

The fun ended when Guy #169 wanted more than just be my massage therapist. I told him I wasn’t feeling too well and that there was no way in hell he would get more from me, as much as I more or less didn’t even want it to to begin with. Guy #169 settled for letting me give him my number. We apped a few times.

I considered going on a date with him. I figured it could be good exercise in turning off the please switch. Then again, I knew I would only enjoy being that passive on a diet of bad anchovies or undercooked chicken. I suppose I just wasn’t that much into Guy #169, which I already knew the moment I let him kiss me moments after I had vomited. That’s not what I would do to a Guy I really like.

However, when I’m slightly delirious and shaky from a fever, the gloves come off and I have no qualms using people for my pleasure.

People often tell me I’m a nice Guy. Little do they know I’m nice for all the wrong reasons.

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 #167 – Twice you go black…

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have much experience with ebony. Call me a racist sexist, but I’ve felt much mutual attraction between me and black Guys. I would like to be sure my white privilege has nothing to do with it, but I had to spend time living in a former Dutch colony for a few years to discover my privilege. God knows what racism I haven’t unearthed yet, but for the most part of my sex life black Guys to me have been like women in the sense that I have considerable trouble getting hard in their company.

Unless of course someone is so unbelievably beautiful and good looking they make you forget about sexuality, preference or privilege, someone like Charlize Theron or Guy #167, the latter of which started touching me at this orgy the night I also met Guy #165, #166 and #168. The night in question was what I would later consider a peak in my sexuality, much like Toxic was a peak in Britney’s recording history.

Speaking of toxicity, Guy #167 and I started feeling each other up on a wave of XTC and GHB, easily the cornerstones of gay sex dating these days. I was standing on a balcony, smoking a cigarette with some other Guys, when Guy #167 sat down next to me and put his hand on my legs.

I instantly remembered the last time I had done sexual stuff with a black Guy, seven years earlier, at a time when I knew nothing of drugs or orgies. At first I figured it was the drugs attracting me to this Guy, but a quick glance at Guy #167 taught me I ought to consider myself lucky to be getting attention from him at all. He was a muscled hunk. I was a skinny sag of insecurity by comparison.

Fortunately there were drugs involved.

To say drugs smooth seduction is like saying air enables breathing. Guy #167 and I communicated through our physicality and quickly established we were into each other, found our own spot in a room filled with over a dozen Guys doing the same and had some good old fashioned gay fun for a while, and again a while later…and perhaps another time after that. I don’t remember exactly.

As we were making out in a bathroom I looked at the reflection of us doing so in a mirror. Part of me had wondered if maybe I was having sex with Guy #167 because the drugs had gotten me high to the point Bea Arthur’s voice would have turned me on. However when I looked at us in the mirror I had trouble fathoming just how incredibly beautiful Guy #167 really was.

But that’s the thing: Even when you realize you’re on drugs you’re still on drugs. Just because you know the world is beautiful because you took a pill doesn’t actually make it beautiful, even when you know it does.

Objectively speaking, Guy #167 was one of the most beautiful people I ever had sex with. I would have liked to meet Guy #167 on a wave of sobriety, but as is so often the case with people you meet at orgies, you only meet them at orgies.

I ran into Guy #167 a number of times since the night we met. We’d fool around a little each time, simply because he has the kind of beauty I’d feel spoiled for resisting. I never met him sober, though. Seeing as he comes with a caring and sensitive personality that neatly contrasts his manly appearance, it would be interesting to see if the caring sensitivity wears off when the drugs do.

Because a lot tends to wear off when the drugs do, something I didn’t know yet the night I had sex with Guy #167. Like that first time I had sex with a black Guy, the only way was still up for me. Seven years earlier I had a one-time thing with a black Guy just to try it out. It was a time of exploration and excitement. Now, seven years later, I was still busy exploring uncharted territory. When you’re on XTC and in a room with 20 good looking Guys who took the same pill you did, you’re basically king of the world in a world full of kings. That, in and of itself, is an experience I wish upon everyone.

Being king of the world in a world full of queens however is a completely different thing. The gay scene consists of grown men acting like teenagers because they were deprived of doing so when they were teenagers. It’s great when you’re high, but it’s unforgivably harsh when you find yourself surrounded by people chasing that high, even more when you start chasing it as well.

I suppose the nicest thing about meeting Guys #165, #166, #167 and #168 was that I didn’t know any of this yet. The night I met Guy #167 I was mostly just excited I got to have sex with one of the most beautiful Guys I had ever seen.

The night of Guy #167 happened about five months after I started 168guys.com. It seemed fitting I would pass the actual 168-mark on what was easily my wildest night in terms of sexual exploration.

What I didn’t know was that the fun part of exploring was about to come to an end.

