Rejection

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 #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

Guy #122 – The spoiled brat…

Like most men never subjected to radiation poisoning I have hair growing out of my body at various places. While I make the effort to keep my chest Bieberesque by shaving it regularly, sometimes a single hair dodges my razor blade and remains sticking out of my body, as desolate as a man standing in the Sahara.

Guy #122 didn’t like chest hair either. That much became apparent when he noticed that one hair a few inches south of my right nipple. Even though we had been engaged in doing naked stuff for a good half hour already, Guy #122 stopped what he was doing and shifted all his attention to that one single bit of hair.

“Can you shave it off?” Guy #122 asked.
“No, I’m having sex,” I said.
It’s not like that one little hair got in the way of anything, but Guy #122 insisted. Again I refused to shave myself, proud as I was to stand up for myself for a change.

That’s when my date proceeded by trying to pull my hair out of my chest. The pain was intense and came without warning. I half heartedly yelled at Guy #122 and scolded him for hurting me, while at the same time laughing about how ridiculous sex with strangers can be sometimes.

The laughter stopped when Guy #122 pulled on my hair again, once again sending shock waves through my entire body. It was the first and to date only time I’ve ever been furious at someone during sex.

At the same time I had been enjoying the sex with this Guy. He was cute and good at it. I didn’t want the sex to stop because of that one tiny hair. Yet much to my surprise and anger Guy #122 kept making attempts at pulling it out. Thankfully I managed to stop him each time he tried, but my defenses came at the expense of my libido. After his fourth or fifth attempt I was so pissed off I turned Guy #122 on his stomach and had my way with him. He seemed to enjoy it, which pissed me off even more. I couldn’t stand being with someone so spoiled, so determined to get his way, so used to getting his way.

Putting on a T-shirt was my first act of business after I was done teaching Guy #122 a lesson. Finally, me and my hair were safe from the clutches of this spoiled maniac who now wanted to cuddle up with me. I however wanted him gone, out of my house, preferably out of my solar system.

Guy #122 hit me up online a few days later. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact our date had angered me to no end. We may have sent a few messages back and forth, but it wasn’t long before I ghosted him. I simply couldn’t stand someone as spoiled as Guy #122.

He would hit me up again many, many times over the course of the next year or so, until eventually I blocked him. Just looking at his picture reminded me of his claws, obsessively trying to pull out that one tiny hair of mine.

I doubt Guy #122 ever realized what the reason for my rejection was. He probably confused my anger for lust, while the lust had merely been a disguise for my anger. Still, I feel good about not giving him his way. He needed it badly.

I do pay more attention to lone hairs sticking out of my chest these days. In that sense I’m giving Guy #122 exactly what he wanted.

Damn, he’s irritating.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 3 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = “Quid Quo Pro, doctor” <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 7

Guy #105 – Urkel.

Love can be either devastating or annoying.

Guy #105 was annoying. The more he fell in love with me, the more annoying he became.
What annoyed me most were his tics. He constantly made a “clissing” sound with his mouth (clicking and hissing, I don’t know what else to call it). Guy #105 had this weird accent I could never quite take seriously. He was a nerdy PhD. in something, German, and the closest I ever came to dating Urkel.

Urkel was smart and from a certain angle and after a few glasses of wine not entirely uncute. He obviously wanted me as he explained to me the PhD. stuff that he did. He wanted me so eagerly I could make him eat his own socks if I wanted to. Apparently he thought me so worthy he considered himself blessed I was within reach. His eyes sparkled with anticipation, his clisses became more frequent and he giggled like a ventriloquist’s doll when I told him I like talking about quantum physics during sex.

Our first date wasn’t all that bad actually. I was in a romantic mood and must have enjoyed talking about particles. I probably initiated the first kiss as a gift of sorts. That somehow ended up in four hours of tender lovemaking. It was during those four hours Urkel’s mannerisms started to annoy me. His spit spat outward like a supernova each time he laughed. Even worse, he thought he was funny. He laughed a lot.

Urkel was so busy enjoying his moment in time he failed to notice I contemplated smacking his head each time he clissed. Instead, he spoke of me visiting him in Germany someday. He wanted to show me around and introduce me to his social life. I on the other hand was silently wondering why I had let it come to this. It’s difficult to enjoy sex when the other one is enjoying it so much more than you ever could.

