you’re fed up with weirdos asking to pay you for sex.  or getting rejected by guys who clearly aren’t as hot as you are. or scheduling a sex date with what turns out to be the guy across the hall in Creswell who you destroy in Halo even though he plays like ten times as much as you do.  doesn’t he know where the melee button is?

it’s time to, in one evening, meet a bunch of reasonably attractive gay men who could conceivably have sex with you.

it’s time to go to Atlanta.

see, nobody in Athens will have sex with you without vetting you through all of their friends.  you should too. because fuck if you want to see that person every other day on College Avenue, at Smoothie King, at Genco’s, at Bourbon Street, at Starbucks, at Jittery Joes, and have it be really awkward and think, “that’s the guy who i tried to fuck but then i couldn’t get it in right away and that made me a little nervous because i thought maybe i won’t be able to get it in and then i got a little bit softer and that made it even worse and then it was like only half hard and it definitely wasn’t going in by that point and then we laughed and said maybe we’ll try tomorrow and then we broke up because he wasn’t over his ex yet and didn’t want to rebound and so now there’s this guy walking around Athens who i hope he isn’t telling everyone that i’m a bad top cause i’m normally great at it but it was just that one time and now there he is and he just finished ordering a smoothie and we haven’t talked in three months so i don’t know if i’m just supposed to nod or smile or wave or make small talk or make slightly meaningful small talk or make plans to hang out that neither of us actually plan on fulfilling, so i guess i’ll just look at him and mirror whatever he does but now i think he’s doing the same thing and now we’re just staring at each other and goddamnit we’re awkward.”

but you don’t have to worry about this in ATLANTA.  when you’re in ATLANTA, they don’t worry about you showing up wherever it is people in atlanta hang out in the daytime!  (the IKEA store?  trader joes?  you never go there!)

but Hayden, you say, Atlanta is scary!  the parking spots don’t have lines!  i can’t move between bars without driving!  i’m so used to asking people what their major is that i don’t know how to make small talk anymore outside of a college town!  people are older than 25!  and a coke costs five dollars!

these things are all true.  but that certainly isn’t stopping you, because you’re tired of the internet, and summer time means Blur is still a PWTGB.  thus, my advice for touring Atlanta.

BLAKE’S – if you’re like me, your first question upon arriving in Blake’s is, why is there a line to get into the bathroom? is Blake’s like a bookstore?  does it suddenly make you have to take a shit?

they are nice bathrooms.  but the urinals are conspicuously free.

but the reason people are waiting in line to use the bathroom with the locking door is because it’s not classy to snort coke off a urinal partition.  also, you can’t fish an ecstasy pill from your underwear out in the open, as somebody’s likely to steal it.

i mention blake’s first because my readership consists of a lot of 21-28 year old twinks, and 21-28 twinks love meeting other 21-28 twinks, and they all love blake’s.  so try it out.  you can compare workout plans, difficulties using your college degree to find employment, or contemporary Modernist methods of decorating your studio loft such that the furniture arrangement makes it feel comfortable, efficient, and still masculine.

MARY’S

mary’s is the more fun, more trendy, more hipster, equally young counterpart to Blake’s.  you’re far more likely to have an interesting conversation here.  mary’s has a lot of straight people and women, so it’s not like walking into kmart with a blue light special on hot attractive gay men with visible abdominal muscles.  mary’s isn’t a meat market like blake’s is.  people at blake’s want it.  preferably in the ass. did i mention they’re all bottoms?  (probably why i never get laid at blake’s.)

i’m sure there’s plenty of you out there moaning about superficiality, or whatever, but the bars in Athens are reminiscent of Mary’s. which is a bad thing. you’re driving an hour and a half to see something new.  or you’re in Atlanta because you want to meet a bunch of hot gay men who you could make out with and are easily ignored later.  if you wanted fun and interesting conversation, you’d go out in Athens.

mary’s does have a stripper pole.

THE EAGLE

a bear bar.  there’s a store in it that sells sex toys, if, god forbid, you left your nipple clamps at home.  there’s a cage, but i never see anyone in it, because it’s in a terrible location off the dance floor.

if you feel like dancing with your shirt off and don’t want anybody judging you, the eagle is great, and has no cover.  the fun result of this is a place that looks like a truck stop with a bunch of shirtless, hairless twinks on the dance floor.  madness!

BURKHART’S

burkhart’s is most notable for having parking.  like an actual parking lot. in front of the bar.  with lines demarcating where the cars go.  you just drive in, and park!  and you’re done!

this joint is interesting because there’s no bar mentality.  you walk up and talk to someone as though you were on the sidewalk.  people at burkhart’s will tell you they have a boyfriend before you spend thirty minutes trying to flirt with them.  people at blake’s will wait until after you’ve met their parents.