Guy #166 – The thing with orgies…

“Can I fuck you?” were the first and pretty much only words Guy #166 ever spoke to me. I don’t remember much of our remaining conversation but imagine I must have said something along the lines of Yes, as Guy #166 in fact became the 166th Guy I ever had sex with shortly after the conclusion of our little dialogue.

The sex was about as spectacular as standing in line at a restaurant, waiting to be seated and seeing waiters with good looking food go by.

The room Guy #166 and I found ourselves in was filled with about 20 or so other Guys, most of which were better looking than him. On the other hand, Guy #166 seemed sweet and he’d been coming onto me the entire night. He wanted me badly. I suppose it’s always nice to run into a waiter who wants to feed you properly. Even though Guy #166 was far from my main course that night, I allowed him to be the mozzarella stick to further wet my appetite.

I guess Guy #166 enjoyed me saying Yes to his question more than he did the sex with me. His drug induced horniness came with a drug deduced boner that was hardly a boner at all by the time he managed to put on a condom. He even lost his balance a few times while rubbering up, something I would later learn was due to this drug called ketamine.
Compassionately, I pretended to be into the whole affair. Guy #166 came across as nervous and I didn’t want to leave him feeling incapable, even though I knew that’s exactly what I’d be doing eventually and soon: leaving him. I was at an orgy, celebrating what I would later consider a peak in my sexuality. I wasn’t planning on upgrading an appetizer to a course. In fact, Guy #167 was already starting to feel me up a few minutes into my relationship with Guy #166, and Guy #167 looked like one of the tastiest and exotic entrées I had ever seen.
It didn’t take me long to shift my attention from Guy #166 to #167. I allowed Guy #166 to have his way with me for a few minutes, even though his ‘way’ was mostly paved by the drugs he had taken. He seemed happy I hadn’t rejected him, which made me all the more comfortable to move on and basically reject him.

Guy #166 went his own way as soon as the ketamine allowed him to. To my relief I saw him having fun with plenty of other Guys that night.

Although the two of us would politely greet each other at various occasions over the year that followed, we never exchanged any words, probably because I had already given him everything he wanted by saying Yes. We were just strangers who so happened to have had what can best be described as a vague echo of sex at an occasion where sex was the only real means of communication. I had been his appetizer as much as he had been mine.

That’s the thing with orgies: They’re like all-you-can-eat buffets where you can spit on your food and then watch someone else eat it.

They’re both the best and the worst place to make friends.

Guy #165 – Two Guys, some drugs and a whirlpool…

Imagine for a second a universe that is truly infinite. Picture yourself traversing the cosmos for an eternity and more without reaching an end, only finding an infinite number of galaxies, stars and planets.
If the universe is really infinite that means the atoms that make up my body, my friends, my Guys, my home, my planet and my solar system are organized in a way that, given enough infinity, will repeat itself somewhere. In an infinite universe the events that created Earth, its oceans and the cycle of life that eventually led to my existence will inevitably happen elsewhere as well.

Sure, the odds of me ever happening were one in a googillion to begin with, but that’s the great thing about infinity: You never run out of the stuff. Somewhere, an uncountable number of light-years away from this Earth, floats another Earth just like this one, with another me, just like me.

So if a Guy sits down next to me in a whirlpool it is perfectly okay to feel him up to see if he’d be interested in having sex with me. In an infinite universe, it is a mathematical certainty that out there, somewhere and sometime, atoms will organize themselves in such a way that different yet totally identical versions of me and this Guy will meet up in a whirlpool under exactly the same circumstances. If I get rejected, I can always take solace in the fact my distant counterpart might have more luck.

In an infinite universe there is no such thing as true consequence. Everything has already happened and everything will happen again. That’s just how infinity works.

It’s thought trains such as these that wash away my sense of insecurity as if it’s tooth decay in a Colgate commercial. When your mind is pondering the wonders of infinity and the possible reality of there being an endless number of me’s in galaxies far, far away, groping a Guy in a whirlpool becomes such a mundane undertaking you can’t be bothered to doubt yourself doing it. You just do it.

I had no way of knowing what Guy #165 was thinking of when I started touching him, but I intuitively felt he shared my sense of wonder. The mere scope of the universe contrasting with the banality of two Homo sapiens going to third base in a whirlpool offers a person such clarity I wonder why people don’t call it Clarity instead of XTC.

Yeah.

Perhaps I should have mentioned I was on XTC the night I felt up Guy #165. As was he. As were all the people surrounding us. The odds of Guy #165 and me thinking the same thing were, again, one in a googillion, but emotionally we were on one and the same page and easily able to carry our make-out session on the wave of empathy that is XTC.