Of course it’s nice when someone finds you attractive, but even admiration can be overdone. Nothing is more irritating than someone who wants to be your shadow.

For a few hours I had granted Urkel the illusion the two of us could ever be a thing of sorts. That had planted a seed. The moment his first cliss annoyed me Urkel became unaware of my true feelings for him. No matter what I did, he liked me more. No matter how curt, avoidant or rude I was, Urkel praised me like a Trekkie taking a shower with Jean-Luc Picard. The fact he idolized me and every breath I took made him an incredible nuisance, like a mosquito hovering around your head when all you want is sleep.

I considered myself lucky Urkel lived in Germany. It’s easy to ghost people long distance. Yet somehow he managed to find himself in my country again two months later, where he somehow had us attending a pride parade together. (As mentioned before, I absolutely suck at rejecting people.)

At times I pitied Urkel. His brain was undoubtedly sexy, but his nerdisms were too much for me to take in. His clissing in particular annoyed me, especially when accompanied by one of his many attempts to get physical with me. Being with him again made me wonder how on Earth the two of us had ever gotten to seeing each other naked.

Urkel was clearly disappointed when I told him we would not be having sex again, even though that had been the main purpose of his visit. I could tell he was sad because the clissing stopped.

We didn’t see each other after that, though he would frequently hit me up online to ask me questions like What’s up?, How’s it hanging?, How are you? and Hi?. I did not Hi back.

No one likes to see a sad Urkel, but I guess that’s because we’re all Urkel from time to time. Being in love is pretty much what being Urkel is all about. Guy #105 completely neglected his own brilliance for the sake of praising my pretty blue eyes. Fortunately, crushes come and go and he eventually stopped attempting to contact me. I guess it means he rekindled his relationship with the hot PhD. stuff he was so very good at.

Perhaps one day I’ll be the failed writer whose only claim to success is that he dated a future Nobel Prize winner this one time.

That’s still better than having to listen to any more of his clisses though.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 4 months
FORMAT: Drunken mistake followed by four month hangover
SEX SCORE (0 = Urkel’s pubic hair in your soup <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 3

Guy #54 – Saying ‘No’ to Hungry Bottom…

The world of sex dating is weird.

Total strangers can commit the most intimate acts.

Right now I have my phone lying next to me. I just checked Grindr. There’s a 46 year old Guy named Hungry Bottom looking for a fun top just 3000 feet away. He says hi. He doesn’t have a profile picture. Plus he’s 46, which is kind of stretching the age envelope for me. Then again, I can be a fun top if I want to.

I was that one time with Guy #54, back in 2009.

We had met online and later in my car.

If it wasn’t for the world of sex dating we never would have met. He was like Hungry Bottom in search of his fix.

He was around my age and not particularly attractive to me. As he stepped into my car I wondered if I really wanted to have sex with him.

The drive to my hotel room took about 30 minutes. 30 minutes of obligatory chit chat can be an eternity on sex dates, but not with Guy #54.

Sometimes nature has a way of bringing good people together. Guy #54 turned out to be someone who knew where to get weed in Wisconsin. It’s the kind of people I like knowing.

I don’t remember anything else that we talked about, but I do remember it being very pleasant. We laughed a lot, understood each other’s minds. After about 5 minutes of driving I found myself becoming attracted to Guy #54.

While I still had trouble finding Guy #54 physically yum, it did feel good to see how glad he was to be with me. It can actually be kind of a turn on if you have the power of turning someone else on, just by being naked. Plus I felt completely at ease with him, cracking jokes all the way through the sex itself. Sometimes it’s refreshing to talk a lot during sex.

For a good two hours we were like best friends on benefits.

Afterward I drove him back home, where we said goodbye to each other in a warm hug. We both knew we would never see each other again.

As pleasant as our friendship had been, we both knew it had run its course. It’s just inherent to sex dating. Sometimes you meet people you actually become friends with. And other times you meet people that are just there to give your ego a push in the right direction.

That’s what Guy #54 and I did for each other.

Presently, I give 46 year old Hungry Bottom very little chance of finding his one true top in me. My ego has been pushed enough over the years.

Casual hook-ups are something of a psychological experiment, a way to meet someone on account of his hormones, or possibly a lack thereof in the case of Hungry Bottom.
Sex is a great way to get to know someone. It reveals someone’s strengths, insecurities, (mis-)conceptions, even hopes and dreams. Sex lets you figure out what makes a person tick.