ATLANTA BAR MENTALITY

there’s lots of other bars.  i’ll write a blog about more of them maybe later.  but first, i would like to discuss the atmosphere of an Atlanta gay bar, so that you don’t go in unacquainted.

1. your chances of finding someone for a meaningful relationship are ridiculously low.  like so low, that if this is your only goal, your chances would be better off if you spent your gas and drink money to hire a personal assistant in india to scour Missed Connections on your behalf.  you should only go because you want to dance and party and have a fun time.

2. don’t let people who are attracted to but who you aren’t attracted to monopolize your time.  some guys have a schtick where they come up and pretend to be shy and act as though you’re the one person who’s so attractive that they’ve left all fear behind to come up and talk to you and aren’t you an asshole if you don’t talk to them for a while.  this is a lie.  shy people don’t talk to you.  shy people send over a friend.  the person who’s talking to you is a bullshitter who goes there every night and gets shitfaced and harasses every guy who walks in the door.  ignore their hateful death stare and spend your time talking to people who are either intelligent or attractive.  if you find someone who is both intelligent AND attractive, and they don’t already have a monogamous boyfriend, then you’re probably hallucinating from the drugs you fished out of your underwear an hour ago.  go drink some water you drunk bitch.

3. learn some jiu jitsu.  a bar full of mostly polite people can be ruined by a couple strangers who try to forcefully grope you.  if you just up and punch them in the face, you’ll get thrown out of the bar.  it’s much easier to just grab an individual finger and pull back on it.  you can do it low and without much movement, so it’s just as invisible as their wayward hand.  you shouldn’t actually break their finger, but they’ll get the point.  if you’re not comfortable doing that, then tell a bouncer (not the bartender) immediately.  do not let strangers you aren’t interested in grope you, even just on the leg or the chest, because they’ll get more aggressive and you’ll really have to clock them.  this might be shocking, but it’s not exclusive to gay bars–it’s the world straight women live in all the time.

4. prepare to get rejected.  i’ve heard firsthand accounts of guys getting rejected because… their shoulders were too big, too much hair on the chest, too little hair on the chest, weren’t vegetarian, weren’t vegan, were vegan, didn’t have a job, had a corporate job, sold drugs, didn’t do drugs, too many sexual partners, too few sexual partners, too tall, too short, had red hair, weren’t latino, had a fake tan, were too pale, played warcraft, didn’t play warcraft, were atheist, weren’t atheist, dick was too big, dick was too small… a bar is very difficult, because you win or lose in a matter of seconds, based on what you look like and how witty you can be in under five minutes.  you’ll probably fuck it up the first fifty or so times.  don’t worry about it.  it’s not how you’ll be meeting most of the people you end up dating anyway.

last week, i discussed the tres sketch craigslist, which is so sketch, even i don’t use it—and i have a paid subscription to manhunt.  (i’m letting the manhunt subscription expire at the end of the month though, pickings have gotten even slimmer on there than at blur.  i never thought a college town bar would need to designate a college night, but jesus!)

but you have other gay internet dating options.  gay.com, connexion, true.com, etc.  but you might find the profile descriptions on there confusing; even harder, writing one yourself.  there’s a whole mess of confusing shit on there: VGL, HWP, PNP, 2M4M, NSA, FB, what does it all mean?  thankfully, i’m here to translate some common gay internet profile terminology so that you don’t go in unitiated, setting up a PNP threesome when you really wanted a piss play foursome or a pig play twosome (word to the wise: don’t abbreviate words starting with the letter “P”).

let’s consider some purely hypothetical internet profiles which are completely fictional and which i promise i did not copy and paste at 2:23 this morning.

example 1:

“HWP dude looking for NSA fun.”

“HWP”.  translation: “height weight proportional.  this is a politically correct way of saying that i am not fat, which should give you a pretty good idea of how skilled i am at subtlety, and that it would be inaccurate to describe myself as slim, toned, muscular, athletic, or attractive.  don’t say you weren’t warned.”

“NSA fun”.  translation: “no strings attached.  let’s at least have a few good romps in the sack before a few inevitable conversations where we find out we hate each other too much to get our dicks up without rubbing them with viagra and cocaine.  or that we like each other and fall in love.  either way, good times had by all!”

let’s move onto something more challenging.

“Normal guy here, not into the scene, looking for fun.”

“Normal.”  translation: “although most people discover that they are separate from the defined mainstream and grow to resent the box that everyone gets forced into and that life can be more than just a hollow carapace chinked with the necessary failings, miseries, and impossibilities of emulating the status quo, i didn’t.”