When you’re on XTC, you just ‘get’ people. You see their strengths, their weaknesses and most of all their humanity. Add some nakedness, some poppers and a space filled with a few hundred other naked Guys and before you know it you find yourself at the bar grabbing condoms from a bowl, enjoying the fact you live in a country where gays can celebrate their sexuality loud enough for the universe to hear it.

Guy #165 and I would celebrate our little cosmic connection in a lounge area occupied by a few dozen couples doing the very same thing. I thoroughly enjoyed his company and the sex with him was everything I had come for that night: Closeness without having to get close.

When I took a closer look at Guy #165 I felt sorry for him not being entirely attractive, even though his imperfections could have been the very thing I would have liked about him had I been sober.

I actually ran into Guy #165 about half a year later when I was in fact sober. We both ignored each other and I imagine he was as fine with pretending to be strangers as I was. I did take one more look at him and figured that, if the universe truly is infinite, an infinite number of me’s must be out there, wondering what the hell we were thinking the moment we groped up Guy #165.

DO WHAT I DID: START WITH GUY #1!

Guy #164 – Attractiveness means nothing. And everything.

Here’s the thing with being attractive: It doesn’t really mean anything. And it means everything.

Attractiveness is a conflict in and of itself.

In many ways I feel I’ve been blessed with my looks, as I generally receive decent amounts of attention from Guys.

At the same time I get rejected all the time. While it’s impossible to dive into the mind of others to acquire their perspective on me, the general assumption is that people who reject me do so because they don’t find me attractive enough to have sex with.

So whenever I go to a place where my merit is measured by my looks I’m a walking conflict, blessed with attention and burdened with the few I don’t get it from.

I should add that, even though I’m a hunter, I am unbelievably bad at picking up Guys. I try to be smooth about it, hitting up Guys as if I’m Joey from FRIENDS. But no matter how hard I try to be a Joey, a Ross or even a Chandler, I always end up a Gunther somehow.

The result is that I mostly depend on people hitting on me to get laid.

And I don’t get hit on very often.

Being a hunter who’s barely hunted himself, I sometimes go through endless nights of futile attempts to get intimate with someone. Sometimes I go for hours without a successful hook-up. Attractiveness means nothing, but after hours of nothingness I generally start to question my looks, thinking that maybe I’ve been overrating myself all these years, that Guys have sex with me out of pity as often as I have pity sex with them. The more unattractive I feel, the more important a feature it becomes.

So when Guy #164 started chasing me down our little gay sauna maze I was at first relieved. Then I took a look at him. Attractiveness means nothing, but it also means everything. In the case of Guy #164 I considered him unattractive enough to reject. Having sex with him, I figured, would only help to lower my market value even more. Even less than wanting to have sex with him, I didn’t want other people to see me having sex with him. Allowing Guy #164 to go down on me would be like having a white trash family exchange their trailer for a mansion. Guy #164 would be the Trump to my White House.

When Guy #164 first reached for my testicles I pushed his hands back and walked away. Guy #164 however persisted, following me and trying to push me against a wall several times. I hated him for it, but at the same time I couldn’t help but enjoy that feeling of being wanted. Gunther doesn’t get to feel like that very often.

So I took a closer look at Guy #164 and decided that, although I don’t have a thing for Guys with beards, at least this beard was kind enough to cover his face.

Guy #164 and I had sex for about ten minutes. He seemed to be enjoying it. I enjoyed the fact at least one person found me attractive.

“Can I have your phone number?” Guy #164 asked me when I interrupted the sex for the sake of not having it anymore.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Please, you’re so beautiful.”
Even though I felt I was way above Guy #164’s league, he was the only one that night to tell me I was pretty. It felt good to hear, while at the same time I resented the compliment for coming from a Guy I couldn’t give it to in return.
“We’ll let fate decide if we ever meet again,” I said, the second time I used that line to distance myself from someone without it having to be a cold hearted rejection.

I walked out on Guy #164, took a shower, and went home quickly.

When I started writing about every Guy I ever had sex with I was very much under the impression love and sex are inseparable. Even Guys that cruise, Guys who frequent places so dark rejection and passion are evenly secluded from the outside, Guys who spend their weekends doing drugs and hunting for mating partners, are in it for love, even if they say it’s just sex.
“Every Guy you see here is looking for love,” I once proclaimed to Guy #168 when I ran into him at the same sauna I met #164.
“Every Guy you see here is looking to love himself,” Guy #168 reasoned, a small but probably just distinction.

I never had sex with Guy #164 because I wanted to love him. Instead, he allowed me to love myself a little. And then, being the wonderful Guy that I am, I resented him for it and walked out on him.

Attractiveness means nothing. And everything.

Guy #163 – Being a dominant kiss-ass…

Being a psychologist who spends a lot of time in places where gays get naked, I see insecurity the way that kid from The Sixth Sense sees dead people: Insecurity is everywhere. It doesn’t know it’s insecure, although in the end it kind of does and for some reason I feel it’s my duty to help those with insecurities face their issues so they may overcome them and move on.