Now that I’ve had my share of Guys like Guy #54 I don’t think I have to meet Hungry Bottom to find out what makes him tick. Guys on Grindr are often very much alike these days, especially when they’re called Hungry Bottom.

The world of sex dating is weird. It’s not monogamous, but it’s monotonous.

And that seems to be a choice.

Hungry Bottom would have much better odds if he had made the effort to say more than just hi.

Perhaps I sound old, but these days people don’t seem to be interested in hungry bottoms for the sake of exploration. They’re just in it for the sake of it.

That’s what I gather from Hungry Bottom’s hi. That’s why I won’t be saying hi back.

Thanks to Guys like Guy #54 I can now save myself the trouble of getting to know someone I already know.

Sex dating is weird, because we are all Hungry Bottom.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 3 hours
FORMAT: Sex date
SEX SCORE (0 = Minnesota nice <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 8

Guy #32 and #33 – Stroke that ego…

There’s one very simple moral to every story here on 168guys.com: Love and sex are inseparable. If you’re looking for sex you’re looking for love.

While quite a few gay people told me they enjoy reading this blog, some have trouble accepting its message.

When I look around it’s as if people want to live in a world where love and sex can live apart.

Which is why gay saunas exist. They help maintain the illusion that sex can be a commodity.

Granted, we don’t have sex with total strangers because we want to love total strangers. We have sex with total strangers because we want to love ourselves, if only for a short while.

Gay guys visit gay saunas because we are lured by our egos.

I’m not judging by the way.

There’s nothing wrong with having someone stroke your ego every so often. It’s what it’s there for.

We say it’s just sex, so we may pretend hurt is off the menu.

But when you go to a place where people wear towels instead of clothes you expose your needy ego to the elements it craves the most. That can be a risky game.

I met Guy #32 in a whirlpool. As is so often the case in whirlpools, words were never part of our relationship. We looked at each other, got within lip range and started kissing.

Guy #32 was very cute in my opinion. My ego started salivating like a Pavlovian dog when he touched me at places my ego likes to be touched the most.

Guy #32 was also just the beginning, because a minute or so into our relationship, Guy #33 came out of nowhere and slid himself and his gorgeous body into the whirlpool. He sat down right next to me.

I found myself right smack in the middle of two beautiful naked guys that either kissed me, touched me or both. Sure it was just about sex, but I couldn’t help but feel like being one of the cool kids. I had never felt like a cool kid before.

I was finally at a place where my own sexuality had matured to the point reality was on par with my fantasies. My ego opened up and settled in for the trip to heaven.

That’s when Guy #32 and #33 got up and walked away, leaving me alone in my whirlpool.

They didn’t say anything. They just left. Together.

At first I figured I had fallen victim to a simple communication error, something easily remedied. So I got up and followed Guy #32 and #33. I found them making out in a steam room. As soon as they noticed my presence they got up and walked away.

It wasn’t a communication hiccup. It was a cold hearted rejection. Guy #32 and #33 wanted something that didn’t involve me. That was unfortunate, as I had just exposed my bare ego on the assumption I was one of the cool kids.

Maybe I was too sensitive to be satisfying my sexuality through sex instead of love. Maybe I should never have gone to gay saunas. Being shunned from a threesome hurts. I can’t pretend it didn’t. It may very well have been the first moment I ever realized there is no such thing as just sex.

At the time I didn’t quite understand why I felt hurt. My previous sexual encounters had already made me feel attractive and cute. I knew I had no reason for feeling insecure, but no rationalization could keep me from feeling the way I did: Like an unattractive and undoable outsider.

It felt like being a virgin again. It reminded me of that time I was convinced no one would ever see the beauty in me.

Gay saunas is where the umbilical cord between love and sex is stretched to its limit. But no matter how thin the cord is stretched, it never breaks.

It took me a good half hour to get over Guy #32 and #33. I allowed both to become a part of my past when I ran into Guy #34 later that night, but that’s another story.

Relationship summary:

LENGTH: 1-2 minutes
FORMAT: Foreplay followed up by exclusion
SEX SCORE BEFORE REJECTION (0 = What Hitler felt like when he was rejected from art school <–> 10 = The best sex ever): 9
SEX SCORE AFTER REJECTION: N/A (sadly)