“not into the scene”  translation: “dancing scares me.”

“looking for fun.”  translation: “looking for sex.”  although everyone’s looking for sex, so this is a bit superfluous.  it’s true!  even your mom was looking for sex, evidenced by you.  and if you’re a gay male, there’s a good chance you have lots of older brothers, which means she took it in two!  well, not necessarily, but would you know if she didn’t?

let’s try an even more difficult one.  test yourself: guess what it means before i tell you!

“looking for masculine guy for drama-free relationship.”

“looking for masculine guy”  translation:  “i don’t actually want masculinity.  if i did, i would go down to the eagle and get a hairy bear who could parallel park a semi at 50 miles per hour without stalling out while smashing six beer cans on his forehead and providing intelligent commentary on why it would be better for the packers if favre stayed in retirement ALL DURING A SINGLE POWERSLIDE.” (Editor: Are we just talking about the amateur Atlanta Eagle hairy bear here?  The good ones can do this while attaching nipple clamps.) (me: to themselves, or to others?)  “what i really mean is that i want… (choose one)…

“fratty masculine.  you should be able to get past the dress-code enforcing doorman at Bourbon Street in the clothes you wear in the shower.  and rich.

“Abercrombie masculine.  i want to be able to crack walnuts on your pectoral muscles.  also, thick, bushy eyebrows that end in a rectangular boundary drawn by laser beams.

“high school jock masculine.  i want a man who can play a sport.  a masculine sport.  like football.  also i never got over Jimmy Stearns, my high school quarterback and FCA huddle leader.  i’m convinced there are some gay guys out there who are 22 year old versions of him, minus going to auburn and getting fat and kind of weird in the face after early onset puberty took a wrong turn.

“dumpy masculine. only by making fun of the polished guys with the six packs and attributing it to an effeminate, queeny obsession with their appearance can i be comfortable with the fact that i am normal looking.  you can be normal looking too.  well, i mean, you don’t have to be, you can be hot.  just be ok with the fact that i’m normal looking.

“top masculine. i’m a bottom, and it seemed tacky to write ‘power bottom looking for horse-hung top’ in a place where all my students might see it.

“suspicion-free masculine.  my ultra religious family, without excessive inquiry, must not be given cause to suspect that we aren’t spending our time smoking pot and playing halo and that you’ve instead spent four hours a day spelunking my asshole in grandma’s basement.”

whew!  that’s quite a lot!  if only people were more specific!  but such is the inherent ambiguity of language.  most gay internet daters don’t read Saussure.

here’s a few lines that can show up anywhere.

“looking for drama free relationship.”  translation: “i dated this guy for two weeks and after i dumped him he poured cat pee on my bed, made a fake craigslist ad about me using my photos, and told everyone that he actually was the one who dumped me because i have a freak case of incurable gonorrhea.  if your flaws require you to date someone who’s a terrible judge of character, e-mail me now!”

“not really a scene guy, just want someone who can enjoy a nice dinner in, or cuddling, or watching a movie.”  translation:  “i have never actually had this and thus have not discovered how painfully boring it is.  you could say i don’t really believe the stove is hot until i burn myself.  until then, let’s go on a litany of vaguely commercialized straight-people dates, like taking a cooking class together, or making pottery at Good Dirt, or going running, until we dream of murdering the other in their sleep.”

here’s a few shorter ones:

top = versatile

versatile = bottom

bottom = power bottom

power bottom = DP bottom

dp = double penetration

chris said i shouldn’t end the blog entry there, so i corralled a few more internet personal chestnuts.  how could i have left out some of these?

“i’m tired of the standard gay guys that are only into sex.  i’m looking for someone able to have a relationship first.”  translation: “when i have sex on the first date, it’s because we have a lot in common and i really like the guy.  when someone else does it, it’s because they’re a whore.”

“looking for clean, normal guys.” translation: “no drugs.  absolutely no drugs.  no E, no special K, no white powder, no meth.  it is still perfectly acceptable to do adderall, darvocet, percocet, or anything in a translucent orange bottle obtained from family and friends, because that’s like totally different.  so long as it’s nothing associated with a sterotype.  i’m trying to avoid that, remember?”

“i’m a Christian looking for another normal guy with faith in the Lord.”  translation: “i have irrational beliefs because the people around me told me to.  my willingness to adopt values with no objective evidence besides everyone else’s unquestioning belief probably explains my willingness to base my romantic desires around bad movies and Abercrombie bags.”

