Humor – Page 3

Guy #146 – Why do gay saunas have to be so dark?

Why do gay saunas have to be so dark?

Dimly lit hallways, faint beams of light at waist level, the air of horniness interwoven with the smell of poppers… It’s the perfect environment to show off one’s gym hours without having to truly reveal one’s self. In other words: Darkness carries both truth and lies further than light tends to.

Gay saunas are places people go to hide as much as they go to hunt. I suppose darkness facilitates both.
I for one go to gay saunas because I like to shine. Sure I aim to find someone porkable, but beneath that is a Guy who just wants to feel loved, something I believe is true for anyone who has pork on the menu. Wanting to shine is just my narcissistic translation for wanting to be loved.

Even though I am insecure about my looks as any pig would be, I know I’m generally considered attractive. The main reason Guys keep their distance is because they’re shy. Being shy myself, I pretend not to look at other people as much as people pretend not to look at me.
Darkness is a contributing factor in all of that and if I’m being completely honest, darkness is where I too shine the most, unhampered by the hassle of facial contact that often lies on the road to getting laid.

Still, if it were up to me I would prefer to meet people where I can see them.

Guy #146 taught me that.

I first saw Guy #146 as he entered the steam cabin I was just leaving. The very definition of cruising dictates one doesn’t make any sudden course adjustments. When you cruise, you cruise, always acting as if you have a destination to be at. Even though Guy #146 and I first saw each other going in opposite directions, me turning around and following him would have been too desperate. Even in a place where it’s just about sex, desire is best expressed in subtleties.

Guy #146 being hot looking in every sense of the word I positioned myself in a sauna that came with a view to the steam room my prey had just entered. There I sat, quietly waiting as one does at a bus stop, until Guy #146 left his steamy quarters. From there he disappeared into a dark alley full of hunters such as myself.

I went in pursuit.

‘Pursuit’ in this case meant navigating myself through a handful of crotch grabbing elderly men as quickly and quietly as I could, until I got Guy #146 in my sight again. My walking speed being well above the cruising limit I knew my intentions were now out in the open. If I wanted a chance with this Guy, I would have to sell my quick pace as an act of assertion, so I did. I stumbled toward Guy #146 and gently caressed his shoulder, not exactly a move befitting the top I wanted to be, but in that moment I was happy enough to have overcome my shyness.

My approach felt clumsier and more out of place than a 747 landing on an aircraft carrier. Assertive, sure, but far from gracious. As such, it came as a surprise Guy #146 replied to my improvisational assertiveness by grabbing my balls and kissing me. Having trouble believing my luck I immediately followed suit by pushing Guy #146 toward the nearest available cabin, kissing him all the way.

It wasn’t until Guy #146 and I had removed our towels and were lying next to each other on a sweaty mattress that I discovered Guy #146 had chest hair, something he didn’t have a few minutes before at that steam room. It took me about two seconds to do the math: The Guy I was sharing a cabin with was not Guy #146. I mean, technically this was the 146^th Guy I was having sex with, but not my intended target.

I had accidentally captured the wrong Guy. Somewhere in my pursuit the Guy I was chasing had eloped me, only to be replaced by someone whose hairdo, body, length and posture seemed similar in what little light we were granted.

Which begs the question: Why do gay saunas have to be so dark?

It’s the question that went through my mind as I halfheartedly had sex with Guy #146. Even though this Guy was nowhere near as cute the one I’d been chasing, I remember him being a good enough kisser. That at least made up for some of his chest hair.

However, I couldn’t shake the feeling of having failed, probably because that’s exactly what I had done as far as the hunt was concerned. Guy #146 and I ended up spending no more than five minutes together. Falling comfortably within the realm of courtesy in a gay sauna, I simply stopped having sex and left Guy #146 alone in his cabin, telling him I needed to be in a brighter place.

The day I accidentally fooled around with Guy #146 would mark the last time I exceeded the cruising speed limit. I also picked up the habit of checking out Guys at the bar before chasing them through dark corridors filled with the scent of poor judgment.

Darkness had allowed me to chase a Guy. Darkness had allowed me to make a move. Darkness got me intimate with someone. In turn, Guy #146 would never have gotten close to my testicles had it not been for darkness. Darkness goes hand in hand with intimacy. Darkness smoothes seduction. Darkness is social lubricant.

I guess darkness is part of the compromise inherent to the concept of a gay sauna. It’s a place where the things we don’t reveal about ourselves carry as much weight as the wrinkles that do show. I’d be lying if I said the darkness doesn’t make me feel safe and secure.

The cute Guy I had my eyes on at first? I ran into him later that night, as I sat down in a whirlpool, inches away from his personal space. I made a move, but my hand was shoved back the way it came.

That’s another thing. Rejection is very bearable under the cover of darkness. I look for darkness to shine, and when I don’t, when I turn dark inside, there’s no one to witness it.

Thank god gay saunas are so dark.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 5 minutes
FORMAT: Mistake
SEX SCORE (0 = Hair when you don’t expect it <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 4.5

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 #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

Guy #143 – For the very first time…

I guess we all adjust to the ones we’re with. Or maybe I just lack the backbone to be myself in front of other people.

Guy #143 was barely of legal age, he still went to high school, lived with his mother and was also unbelievably mature for his age, not to mention cute. While part of me couldn’t help but feel like a pedophile, another part fell hopelessly in love.
Guy #143 was mature for his age. I didn’t say I was.

The year was 2015, I was 32 years old and life threw me my first and only high school crush. We had the best conversations, it be about the burdens of parental supervision, high school gossip or how hard having homework can be.

When you fall in love for the first time you don’t know any better or it’s the single most important life event in the history of life itself. Every hug, every kiss, every app, all of it matters. When you’re in love for the first time, you don’t yet know you’re suffering from a psychological disorder that tends to prelude clinical depression the way Oreos precede a sugar crash.