I like saying nice things to people. Sure I do it because I want them to like me, but mostly it’s a conscious effort to let people know that insecurities are like birth marks in the sense that everybody has them in places we don’t want them.

In short, I love making Guys with abs feel good about themselves.

Guy #163 had terrific abs. In fact, his entire body was more than could be summed up in one compliment. Also, I quickly noticed how Guy #163 felt insecure about himself. We met up at his place, where the air of arousal got perturbed by his constant restlessness. I offered him a few sips of a joint I had brought, but as it turns out people with ADHD become more like people with ADHD when they slow their brains down. The weed rendered Guy #163 unable to sit still for more than a few seconds.

Although I was in the mood for some conversation as a means to make the sex more interesting, Guy #163 and I soon got physical. I suppose it was the most sensible thing to do. Guy #163 clearly lacked the inner calm to carry a conversation and I was too high to carry it for the both of us.
During sex, Guy #163 remained somewhat frantic, occasionally checking if everything was in place. The only moment I could focus on our sex was when I positioned myself as the dominant factor in our little one-night stand. It was in that moment Guy #163 managed to let go a little and ride his high the way it was intended.

The thing is, I only like being dominant when the other Guy fights it, not when it’s blithely accepted. Being dominant with someone who immediately allows you to is akin to the bad Guy dying at the start of a movie or starting sex with an orgasm: It puts the reward before the effort.

So I did what I figured was the right thing: I started giving compliments, hoping to put Guy #163 at ease and only as I write this down do I realize how odd it must have been for him to be dominated by a kiss-ass.

I praised Guy #163 for his body and hotness. I told him I’d wanted him the moment I first laid eyes on him.

It wasn’t long before the sex was over.

I however wasn’t done upping my date’s ego. Even as he secluded himself to his bathroom to take a shower did I practically yell at him, letting him know how gorgeous he was.

“You should really stop saying how beautiful I am all the time,” Guy #163 said as he returned from his shower.
“Why?” I asked surprised. I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to receive a compliment. I love it when someone tells me I’m beautiful. How could anyone not?
“It takes away the tension,” Guy #163 said.

Oddly enough, I was both surprised and empathetic. Sex without tension indeed is like Will & Grace without Jack & Karen, but do we really need insecurites to create that tension? Do we need doubt to make sex interesting? Guy #163, despite his insecurities, seemed absolutely certain that we do.

I was reluctant to accept the fact my kind words were not well received. At the same time I couldn’t help but agree with Guy #163: Repeatedly saying how beautiful he was didn’t appear to make him feel more beautiful, at least not in the way he wanted to be beautiful.

I guess compliments are like orgasms: They’re more rewarding the harder you work for them. Silly me handing out orgasms for free.

Guy #163 and I would occasionally run into each other after our date, but sex between the two of us never again materialized, nor do I think either one of us wanted it to. My dominant self had killed all the tension by being a kiss-ass.

Shame, because Guy #163 had the most amazing abs.

Guy #162 – The perfect relationship for when you don’t know how to have them…

I suppose Guy #162 was the perfect Guy in many ways. We never talked, we never committed, we never expected anything from each other, but each time we met we had the kind of sex that reminded me how fun living can be.

Guy #162 and I only spoke with each other the night we met. He was a gorgeous Colombian twink and I have blond hair and blue eyes. Gravity did the rest.
The conversation was mostly a formality, but it lasted a good hour nonetheless, probably because I felt shy in the presence of such a beautiful Guy. I guess I wanted to give him the impression I wasn’t just in it because of his looks, despite the fact I wanted him because of his looks.

Looks aside, Guy #162 was a very friendly person who spoke English as a second language. His English was better than my Spanish, but in terms of complexity our conversation could just as easily have taken place on Sesame Street.
He spoke a little about missing his Colombian family and even got a bit emotional when he opened up about the worst thing that had ever happened to him: the death of his dog. I had buried my mother a few years before and spent my days tending to my stepdad who was currently knocking on heaven’s door. I couldn’t care less about a dead dog, but I was affected by Guy #162’s sadness, plus I really wanted to get to the sex part we had both agreed upon the instant we first glanced at each other.

So I empathized and got physical, two things that are really just one and the same when it’s sex you’re after. The kissing soon followed.

I enjoyed having sex with Guy #162 and he enjoyed me in return. After we were done we each went our seperate ways, only to run into each other a few weeks later. This time we skipped the talking and went straight to lovemaking. It was even better than the first time.