“VGL professional.  masc top.  hung.  looking for cool guys for fun or relationship.”  translation: “despite having all of the characteristics 60% of the gay online dating population would gouge out their own eyes for, i remain permanently single.   mom tells me it’s because i just haven’t found a guy good enough for me yet, and she should know, because she’s always there when i meet up with a dude for the first time.  they don’t call back cause they know i’m too good for them.”

“top here.  no fats, no femmes.  that’s just the way i like it.”  translation: “how i got to be that picky with a face like this is just the first of many mysteries you’ll enjoy detangling if you send me a message!”

“str8 guy looking to experiment.”  translation: “the results from my experiments with eighteen guys in panama city that left semen in 16 different pools and hotel rooms have still proven inconclusive.  thus, more research is required. and you should be a top. duh.”

“fratty white vgl bottom wants ur cock 4 NSA fun.”  translation:  “i wait tables at last resort.”  (Editor: You don’t wait tables at last resort!) (me: i bet i could if i wanted to!  i’m attractive enough.) (Editor: At your mid-twenties?  Good luck grandpa!)  (me: and since when am i fratty?)

flipping through a recent issue, i saw the pet shop boys on the cover.  ok, so, 80’s resurgence.  could be gay.  there was an article on cars.  ok, there’s plenty of car queers out there.  a blurb about why you should be spending $35 to get your beard cut by a professional beard stylist.  hmmm… ok, maybe an appropriation by GQ queers… i guess that’s possible?  and then, the statement that post-Madonna, the modern gay icon is… (drum roll) Michelle Obama.

HOLD IT RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

no!  no, no, no, no, no!  Michele Obama is not the modern fucking gay icon!  and no, this is not me saying that i wish it wasn’t true, it simply is not true, it is quite simply wrong, as in incorrect, as in false, as in no gay people actually think of her as an icon.

that’s when it all made sense: OUT magazine is written by straight people.  sure, some of the other oversights of OUT could have been made by, say, a homosexual stuck in 1985, who still uses phrases like “friend of Dorothy” or whatever.  some of the oversights could have been made by some of those self-hating queers who think straight people don’t sleep around and that gay people don’t have long term relationships.  some of the oversights about trends, clothes, and hang-outs could have been made by real gays with a brain ailment cocktail of asbergers, down syndrome, and lyme disease.  BUT NONE OF THEM WOULD CONSIDER MICHELLE OBAMA A GAY ICON.  OUT magazine is a tool of our heterosexual oppressors!

OUT magazine is what happens when straight people try to manufacture gay culture for profit.  they piece together some advertisements for beer and clothes and cruises and HIV meds, with some bad copy about cute men on television, and call it a gay magazine.  that’s what gay people want, right?  sex and clothes and AIDS meds?  i can see them in their offices now, deliberating.

“hey jim, fuck any girls lately?”

“yeah!  what about you stan?”

“of course!”

“so, i’m working on some more copy, and i haven’t been watching LOGO much lately.  who’s the modern gay icon?”

“what about michelle obama—she’s a democrat, and a strong woman!  that’s what gay people like, right?  democrats!  and strong women!  and Anderson Cooper!”

“genius!”

“do you think after that you could write another page of copy?  i need something to buffer the depression meds ad and the HIV meds ad, and Jason hasn’t finished his piece on bad gay movies that came out ten years ago.”

“i thought he was working on the token black piece?”

“hey, with michelle obama in there, that’s a two for one!”

“genius!”

and then bam, Michelle Obama is the replacement for Madonna.  the editors of OUT magazine say so!

well, straight people of OUT magazine, we choose our icons more carefully than that.  our actual icons take feminist positions even when people will call them sluts for it, don’t kowtow to the political positions taken by their male romantic partners, and don’t expect all the little queer boys and girls and children in between to dream of one day being able to enter into a “robust civil union.”  (link: http://www.observer.com/2008/politics/michelle-obama-receives-lukewarm-reception-lukewarm-position-gay-marriage )  fuck that!  i will forgive the obamas for their gay rights transgressions if they get everyone healthcare or reign in campaign finance, but the gay icons moniker is only available to those who support us when it’s not cool.  the gay icon moniker is special.  it is not given in default, because the alternative from Alaska would have lit us on fire.  it’s not an award.  it’s not chosen by a group of jack-offs in a small room picking one of their own. it is a decision by the queer democracy.  it means something.  it means fuck you, OUT magazine.