At 32 I was old enough to know all that. I had been in love before. It had depressed me on more than one occasion. Yet for all my experience, I had never actually been with someone who was in love with me as much as I was in love with him. In terms of having a successful love live, the first month of my two month relationship with Guy #143 was probably my happiest to date.

Not wanting his classmates to see him dating a Guy old enough to be his teacher, Guy #143 insisted we’d keep our thing under wraps. Not wanting to be considered a pedophile, I happily obliged. If anything the secrecy only made our love more special, more meaningful, more like something people make movies about.

We started off with a one month streak of four successful dates, interwoven with endless Whatsapp conversations in which I fueled our connection by validating all of Guy #143’s drama for the serious stuff that it was.
Yet as much as it made me feel young and alive to be doing his homework, it was precisely the fact I found myself doing homework at 32 that made me wonder if Guy #143 and I had any future to speak of.

On the other hand, you don’t care about the future when you’re in love for the first time. Not even me, who had taken 32 years to finally enjoy life as a teenager. I wasn’t about to let go of that.

But I guess the future looks different depending on how old you are, regardless of maturity. Guy #143, as it turned out, saw it differently.

I will never know why, but one day Guy #143 went from saying I love you during sex to saying his mother needed him to be home at ten, instead of sex. All the enthusiasm, his sparkling personality and playful bedside manner…it all vanished into thin air. What was left was a teenager who kept all his feelings inside but would rather die than talk to an adult about it. No matter how hard I empathized with his mother issues, no matter what Whatsapp emoticon I threw at him, not even the amount of homework I did changed anything about his curtness.

The joy I had felt during our first four dates was replaced by despair. As so often happens when you fall in love, it lures you in before it reveals its true nature. Butterflies turn into bats, birds and bees become vultures and flies, happy becomes black. It had happened to me before, but this being my first high school crush it came as a surprise nonetheless.

As weeks passed, the dates stopped coming, as did the emoticons. A day or two after finishing his paper on the Russian Revolution all frequencies went silent.

I was heartbroken for about a week, far from the worst sugar crash I ever had. I suppose I was relieved I could stop living life as a teenager.

While I never understood why Guy #143 became distant all of a sudden, it was at one point revealed to me he had cheated on me with a Guy old enough to have been my teacher.

Turns out people tend to lose perspective when they’re in love for the first time. Thankfully, I learned my lesson and never fell hopelessly in love ever again for well over a year.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 months
FORMAT: Dawson’s Creek meets Boy Meets World
SEX SCORE (0 = The Russian Revolution <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 9.3

DO WHAT I DID. START WITH GUY #1!

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.

Guy #139 – So sometimes hot Guys are into me…

When I met Guy #22, he was the most beautiful Guy I’d ever been with.
When I met Guy #81, he was the most beautiful Guy I’d ever been with.
Until I met Guy #106, the most beautiful Guy I’ve ever been with.

Except for Guy #139 that is.

I don’t know what to tell about Guy #139 except for the fact he was the most beautiful Guy I have ever been with up till now. He was a Colombian tourist who visited my home island of Curaçao for a weekend. Although I hardly ever take initiative on Grindr, the sight of his abs compelled me to say ‘Hi’. I couldn’t imagine someone this undeniably gorgeous to take an interest in me, but much to my surprise he said ‘Ola’ back.

Guy #139 spoke Spanish. I did not.
I spoke English. Guy #139 did not.

So when I went to meet Guy #139 at his hotel, our only means of communicating was this phone app he had. I would say something in English and then some distant cousin of Siri would read my words back to him in Spanish and vice versa.

It was frustrating having to articulate and compress all my thoughts into childlike sentences, but at the same time I was probably blessed by our little language barrier: I was so in awe of Guy #139’s beauty I had trouble thinking of sensible things to say. Had we been granted a common language odds are I would have awkwardized our date beyond repair, as I so often do in the presence of beauty.

Guy #139 and I walked down a beach until we reached the outer edge of the hotel’s wifi network, where Spanish Siri rendered our conversation dead. Forced to head back, Guy #139 suggested we’d get together in my car.

And so Guy #139 and I had sex in my car in broad daylight on a parking lot where ‘hotel_guest’ got one bar, just enough to ask my Colombian twink underwear model to join me on the back seat. I usually don’t like car sex, but Guy #139 being so incredibly good looking my libido allowed me to let go of my inhibitions. I didn’t care whether we’d be seen, get caught or even disturbed.

What I did care about was whether or not I was enjoying Guy #139 to the full. Though I wholeheartedly embraced the Naughty, I really wanted to embrace Guy #139, something that proved difficult in a 1982 Mazda.

Earlier, Siri’s cousin had informed me my date would also be available later that night, for a full few hours, meaning I could pick him up, take him to my place, get high to the sound of the ocean, embrace the most beautiful Guy I ever had sex with and then drop him off again.
To increase my chances of seeing Guy #139 a second time I stopped when he started showing signs of coming. I wanted him close, but not over the edge just yet. Except for sexual chemistry there was no language in which I could adequately express how much I wanted him at my place later that night. But perhaps more importantly, I wanted something to look forward to as well. And in another stroke of pure luck, neither one of us had condoms at hand, meaning our car date would leave something to be desired no matter what.

I suppose it’s a good thing Guy #139 had no access to my thoughts.

I’d like to think of Guy #139 as a little present the universe threw in my path, just a quick reminder that yes, sometimes even beautiful Guys are attracted to me. This one in particular was all too eager to come to my place that night, where we got high and then had sex in which I embraced the living daylights out of him. We hugged a lot too. And then I dropped him off at his hotel, knowing all too well the chances of me ever owning Guy #139 again were slimmer than the plot of Jurassic Park actually happening.