For a while we would run into each other occasionally and each time we did we ended up having sex. It was the perfect relationship for someone who, like me, is very inept at having them. Our conversation never exceeded Cookie Monster’s vocabulary and we gorged on each other as if we were made of oatmeal. The great thing was that, in those gorging moments, Guy #162 and I completely understood each other. Whatever we were feeling – lust mostly – it was completely mutual.

Sex with a beautiful person, in all its simplicity, is nothing short of a treat. I dare say it’s the kind of treat every Guy is looking for when they go out hunting.

Whenever Guy #162 and I would run into each other, we both instantly knew something sexual would sprout from it. We never made any effort to meet. We just did, our local gay scene being small enough for us to bump into each other every so often.

After we bumped each other the fifth or sixth time, I decided to up the fun a little by giving Guy #162 my phone number.
“App me sometime,” I said.

I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

Guy #160 and #161 – 9 minute 20 second relationships

According to PornHub the average human being visits their site for 9 minutes and 20 seconds.

Think about it. Isn’t it the greatest statistic in the history of statistics? That’s 9 minutes and 20 seconds between pressing Play and grabbing Kleenex.

9 minutes and 20 seconds is all the time we invest in porn stars as they go down on their routine, after which we casually dismiss them from our lives as if they have no meaning whatsoever.

Coincidentally, I’ve had relationships that lasted this long. I’ve known people I dismissed as soon as I was done with them. Guys #253 and #254 were among those whose life I walked out of the moment they had served their purpose. I met both of them last weekend. Both gave me a quick fix, after which I practically couldn’t bare to be with them.

When I started this blog I advocated the view that anyone looking for sex is looking for love. Yet last weekend I met two Guys, used them for bodily pleasure and then left them to their own devices as if they were homeless people asking for change.

I wasn’t always this heartless.

In fact, a little over a year ago I bumped into Guy #160. The place we were at allowed for sex to occur mere feet from where we met. Guy #160 wasn’t exactly pretty, but I was flattered by how much he wanted me. Even though I was about a foot taller than this little Asian fellow, he insisted he was only top. I always find it a bit awkward to bend over for a Guy smaller than me, but I remember being very much okay with anything Guy #160 set his mind to. It wasn’t really the sex I was after. Instead, I enjoyed the cuddling and kissing way more than I did those few seconds he frantically tried getting his Asian penis to turn Black-ish.
Cuddling and kissing would prove to be the peak of our relationship.

It wasn’t my intention however to end the relationship the moment Guy #160 couldn’t get it up. He seemed like a nice Guy, someone I’d enjoy cuddling up with and getting to talk to for the remainder of the night. However, as soon as Guy #160 had gathered his stuff, a towel, a flask of poppers and a barely used condom, he gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and took off, never to be seen or heard from again.

It’s not that we had established any sort of connection I deemed worthy of celebrating, but it did make me feel slightly empty inside to see Guy #160 take off like that, almost as if he didn’t want me to be a memory.

Things went slightly better with Guy #161, who I met not long afterward. Sexually speaking Guy #161 was that night’s winner, though of course the competition had been anything but stiff. Actually, the sex with Guy #161 was better only in terms of how closely we resembled a porn scene. The nine minutes we spent in our cabin surely must have been a nice sight had there been anyone to see us, but our little sex ritual fell short of offering me any sense of intimacy or bonding.

After we were done Guy #161 offered me to join him and his Asian friends, who were hanging out in a lounge area.
Guy #161 was a friendly person, sociable and welcoming, but beyond that he bored me to no end. He and his friends all spoke English as a second language and while their use of English far exceeded my proficiency in whatever language they grew up with, their current conversation was one of shallow oneliners and meaningless catchphrases. These people had obviously seen every episode of Sex and the City and to their credit their impressions of Samantha Jones were spot-on. I however didn’t feel entirely in place in the presence of Asian Guys pretending to be a 60 year old slut. It wasn’t the kind of connection I was looking for.

A few minutes into Samantha’s breast cancer storyline I excused myself and told Guy #161 I would walk around some more, which we both knew meant cruising the darker areas in search of more meat, which I wouldn’t find that night.

 

 

A year ago I would proudly tell people about my blog and how it ‘proved’ love and sex are inseparable. Often Guys would look at me as if I don’t know how Guys work, that male sexuality prescribes we spread seed and not raise it into anything worth mentioning outside the walls of a gay sauna. Yet even though I was fully aware of how shallow my encounters with Guys like #160 and #161 had been, I wholeheartedly tried to establish at least some form of human bond between us. Granted, I didn’t try very hard, but at least I made some effort to live my sex life according to my belief that love and sex are like Batman and Robin, or at the very least Batman and Alfred…not Batman and the Joker.

A year ago I didn’t yet know why Guys joked about my ideas on love and sex, which is why I felt disappointment when Guy #160 walked out on me or when I walked out of Guy #161.