In a way I was relieved I’d never be seeing Guy #139 again, beautiful as he was. I couldn’t help but feel I had enjoyed him to the full, meaning every other attempt at having a conversation would just be pushing it, not to mention make things awkward.

I’m pretty sure he’s the most beautiful thing ever to have found itself inside of that 1982 Mazda though.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 1 x 1 hour + 1 x 3 hours
FORMAT: Sex date + a better sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Philately <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 9.9

Guy #138 – The hotness that is clinical depression…

A few years ago my father died. I never dealt with it very well. Sometimes I wonder if I myself want to live at all.

Those were the words Guy #138 spoke toward the end of our date, mere seconds before getting in his car and driving off.

More often than not, a sex date is the kind of thing you don’t want lasting too long. When the physical relationship has played its part, the usual lack of remaining chemistry makes you want to bail out, to get back to your own life, away from any naked strangers.
Guy #138 was a notable exception in that respect.

Sometimes clinical depression looks good on a Guy. Before he spoke of his suicidal tendencies Guy #138 had been another good looking human being that had Grindred his way to my back yard, where I had the pleasure of doing him for a good few minutes. It was fun, sure, but our relationship was expressed entirely in movements, cold, concise and deliberate movements typical of a sex date: The silent walk toward the spot we’d be having sex, the somewhat obligatory crotch grabbing, the three stages of foreplay (kissing, handwork and oral), followed by an uneasy intermission needed to get condom and lube in place, followed by doing that thing Guy #138 had in mind back when he said ‘Hi’ on Grindr.

Afterward, Guy #138 and I both lit up a cigarette as we walked back to his car. Our dialogue was brief and in many ways compulsory as our movements had been, yet a few sentences into our conversation he told me about the death of his father and his own subsequent depression.

Sometimes orgasms are but a prelude to social awkwardness and self pity, but I guess they also have a tendency to lower our defenses. Sometimes the relationship stops being one of movements after those movements have climaxed.
Suddenly, seconds before he would drive off, Guy #138 became interesting, his perpetual sadness adding a welcome dimension to his already well defined abs.

Guy #138 had somewhere else to be though. He never intended to spend more than 15 minutes with me. It was only in that final minute I became frustrated by the agreed upon format of our relationship. I wanted to know more of Guy #138. I wanted to hear his story, perhaps even cuddle up with him and let him ponder ways to kill himself.

For the record, I wasn’t being morbid. I was being empathetic.
Okay, I was being morbidly empathetic, but still, I wanted nothing more than to share my good intentions with Guy #138. More specifically, I had glimpsed someone I could connect with, which is what I have in mind each time I say ‘Hi’ on Grindr.

I accidentally ran into Guy #138 about a year later. Our date had taken place in obscurity. This time we met in a crowded and brightly lit place. Good intentions aside, I didn’t recognize Guy #138 when he stood before me and rather enthusiastically said ‘Hi’. He needed to remind me who he was. I tried to make up for my apparent ambivalence by texting him, asking if he would be willing to meet up with me again sometime.
I haven’t seen or heard from him since.

For what it’s worth, I hope Guy #138 is doing better these days, and I guess I would like to run into him again someday and actually be aware it is him. I’d like to know more than just his moves.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 15 minutes + 2 minute awkward encounter
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Clowns <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #136 and #137 – The ones who inspired this blog…

It’s not always easy not being the relationship type, especially when there are very few gay people around.

In fact, living on a small Caribbean island most of my Grindr conversations were with tourists and the occasional flight attendant. My window of opportunity for getting dates was often small. There have been many, many gorgeous Colombian Guys who dug my mirror selfies to the point they regretted not being able to leave their family to go hump me for a few hours. I regretted it too, and it wasn’t long before I became somewhat sexually frustrated.

So when I picked up Guy #136 from his hostel one night it was mostly because he was free and willing, not because his selfies had been stellar. We ended up having sex next to a pile of two-by-fours on an abandoned construction site with a view of the ocean. It was ridiculously bad, awkward and as a result even a tad gross. Guy #136 came off as a clumsy hump of nerves, part overly excited to have some fun, part hopelessly inept at doing so.

It felt off doing this primitive sex ritual with such premeditation and routine. Guy #136 and I both knew our relationship would be measured in minutes and that we should probably just ignore the other in case we’d ever pass each other on the street again (which is what I did when I ran into Guy #125 at the gym a few days ago).
Even though I wasn’t the relationship type, it had always been the connection with someone that made sex something worth chasing. It made me wonder what on Earth I had been chasing the moment I decided to pick up Guy #136.

The same question popped up in my head when I visited Guy #137 in his vacation bungalow a few sexually dry weeks later. Guy #137 matched #136 in clumsiness, but this time I realized it was me who was causing it. I remember feeling misplaced, simply because I wasn’t having any fun. I was living a sad derogative of an unrealistic fantasy. I halfheartedly forced myself to feign arousal so that Guy #137 might not notice how much of a disappointment he was to me, but I suppose I was unable to mask the disappointment I felt toward myself. I have no way of knowing what Guy #137 felt in my presence, but I’m pretty sure we both felt relief when I left. Our date had transpired quicker than a Judge Judy court session.

It reminded me of my first date with a Guy, nearly ten years prior. I remembered the excitement of getting my first kiss from someone, followed some Guys later by my first good kiss. The more sex you have, the more difficult it can become to experience the thrill of it. More and more it becomes a matter of who you do it with and when you lack suitable ‘who’s’, you go for cheap thrills, in the case of Guy #137 a bungalow bedspring that squeaked its way through our ten minute date as if it was the soundtrack to our relationship.

So what was it I was chasing? And why was there this Grindr to facilitate other people chasing it? Construction site sex with a stranger by its very nature is a compromise on many levels. Stranger yet, unless people generally have lower standards than I do (and I highly doubt that’s the case), a lot of us appease to our limited options by default. It’s as if many of us consider ourselves lucky to have weird sex at all.

How did that happen?

After I got home from my quickie with Guy #137 I got high and recalled the first time I had sex with someone. I was struck by how the excitement of my first date contrasted with the sheer ambivalence of my time with Guys like #136 or #137, or #134, #131 and #124 through #129, to name but a very few.

I wondered if perhaps the story of my often clumsy but occasionally spectacular sex life could be fun for people to read, perhaps even helpful. The internet has a lot of sex, but it does a poor job picturing the social maze that accompanies it.

The thought of writing about my sex life for the world to see brought back the excitement my date with Guy #1 had been about. As with then, part of me hesitated to move forward. Then again, what better way to give at least some meaning to dates like the ones with #136 and #137 than to have people laugh about them?

I started writing the day I met and said farewell to Guy #137.

Guess there was something worth chasing there after all.

Relationship summaries:

Guy #136:
LENGTH: 20 minutes
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Having to spell out your name to get a Starbucks coffee <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 2.5

Guy #137:
LENGTH: 8.25 minutes
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Making ‘Tall’ the new ‘Small’ <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 2

Get the full story. Start with Guy #1 here.

Guy #135 – The best sex. Yet.

The last time I had sex with Guy #135 I whispered “I love you” seconds before coming. It felt strange to say the L-word for a change, but above anything else I knew I meant it, even after coming. That almost never happens.

What I loved most about Guy #135 was his wisdom. I’ve never seen him radiate anything but Zen. Though about ten years younger than me, I often felt my own cynicism came off as immature by comparison. Guy #135 was as much a boyfriend as he was a spiritual guide.

On top of that he was also one of the most beautiful Guys I ever met in my life. He looked what you’d expect Adam of Adam and Steve fame to look like, beauty in its most natural incarnation, or doable to the highest degree as I thought the night we met.

His online selfies had been strangely obscure. Had my home been at the center of a lustrous gay life, I might not have even met up with Guy #135. Instead my home was a little tropical paradise. Guy #135 lived an island away and was visiting mine for a week. Not wanting to forego the possibility of sex with a possibly good looking Guy in a place with so few, we met up on his penultimate night there.

I instantly regretted spending the better half of a week not making an effort to set a date, only because his selfies had been so obscure. It would be the first of many times Guy #135 confronted me with my shallowness. Regardless, at the onset of our date I set out to become Steve, even if it was just for one night.

As the night progressed I came to realize two things: Guy #135 was what you would call an old soul and he was into me. He was by no means the slutty type, but for some reason he apparently agreed with me our connection was a special one. I knew I was Steve by the time the two of us were sitting on my porch, praising each other’s beauty as Adam and Steve would.

By the time we woke up together Guy #135 had become someone I care for, even after coming.

We met up a few weeks later, when again he visited my island, only this time he spent all nights with me, all three of them. It was on one such night we fell asleep in each other’s arms and woke up in the exact same position precisely eight hours later. We were Adam and Steve alright.

Guy #135 was not one to be jealous, but he did seem at odds with the way I lived my sex life, going from one meaningless hook-up to the next. I tried to talk my way out of it by saying I was always open to the possibility of a commitment, except of course no commitment ever felt worthy enough to forego anonymous sex on a parking lot, among other things. Guy #135 quickly uncovered it was in fact my own lack of self esteem that deemed every connection disposable. Indeed, part of me couldn’t help but feel unworthy of Guy #135.

We hardly kept in touch when he wasn’t on my island. I guess it felt off chatting with such a profoundly moral boyfriend while at the same time Grindring those closer to home. Life went on and it wasn’t until the day after I broke up with Guy #144 that I learned Adam was back in town.

We spent a few nights on a little private beach no one else could come. It was a place from which one could often see shooting stars in the night sky. I don’t remember if the two of us saw one that night, but for the sake of the story: There was weed.
“We go well together,” Guy #135 told me. I knew I wasn’t ready to commit myself to someone, but it felt good to realize a relationship with #135 might actually be a good idea at some point. I remember looking at him and silently agreeing how well we were going together. It was the night I said “I love you”. It was also the last time I ever saw him.

Our last Whatsapp conversation took place a few months after the night of the best sex ever (up until that point that is). I had just started 168Guys.com and Guy #135 expressed surprise at my number of sexual experiences. He’d always known there were plenty. He just never realized there were that plenty. He wanted to know his number and what his ‘Sex Score’ would be. I said it would be a 10. (It has been for a long time.)

I guess part of me always assumed Guy #135 should maybe hope for another Steve, one with more self esteem and abs to show for it, a Steve less shallow than I am.

Even though nothing ever materialized between Guy #135 and me, he’s always been a very pleasant memory, someone I enjoy missing from time to time. It’s nice to know there’s at least one person I can be Steve with, or me in my most natural incarnation, shallow as a pond, afraid to swim where my feet can’t touch the ground, yet somehow seaworthy enough for Guy #135.

Guy #135 – The best sex ever…

By the time we woke up together Guy #135 had become someone I care for, even after coming.

Our last Whatsapp conversation took place a few months after the night of the best sex ever. I had just started 168Guys.com and Guy #135 expressed surprise at my number of sexual experiences. He’d always known there were plenty. He just never realized there were that plenty. He wanted to know his number and what his ‘Sex Score’ would be. I said it would be a 10.

I guess part of me always assumed Guy #135 should maybe hope for another Steve, one with more self esteem and abs to show for it, a Steve less shallow than I am.

dscn3815

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: ±2 years
FORMAT: Wholly non committal highly intermittent relationship
SEX SCORE (0 = Cat videos <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 10

Want to read the full story? Click here to start with Guy #1!

Guy #134 – Shame…

Guy #134 made me realize something.

Car sex is depressing, if not depressingly impractical.