Last weekend I met two Guys. I had sex with both of them. They clearly wanted to hang around with me, but I couldn’t be bothered. I gave both a quick kiss on the cheek and wished them luck with the rest of their lives.

So did I become heartless? Or did I give too much heart to a place that has so little?

A lot can happen in a year.

You should read about it in my upcoming book.

Guy #152 and #153 – Gay dating and the true meaning of the word ‘No’…

As is to be expected from a gay Guy over 30, rejection is an integral part of my daily routine. After all, most 20 year olds believe there was a time I roamed the Earth with dinosaurs.
I rarely initiate a conversation with anyone on Grindr, but when I do it’s usually with someone younger and in my opinion cuter than me. Sometimes I am successful. Other times not so much.

I do however maintain one very simple rejection policy: If a Guy ignores me or tells me he’s not into me, I will not hit up that same person again. Ever. I simply don’t enjoy rejection enough to make a habit of it, which is hard enough as it is when you’re a gay Guy over 30.

Equipped with a reasonably good looking body and a not at all unattractive face by dinosaur standards, I spend quite some time rejecting people as well. Most Guys that hit me up are old enough to have experienced the last ice age. Some are even over 40!

My policy for rejecting is akin to the one for rejection. When I have no interest in someone, I either ignore them completely or, if they’ve taken the effort to say something nice, I tell them politely, with a smiley to ease the pain. This too I do only once.

And that’s where things get interesting. And irritating.

For reasons I often wonder about the gay scene is riddled with Guys who don’t take No for an answer. In fact, it seems perfectly normal for people of all ages to keep sending me the same opening line, the same dick pic, the same ass pic and the same grainy face pic over and over and over again. My dating apps are filled with hundreds of unread messages.

It baffles me why someone would set himself up for rejection at regular intervals. No means no, does it not?

Well…

One night, as I was aching for some fun in a gay sauna, someone reached for my testicles. Up till that moment it had been a slow night for me. I had seen some Guys I fancied, but all of them had avoided me as one would a T-Rex. Still, the Guy currently grabbing my testicles was by no means the kind of prey I had given up my night’s sleep for, so I pushed his hand back the way it came and proceeded walking as if I had somewhere else to be.
To my annoyance, said testicle grabber went in pursuit of me and it wasn’t long before he started touching me again. When I turned around to say something about it I was greeted by a friendly, slightly desperate, but nevertheless inviting smile, and I started thinking: Maybe I should lower my ridiculously high standards. Maybe this Guy is the universe’s way of telling me I need to learn how to settle. Granted, the string of rejections that had preceded our encounter no doubt fueled my lenient attitude, as I empathized with this Guy and his not exactly pretty face but not at all half bad body that could have been less gross were it not for its random snippets of chest hair.

No one likes to reject someone. Rejecting the same person twice is even harder. And my ego wasn’t going strong that night.

So I listened to my frail ego, which I often mistake for the universe trying to tell me stuff. The Guy I had rejected before now became Guy #152. I don’t really remember what we did exactly, except that it was brief and heartless, and in many ways still a form of rejection. Afterward, Guy #152 asked for my phone number, to which I said I wasn’t sure if we’d be seeing each other again. He pointed out the odds of us seeing each other again would be bigger if he had my phone number. To settle the issue of us ever seeing each other again, I gave Guy #152 a kiss on the cheek and told him we’d let fate decide if and when we’d meet again. The universe hasn’t brought us together since.

Feeling regret over the fact I had committed pity sex because I once again mistook my ego for the universe I found myself in a steam room later that night, where Guy #153 came out of nowhere and pushed his penis into my mouth. I angrily pushed him away and turned my head down, a rejection as obvious as they come.
Still, Guy #153 was undeterred, almost as if he could see my insecurities and subsequent lack of defenses. As if me rejecting him hadn’t just happened he donaldtrumped his way to my lips once more and stuck his penis in between them with a sense of entitlement that would have gotten me mad on any other day, but when I looked up to take a look at the Guy I was now more or less giving it to, I saw that his face might have been somewhat attractive had it not been for his beard. Maybe the universe was talking to me again. After all, why else would I be aroused by Guy #153’s dominance?

The arousal lasted for about five seconds, after which I realized I was only susceptible to dominance because I so happened to lack a backbone. The very thing that turned me on I now resented, so I pushed back Guy #153 a second time and said: “You’re welcome,” referring to the 5 second blowjob I had just given him. Guy #153 laughed, this time accepting the rejection, and went on his way.

No means no, but a lot of gay Guys continue making endless efforts to turn a no into a yes of sorts. I guess it makes sense: When sex becomes a commodity, most people set up camp in the gray area, whether they’re rejected or the one doing the rejecting.