Though I would go on to have pleasurable car sex with Guy #139 a while later, I do believe the idea of car sex sprouted from a lack of options. Sometimes finding a bed to have sex on can be a logistical nightmare. Sometimes a car ends up being the closest thing to a motel room. Sometimes dating is just sad that way.

Guy #134 nor I were capable of hosting a private sex fest. We did discuss the possibility of a motel, but as my date was lamenting his financial situation I realized he was driving toward this one remote parking spot I knew of. Being in a frugal mood as well, I accepted it.

The two of us had sent each other pictures of our naked selves. In anticipation of our date I had imagined us doing the usual fun stuff, like kissing and undressing each other, discovering our nakedness through foreplay. Instead, within seconds of engine shutdown Guy #134 treated me to a hasty French kiss that quickly went south and ended up at third base, where it stayed for the remainder of our date.

While Guy #134 definitely deserves credit for being good at his job, I was mostly occupied with staring out the window, carefully monitoring the movement of distant silhouettes of people and other cars, unable to fully shake the sadness of my situation.

Toward the end of our little parking lot extravaganza I saw two people passing within 50 feet of our car. I could swear one of them was looking straight at me, pushing down Guy #134’s head to make sure it didn’t appear in and out of view all the time.

Guy #139 and I would later have sex in a car at broad daylight and it truly was a little paradise by the dashboard light. Guy #139 was so hot and friendly and handsome and ribbed and on all counts the most beautiful Guy I ever had sex with up till now, I didn’t mind getting caught with him. Guy #134 to me was so much more unremarkable in so many ways the thought of people seeing me with him filled me with shame. It’s not that Guy #134 wasn’t cute. He simply wasn’t special enough for me to take risks for. Preceded by 133 other Guys, a lesbian and a stripper, Guy #134 just didn’t have it in him to excite me the way he might have had he been a two digit number.

Guy #134 and I reached peak shame on our ride home, when post orgasmic sobriety filled the car. I wasn’t raised to get blowjobs from unremarkable strangers in their cars, so I couldn’t help but resent myself a little. One might even say I felt like a cheap whore. I have no idea how Guy #134 postured himself from the moment my pants came back on. All I know is the car was eerily silent and our goodbye as uninspired as our first and only kiss had been.

Our home being a small Caribbean island, Guy #134 and I ran into each other several times over the next few years. We would always shake hands, but never engage in conversation, not even when we turned out to have mutual friends and at one point even a mutual ex. My guess is Guy #134 had felt my shame as well. It had made our date awkward and unrewarding and it had consumed our entire relationship.

Shame.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 years
FORMAT: One time car date followed by occasional obligatory handshake
SEX SCORE (0 = A Sigmund Freud action figure <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 3

Guy #133 – On the beach…

When you live on a tropical island and use Grindr to meet up with Guys, it’s all but impossible to avoid having sex on a beach at some point.

Beaches can get dark and quiet at night.
So when Guy #133 and I met up at his hotel lobby, we went out for a walk and soon found ourselves at a small lagoon with a view of distant cruise ships decorating the horizon and the ocean oozing our date like a Norah Jones album.

I don’t remember much about Guy #133. He was a shoe salesman, only the type of shoes he sold went for $2000 a pair. He showed me pictures of shoes covered in diamonds. I imagined he must have sold many shoes to Hollywood stars, but he told me most of his customers were “hoodies” wanting to add some bling to their wardrobe, so I quipped Guy #133 was a bit like Al Bundy. He had no idea who or what Al Bundy was, though he did later proclaim himself a fan of Modern Family.

In short, Guy #133 and I had nothing in common. I was a 90s kid. He was whatever they call kids who didn’t grow up to the tune of a dial-up modem.

Our conversation was pleasant, but equally meaningless. I was scanning my half of the horizon to see if the coast was clear. He was doing his part.

Sure enough, the more I learned about life as a shoe salesman, the more isolated we became, until it was just us and the sea.

Usually I don’t enjoy the risk of getting caught, but this time the scenery was so lovely I deemed it completely in my right as a human being to enjoy nature the way it was intended, all the way to third base.

In hopes of covering all bases I brought Guy #133 to my place, where the absence of nature dissolved what little common ground we had into a lame hand job. Worse yet, when I dropped my date off at his hotel later, my car broke down. Not wanting to hear another word about shoes I assured Guy #133 I was in complete control of my vehicle. The two of us waved each other goodbye through a cloud of smoke that sprouted from my car’s radiator as I popped the hood. The hesitation with which Guy #133 walked away suggested he felt obliged to stick out my car trouble with me. I however insisted he’d leave. We had gone from blowjobs in the Garden of Eden to discussing shoes in my bedroom to resuscitating a 1982 Mazda on a Hilton parking lot. It was clear to me Guy #133 and I had no future to speak of.

It must have been about 3 AM, hours away from the nearest tow truck. It would take the better half of a day and about $100 to get possession of a working car again, all of it because I so much wanted to do a Guy who spoke of shoes on a beach, someone who didn’t even get my Al Bundy joke.

I should not have transposed our date from the beach to my bedroom. I was fine talking about shoes at a lagoon. Most Guys could probably spice up Keynesian economics there. Our date was great as long as we had the beach to remind ourselves how awesome it would be to have sex there. It did not imply the sex would be awesome elsewhere.

Guy #133 flew back to his home country a few days later. I could tell, because he had disappeared from Grindr. I realized I would have no way of ever getting back in touch with him again, for one very simple reason: I had already forgotten his name.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 3 hours
FORMAT: Overvalidated sex date
SEC SCORE (0 = A date with Al Bundy <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7.8

Guy #132 – The marine.

A question I get asked on a daily basis is whether I’m top or bottom. At times it’s the first thing that comes up in conversation.

I’m sure some kind of Kindsey-scale could be attributed to the top-bottom continuum, but the truth is it’s impossible to predict who ends up on top. It all depends on who you’re with.

Guy #132 was with the navy.

He looked the part.

Guy #132 radiated a boyish manliness that, combined with his perky smile, made you wonder how they managed to even keep Don’t ask don’t tell going for that long.

Being a marine, my date had seen places, things, events even. He was the kind of Guy you’d want to be with when your car breaks down in the middle of the desert. In porn, he would have been the John McTame to my Nakatomi building. He had this sturdy clumsiness about him that befitted a Guy harvesting a primitive sex drive, someone who could let himself be owned by his own instinct.

One could say I dug Guy #132’s sexual energy as he offered me a glass of water. He wasn’t even that attractive. He didn’t need to be, which somehow made him even more attractive. We engaged in one of those conversations we both knew was only a formality standing in between us and the bedroom and I was comfortable in the knowledge he would take charge and be the first to put away his drink to kiss me.

He did, which made it all the more surprising he quickly turned out to be a total bottom.

It’s not that I don’t know what to do with the body of a marine, but part of me couldn’t shake the thought You’re a soldier. Conquer me!

It was hardly a punishment to own a marine for a night, but I did feel like the sex hadn’t lived up to its image.

We met up on two occasions. On our second date he withheld the formalities altogether and went straight to sex. He knew exactly what he wanted, how he wanted it and what he needed to do to get it. It had this manly pragmatism to it that empowered enough potential to own a harem, yet again, when push came to shove, I had to push.

Seeing that much surrender embedded in the sexuality of this army person it was comforting to know Don’t ask don’t tell isn’t a thing anymore. In that sense I can proudly argue I did my part making my country combat ready. Twice. On two occasions.

I lost interest in Guy #132 the moment he brought up the subject of fisting. I guess I’m not that much of a patriot.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 x 90 minutes
FORMAT: Sex dates
SEX SCORE (0 = Patriotism <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #131 – The ring beard…

Blessed with everything but a plan or even the slightest idea of what I wanted to do with my life, I moved to the island of Curaçao in October of 2013.

For a few years I lived in this tiny country, cocooned from the outside world by its climate, the beaches, the rum, the air conditioning and the fact I was one of only a few white Guys on Grindr.

On the downside, I was also one of the few Guys actually on Curaçao. On bad days the bottom 50 Guys appearing on my Grindr screen were literally an ocean away from me, stuck in Venezuela or Colombia.

With a population of just 150,000 people, Curaçao had no gay life to speak of. It was friendly to gays, but by no means hospitable, or facilitating for that matter.

Discouraged by the lack of doable Guys in my vicinity I decided to be polite when Guy #131 hit me up online, saying he liked my selfies. I didn’t consider it much of a compliment. In this corner of the Earth I was one of the few online people who even had selfies.

Still, it was nice talking to a gay Guy again. That hadn’t happened in weeks. Guy #131’s job consisted of writing copy for gay porn sites. It struck me as the easiest job in the world, getting paid to write about sex. When I shifted through some of the sites Guy #131 referred me to I was appalled by the number of mistakes and errors there were to be found in his copywriting efforts. I instantly knew I would be so much better at this job than Guy #131 was.

So I accepted Guy #131’s invitation for drinks at his place, hoping to learn how one can get paid writing about sex. It was more of a mission than a date, one that did not start off well: I had just parked my car and slammed the door when I realized my keys were still inside. My car, much like my date, was kind of old. Its lack of electrical windows allowed Guy #131, his landlord and his landlord’s friend to pry one open far enough to get my keys back. It had taken them a good 15 minutes.

Relieved as I was to know I still had a working car at my disposal, it came with a price, namely my diminished amount of self worth: Here I was, in a strange country, where I knew absolutely no one and my first date had to witness me being completely incompetent by locking myself out of my car.

My intention had been to seduce Guy #131 up to the point he would tell me how to get paid writing about stuff people do in gay porn. I had anticipated my charm to be enough to sway him, but our little paradise by the dashboard light had killed my mojo.

Once inside Guy #131 showed me more of his work as he spoke about working in the porn industry. From what I gathered all he ever did was write captions for porn videos. And they were awful. So I asked how one becomes a writer in porn, but no matter how I phrased it, I never got a clear answer. Instead he showed me some more porn videos and started touching me. Determined to get my first job as a paid writer I kissed him when he tried to.

It was in that moment I realized his ring beard was all the hair he had. It’s not that I hadn’t seen his baldness before. I just hadn’t registered it as such. Now that he was about to do a porn routine on me I could only think Guy #131 was kind of weird looking with that silly ring beard, not unattractive, but too weird to be pretty regardless.

There are one or two wholly painless sexual positions where one person can be completely passive. Those were the positions I attained as Guy #131 went down on me. It was the kind of sex where I wished for a magazine to make the time pass quicker.

Afterward, he turned off the porn and started inquiring about my life. I told him about this blog I maintained at the time and how it got over a 100 views on a good day. Even before our date was over I knew I would always regret letting a ring beard this outlandishly peculiar go to second base without giving me a single clue about living off the internet first.

I continued my inquiry for good manner, but in the end all he told me was that someone had asked him to do this job. Basically, Guy #131 got to give oral in exchange for telling me he owed his job to one of the 7 billion people on this planet.

I did end up thanking Guy #131 for helping me out with my car key earlier. Leaving had indeed become my top priority as our date progressed. He contacted me a few times afterward, but I pretended to be one of 7 billion people.

My reason for going on a date with Guy #131 was to get information. I was armed with my charm and well received selfies. Guy #131 met up with me to get laid. He was armed with information.

Even as one of the few white Guys in a little tropical paradise, I suck at playing the game sometimes.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 3 hours
FORMAT: Drinks with sex involved somehow
SEX SCORE (0 = Being stared at by an octopus <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 2,5

Guy #130 – The Lay After…

My mother and I never spoke much about my private life, though I did manage to reveal bits and pieces of it through our common, often morbid sense of humor. A few weeks before she died I granted her permission to come haunt me whenever she wanted, except for the times I would be having sex with people. My mother promised to honor our agreement.