Counting on people’s lack of self esteem seems to be a genuine hunting strategy, online and elsewhere. That’s why I have hundreds of unread Grindr messages that keep piling up, because people anticipate the day my ego renders me defenseless.

Defenseless, or older than 40. Whichever comes first.

 

 

 




 

 

Guy #145 – Look at me not being shallow!

Sometimes I like to look at human beings as I imagine aliens would. Aliens, in my view, would be unable to rank us based on our attractiveness. Voluptuous lips, muscled legs, dark blue eyes, straight teeth, abs…all of it would look equally random when seen from hundreds of light years away.

The reason I try to take on an alien perspective is simple: I often wish I wasn’t as shallow as I am. I wish I could be happy with someone whose looks don’t turn me on. I wish I had it in me to not consider it a compromise.
In fairness, there have been times I enjoyed being intimate with someone I deemed of a lesser league, but always because I knew the fun would be temporary and wholly non committing.

How liberating it would be to view Guys as aliens would, ranking them on their merits and not their looks.

I guess my relationship with Guy #144 made me long for some liberty, which is why I attained an open mind the moment Guy #145 hit me up online.

Guy #145 was not at all unattractive by alien standards. Yet through my petty human eyes he looked like one of those people you just assume are good at math because why else would the universe have made them so dorky, clumsy and overall off the mark when it comes to outer beauty?
Guy #145 was the kind of Guy whose online attempts at starting a conversation would have been futile solely on account of his looks: I’m not on Grindr to make other people feel good about themselves. I’m there to make me feel good about myself. Entering a conversation with an unattractive person is something I consider a waste of time when it’s my genitals I’m trying to satisfy.

Then again, time is relative when light years are involved.

So for once I decided to empathize with this Guy #145 and his grainy, sad attempt of a selfie. I figured it must have taken at least some courage to hit me up, knowing all too well the odds of me replying were as slim as he should have been.
And so it happened Guy #145 and I became engaged in conversation. As is so often the case with unattractive people, he was good at having a conversation, putting in the effort hot Guys seldom do.
A few days later I found myself at his place, on his couch, holding a glass of water and observing him as he sat across from me. The thought of having sex with him made me queasy, yet at the same time I couldn’t help but like Guy #145. He had this inner calm over him I myself tend to lack. We spoke about spirituality for well over an hour and found we had a lot in common. Guy #145 was the kind of Guy who, like me, could empathize with aliens in aid of making himself a better person, something not at all common in the gay scene.

At some point during our date I flipped the switch and went into alien mode. I decided I would not let Guy #145’s greasy skin or nigh lack of upper lip turn me off, instead making a conscious effort to focus solely on his personality and the fact I was sharing a room with a wise, generous, friendly and by all galactic standards more than decent Homo sapiens.

I can’t say the sex was satisfying, but I did get to experience a sense of pride, patting myself on the back for not being shallow.
Being so immensely focused on my newfound character depths I neglected to note whether or not Guy #145 had any fun going down on me, but I reckon he did: He invited me over a second time mere days after our first date.

Our second date echoed our first: We talked about philosophy, spirituality, music, life, the shallowness of the gay scene…and then of course we had sex. Yet as much as I tried to look at Guy #145 as if I had traveled light years to be with him, the novelty of not being shallow had worn off. It had taken me one date to prove I have it in me to not be shallow. Now all I really wanted was to celebrate my layered personality with abs.

Long story shallow: After two fun, interesting and rewarding dates with Guy #145, I moved on to #146.

Spoiler alert: #146 had abs.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 x 2.5 hours
FORMAT: Sex mixed with philosophical banter
SEX SCORE (0 = Platonic porn <–> 10 The best sex ever): 7.5

Guy #142 – The awkwardness of dating people the normal way…

Old fashioned as it may seem, sometimes you meet people you will have sex with on normal, everyday gatherings such as birthday parties.

Guy #142 and I met one night and ended up eating cake together, which somehow evolved into us exchanging phone numbers.

A few weeks later I found myself having sex with him on his kitchen floor.

The weird thing is, when you meet someone the normal way and then have sex with him, it’s almost as if it means something. If you prefer someone from real life over a stranger from Grindr, you’re inclined to take the other person seriously.

Though neither one of us felt any obligation, we did think of our little dating experiment in terms of the word relationship.

At least, I may have thought that’s what people do with people you meet the normal way, I’m not sure. In fact, I was never quite sure whether we were committing, casual or somehow both.

Guy #142 wasn’t really my kind of attractive. It meant that if I wanted to have something meaningful with him, I would have to make an effort. Had I met him through Grindr I would have dismissed him as just another sex date. Yet our sexual chemistry had evolved all by itself, the way nature intended it. It felt off dismissing something like that.