I was willing to date my grief away shortly before my mother’s passing. It logically followed I went on Grindr a good two weeks after her funeral. The rush of organizing a memorial service was still fresh on my mind, but other than that my life had reached the calm after the storm, if ever there were such a thing.

Guy #130 was a flight attendant who spent half his life in fancy hotels. It was in one such hotel we sat down for coffee. Our Grindr conversation had been about sizes, positions and liquids, but our lobby talk ventured into the personal. I realized my date was deciding whether or not he would take me up to his room. Given the peculiarity of my situation I decided to for once not aim for sex and instead just be myself.

So I told Guy #130 I had buried my mother two weeks earlier. Fortunately, this flight attendant had way more than just a Pan Am-smile. Sometimes telling a stranger about your life is liberating, even more so if that stranger turns out to be a good bottom afterward.

Whatever emotions I had stacked up inside of me, Guy #130 offered me a lengthy release from my worries, but perhaps my favorite moment of our date had transpired before the sex, when Guy #130 suggested we’d go for a drink in his room. The effort to be myself had been such a conscious one it came as a relief to find out it was to be rewarded with sex.
Not only that, Guy #130 didn’t treat sex as he might have chicken or fish: He took me out to dinner afterward and let me spend the night with him. It was a sex date, sure, but I was given the First Class treatment, and again when I met up with Guy #130 about six months later.

What I enjoyed about our dates the most was the total lack of complexity. In terms of getting high, the sex allowed me to enjoy the wonder of flight without any crying babies to kill my moment of Zen.

It would seem my mother honored our agreement.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 2 x one night and morning after
FORMAT: Caring sex dates
SEX SCORE (0 = Those crying babies on an airplane <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8.4

Guys #125, #126, #127, #128 and #129 – Floating…

Baggage.

We all carry it.
And like drug mules bluffing their way through customs, we all lie about what we carry.

It’s not that we have anything necessarily worth hiding, but baggage just happens to be a dish served best in installments. We all carry a vast collection of issues small and big, most of which we hide regardless of how naked we get.
Yet while we aim to hide our baggage from those we position to pass judgment over it, we reach out to people for the very purpose of having them lighten up our load. The phrase get your load off has way more levels than most Guys are willing to admit, because baggage.

In terms of baggage I didn’t reveal, Guys #125 through #129 all had sex with me in the weeks leading up to my mother’s death.

As women with ovarian cancer so often do, they die. My mother was no exception. She spent her last month in a hospital bed in her living room, surrounded by loved ones such as myself, her weakness overpowering her strength bit by bit, day by day, until her final day, when she told me:

I don’t want to live. I don’t want to die. I just want to float.

Looking back I realize I followed a similar philosophy with the Guys I dated in those weeks. It’s natural for parents to die before their children do. It’s natural for parents to be with their children when they die. And I guess it’s natural to want to float when the air of death quite literally fills the room like a cancer.

So I went online, looking for Guys to float with.

I must have told my mother I was going out for a walk, when in reality I went out to meet Guy #125 in his car on a parking lot, where we exchanged oral for a good ten minutes. He had no knowledge of my baggage, nor did I inquire about his. We were just two complete strangers wanting to float for two completely different reasons.
God knows why I agreed to have sex in a car. I hate having sex in cars and I wasn’t even that much into Guy #125. He was simply the most available Guy within walking distance. With Guy #125 I drowned more than I floated.
It felt good to leave him behind and get back to taking care of my mother.

I met Guy #126 on another one of my ‘walks’. It was at his place. To his credit, he got me to climax three times in a row just by using his mouth, a feat unsurpassed by any other Guy since. One could argue he got me floating three times, if ever so briefly.
Apparently my mournful self had gotten Guy #126 to float too somehow, as he kept asking me to come over another time. Before I had met Guy #126 I had been okay with leaving my mother’s side to explore the possibilities a stranger offered. Now that I knew exactly what he had to give me I couldn’t bring myself to favor him over my mother a second time.

Guy #127 and #128 I ran into in a sauna, where we had sex that cuddled its way into a conversation. Guy #127 studied something, Guy #128 had a job at the airport. I evaded talking about myself altogether. Blowjobs can do that.

I actually ran into Guy #127 a little over a month later, after my mother had passed. He was excited to see me, but despite his raging cuteness I felt incapable of giving him any more attention. In the time between our two encounters he no doubt studied some more, whereas I had buried my mother. It wasn’t the kind of baggage I could ask a faint acquaintance such as Guy #127 to carry, nor was it the kind I was comfortable sharing. Some loads are just too heavy to be carried by strangers, no matter how good their blowjobs are.

Guy #129 would go down in history as the last Guy I ever had sex with before my mother died. He was a physiotherapist whose massages were unexpectedly disappointing. The sex itself was moderately okay, were it not for the fact my mind was constantly split between two places: The here and now, which consisted of Guy #129 and me going it at like rabbits, and the there and now, which consisted of my mother fighting a battle not even God could win.
During sex and before the massage I may have floated a little, but my baggage no doubt weighed me down considerably.

Guy #129 was kind enough to let me spend the night at his place. Sadly though, he only had one pair of sheets barely big enough to cover his own body, let alone mine. I spent the night under a tiny blanket that felt more like a towel, shivering and thinking about all the times my mother inquired about my love life, all the times she expressed her wish for me to find someone to be happy with, someone to live, die and float with. Shivering my way through the night I couldn’t help but feel I had disappointed her somehow.

There was another Guy, someone who could have been #130. We agreed to meet up on a Thursday, but on the morning of our date my mother told me: “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to die. I just want to float.”
So instead of venturing out on yet another sexual conquest me and my family gathered to say one final goodbye to my mother. I told my date-to-be I couldn’t make it because I had a “family thing I really needed to be at”, quite possibly the whitest lie I ever told anyone.
I never contacted this Guy again, nor did he contact me. I can only imagine he too had baggage he didn’t feel like sharing.