The two of us could have pleasant conversations, he made the best cocktails and he was someone I could cuddle up with at a time when I was in need of that. Yet the more I drank of his cocktails, the more I came to realize I was in no way willing to make the effort to truly open up to him.

Guy #142 became more distant as time progressed. I suppose he had taken note of how spoiled I can be toward people I don’t consider underwear models.

For a while after we dated Guy #142 wasn’t just my ex but also my hairdresser, which meant we kept seeing each other the normal way, restricting ourselves to normal stuff.

I always enjoyed it when Guy #142 cut my hair. It was intensely relaxing, even more so because he was the kind of hairdresser who explicitly preferred not to talk while he was working, meaning I got a soothing and conversationless head massage that turned me on each time I got one.

And each time Guy #142 cut my hair I would wonder if maybe the thought of having sex with me occurred to him as he was busy making me look prettier. To me, the arousal came as naturally as it had on his kitchen floor. I figured a barber having sex in his shop would make a good blog story one day, but to his credit Guy #142 stayed professional every time. I very much doubt his mind was on sex as much as it was on mine. I guess Guy #142 was way more accustomed to all the normal going on.

The reason he probably didn’t think of having sex with me might very well be that I was the kind of person unable to not think of it. Plus he viewed his job as a craft, an art form of sorts, not the kind of thing one sets the normal aside for.

Still, considering a hairdresser who talks is like a psychiatrist that touches you, it was awesome getting the silent treatment.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: ± 1 year
FORMAT: Few weeks of dating followed by four or five haircuts
SEX SCORE (0 = A hairdresser that talks <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

 

Guy #140 and #141 – Letting go of the shallow…

The one thing I remember most from my dates with Guys #140 and #141 is the scenery.

For a while I had the pleasure of living in a house right next to the sea. It even had its own little private beach. The sea in question was the Caribbean Sea, meaning I lived next to what could have been the set for Finding Nemo. Basically, I woke up to the sight of the world’s most generic wallpaper every day.

Having dates in that environment can be fun, even if those dates themselves aren’t that attractive.

Guy #140 was an engineer from Colombia, over at my island to do some engineering stuff and to get off with the locals in his spare time. We sat on my beach, counted the number of ships we saw on the horizon, talked about the mysteries of the cosmos and our macabre interest in plane crashes. I actually had a great time with him as we pondered the final moments of Air France 447. It was awesome to go that deep with a stranger.

Yet as much as I dig deep, I consider looks important too. While it’s definitely hot to discuss the inner workings of a pitot tube with an engineer at night on your own private beach, this particular engineer had belly fat and chest hair.

Still, I found myself in a romantic setup in one of the most romantic places I had ever been, let alone lived. I believe it was me who initiated the first kiss, which ended in my bed somehow.

While Guy #140 surrendered himself to making love to me as passionately as engineers can manage, I couldn’t shake the thought of being in a plane crash. While I thought of it in terms of how lucky I am to be alive, it wasn’t the sort of motivational speech to get me in the mood. Added to that, said sex took place in my bedroom, where the sound of the ocean got replaced by the humming of the air conditioning.

Still, I didn’t feel regret afterward. In fact, part of me couldn’t deny part of me had enjoyed it. I guess sometimes it’s liberating to let go of the shallowness, uneasy as it may feel. If it hadn’t been for that generic wallpaper as my back yard, I probably would have rejected Guy #140.
So there you go. Scenery matters.

Testament to that fact was Guy #141, a tourist from France, also equipped with belly fat and chest hair, but also equally engaging. It actually thrilled me I was capable of maintaining a conversation in French for a full hour, covering topics such as terrorism, freedom of speech or the horror that is blue cheese.
Once again, it was me who initiated foreplay and although it’s never a good idea to have sex with the memory of blue cheese resurfacing as blue cheese would, part of me had nothing but a good time.

Before Guys #140 and #141 there had been Guy #139, the most beautiful Guy I ever shared a bed and a car with. He too had been at my beach. He only spoke Spanish, meaning my mind wasn’t on global warming or the Challenger disaster when I had sex with him.
Now, I had used my secret human powers to connect with someone on a meaningful level, in French even. The resulting sex was almost equally rewarding, even though I would have done Guy #139 over any engineer no matter what the scenery.

Guys #140 and #141 were both intelligent, friendly and charming people who came by to teach me a few simple yet powerful life lessons:

– Scenery matters.
– As do looks.
– And even brains in some cases.

It’s rewarding to let go of the shallow.
It’s also not easy.

Relationship summaries:

Guy #140:
LENGTH: 3 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Beauty and the Beast, when you stop to think about what it entails <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7.5

Guy #141:
LENGTH: 2 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Also, The Little Mermaid was a minor when she hooked up with Prince Eric <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8.5

 

Do what I did. Start with Guy #1.