These days I still see Guy #125 on Grindr every so often, always less than a mile away from me. Occasionally I ignore Guy #126 when we pass each other at the local train station and Guy #127 recently dug my pictures on Tinder, though no conversation will ever sprout from any of it: There’s too much baggage for casual sex and too much sex for casual baggage. Blowjobs can do that.

I quietly assume Guys #125 through #129 were in it for the floating as much as I was, albeit it for completely different and forever unknown reasons. Dates are exciting because of what we don’t say to each other and sex, by its very nature, is both the best and the worst way to lighten up our load.

The ferryman

Oh, the traveler moving on the land, behold I give you, I give you the traveling man
And he’s very heavy laden with the questions in his burden
Lo, and I give you the traveling man
He has crossed the mountains, he has forded streams
He has spent a long time surviving on his dreams
Many times he’s tried to lighten up his heavy load
But his compromises fail him and he ends back on the road

Oh the traveler he is weary, the traveling man he is tired.
For the road is never ending. In his fear he has cried aloud for a savior
And in vain for a teacher, someone to lighten up the load
And he’s heard the sounds of war in a gentle shower of rain
And the whisperings of despair that he could not explain
The reason for his journey, or the reason it began
Or was there any reason for the traveling man

At last he reached a river so beautiful and wide
But the current was so strong he could not reach the other side
And the weary traveling man looked for a ferryman, strong enough to row against the tide
And the ferryman was old but he moved the boat so well
Or did the river move the boat? The traveler could not tell
Said the ferryman: “You’re weary and the answers that you seek
Are in the singing river, listen humbly it will speak.”

Oh, the traveler closed his eyes and he listened and he heard
Only the river murmuring and the beating of his heart
Then he heard the river laughing, and he heard the river crying
And in it was the beauty and the sadness of the world
And he heard the sounds of dying, but he heard the sounds of birth
And slowly his ears heard all the sounds of earth
The sounds blended together and they became a whole
And the rhythm was his heartbeat to the music in his soul

Relationship summaries:

Guy #125
LENGTH: A good 10 minutes
FORMAT: Car park fondlefest
SEX SCORE (0 = Lifetime movies <–>10 = The best sex ever): 3

Guy #126
LENGTH: 2 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Lifetime movies about cancer <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7

Guy #127
LENGTH: 1 hour + 2 minute conversation a month later
FORMAT: Sex date + awkward meet-up
SEX SCORE (0 = Lifetime movies about cancer where the hero lives <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #128
LENGTH: 30 minutes
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Lifetime movies about cancer where the hero dies <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #129
LENGTH: One night
FORMAT: One-night stand
SEX SCORE (0 = “The Fault in Our Stars” <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7.5

Guy #124 – Let the dolphin speak…

Sometimes Guys on Grindr fail to get the message: That he’s just not that into you.

A good friend of mine introduced me to the perfect emoji for silencing people who fail to realize when the relationship, whatever it was, has run its course. It’s the dolphin.

These days, whenever I used up every available polite way of saying let us not be part of each other’s lives and the only thing I have left is to bluntly tell this person I’m not that into him, I send a dolphin:

A dolphin is friendly, playful and well spirited. It means I wish the other person well on his journeys.
It also means the conversation is over.

No healthy person enjoys rejecting others. It’s why we go about it ever so gently. The result is an internet full of people who mistake attention for interest.

Guy #124 was old enough to be dating but too young to have even a slight grasp of the complexity of the game.

About fifteen minutes into our dance floor hook-up Guy #124 told me he had wanted me the moment he first laid eyes on me. For me Guy #124 was only my third or fourth choice of all the Guys there. He was young and inexperienced. I was at #124 and had every intention of making it to at least #125 in the near future.

The reason I ended up having sex with Guy #124 is that he was the key to experiencing a tiny part of the local gay scene I had never experienced before: Hook-up motels, where you park your car behind a curtain and have sex in the garage. The country we were in just so happened to be the place where secretive gay sex was very common, so when Guy #124 suggested we’d go there one day, I was curious enough to try.

What I remember most is the motel cleaning lady, the only person in the world who got to look the customer in the eyes, a bearer of secrets if ever I’ve seen one. The sex itself was more or less okay. We could hear the cleaning lady vacuuming throughout.

As we were cooling down in the garage, Guy #124 occasionally asked me to ‘say something’, apparently lamenting the fact I wasn’t as cheerful as I had been on a dance floor. I didn’t say anything. I just couldn’t be bothered.

Yet for some reason Guys like #124 can find in depressing motel room dates the start of something beautiful. And they’re sweet and inexperienced, so you don’t want to be the first to break their heart, so you go easy on them, and you reply when they start texting you the very next day.

You reply without offering any real input for the conversation to go on, yet the other Guy just keeps asking questions, or gives you that one remark that gets under your skin just enough to respond, thinking the conversation will die out eventually like a flame in the vacuum of space.

I should have flippered Guy #124. I should have sent him the dolphin, letting him know I have nothing against him and that I think he’s sweet and reasonably apt at having sex, but that the relationship has ended, because reasons.

The dolphin is the definitive lid on social awkwardness. It’s the most humane way of saying:

True to form I never reply to a single message from a person I’ve flippered. If a dolphin can’t show them I’m just not that into them, I don’t know what will.

Guy #124 ended up being quite offended when I eventually stopped replying to his text messages. He would not have been had I sent him a dolphin. That would have left him in a gentle but confused state of wonder.

I think ‘flippering’ could be this year’s planking.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 3 weeks
FORMAT: 2 hopeless sex dates
SEX SCORE (0 = A Hannibal Lecter dinner party <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7.5

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