A slice of beefcake … just because! Read on for Hayden Darkwith’s three dangers of Craigslist and Manhunt.

lately i’ve been hearing that athens’ homosexuals have been using craigslist to find sex, which i find both shocking and exciting. shocking because i thought craigslist was just for hopeless attempts to give away kittens. exciting because craigslist provides even more anonymity than manhunt, and despite years of downloading arthouse fetish porn, manhunt still makes me blush. so with absolutely nothing to identify the posters, craigslist couldn’t fail to disappoint . (i don’t know what “TT” is, but i can guess!) it heartens me to think (teletubbies?) there’s leather dungeons and free kittens within fifteen minutes of my house! why have i been wasting all this gas driving to atlanta for food for my boa constrictor and TT (tasty treats?) when i can get it through my local craigslist!

but then reality sets in. i don’t want to run into CntryBoy666 again in chemistry class and fumble with a micropipette while sneaking glances at the dude i think was wearing a gimp mask 12 hours ago. i fuck up enough labs already.

also i suspect that craigslist suffers the same failings as manhunt, where i’ve been getting my sketchy internet dating fix.

don’t get me wrong, manhunt’s great. the reason manhunt is great is this: everyone’s honest on manhunt. when you walk up to someone in a real life bar, they’re not going to come out and tell you, “hey, i only get off to mixing ecstasy cut with coke and viagra while watching old reruns of the Love Boat.” which means you then have to go through two to three weeks of dating to get to their house and come to the mutual, horrible discovery that you don’t like the Love Boat, or that it’s difficult to perform CPR with lube all over your hands. manhunt saves time. and if the people on manhunt want three weeks of dating first, then they’ll say as much, cause nobody’s going to judge them for not saying it.

on the other hand, you might notice that on manhunt (and craigslist), everyone is a “masc, fratty, country boy, looking for same.” (“masc” is the masc way of saying “masculine.”)

if you haven’t lived in georgia long, or athens, then you might not be aware that fewer than 10 percent of UGA students are in frats, farming is mostly corporate, and you have to drive many many miles away from atlanta, athens, augusta, macon, lawrenceville, alpharetta, roswell, etc. if you want to find a southern accent. but not on the internet. apparently, this is where all those guys in the movies and in the Marlboro ads and on the Abercrombie and Fitch bags hang out after the tractor pull.

this intimidated me at first. “i don’t know how to hitch a combine to a tractor!” i thought. “i don’t even know if those two things go together! does a combine have its own engine? fuck! damn me and my suburban upbringing!”

but, as it turns out, it’s all a bunch of bullshit. of the “masc country fratty farm boys” i met up with, half were theatre majors, none were in frats, and i could have handily beaten them all in arm wrestling. and my twang was stronger. (maybe this says more about me than them, or rather what puts the “power” in powerbottom. but i digress.)

but God help you if you point any of this out. if you want to get laid in Gay Land, be prepared to let these guys maintain their illusion that they are a Masc Dude, trapped/lonely in a world of queens giving “us” a bad name. you’ll be tempted. you’ll really want to say, “it doesn’t get anymore faggy than a marketing major with a long sleeve shirt underneath a polo you toolbag” but you CAN’T. you have to keep these thoughts to yourself. because if you do point out that you could throw them across the room with one hand, they’ll assume that you’re the real butch here and expect you to top, and then you’ve got a real mess on your hands. so stay cool!

but this is not the only danger of sketchy internet dating.

big danger number two: meeting people you know already

people rarely use face pictures on these things. it’s much more common to just put up a picture of your chest. or penis. (p.s. only go with the penis shot if you have a bad chest.) as a consequence, you don’t know who you’re chatting with most of the time, until you agree to exchange face pics. this is the moment of truth. this is when there’s a small chance you’ll receive something like this:

CntryBoiiii45: HAYDEN????!!!

you are now fucked. cause the guy who’s been talking to you about 69′ing for the last thirty minutes is actually your (fill in the blank) english teacher/neighbor/grocery store checkout guy/friend’s friend/mom checking up on you (”since when were you a vers/top? take out the garbage!”).

if you were interested in this person, it would have happened already, so you have to extricate yourself in a manner friendly enough so as not to prompt them to tell everyone you know that you were cruising on manhunt.

pwrbttm72: Well, isn’t that a funny coincidence! See you in class I guess! Haha! Don’t tell mom! Haha!

danger number 3

but maybe the face pic comes in, and it isn’t anyone you know, but they’re fuckin hideous. the easiest way to get around this is to say that they’re not your type, because you only like X, where X is any racial minority which is not them.

pwrbttm34: Sorry, I only like black guys and asians.

sure, it sounds bad, but it’s a lot better than:

pwrbttm34: Sorry, you’re fuckin’ ugly.

and get ready for plenty of these rejections yourself. as always, no rejection should upset you, because you have four other possibilities set up. never chat with fewer than three guys at once. you’re buying lottery tickets here.

subject for next time: writing a profile that doesn’t make you look like a big toolbag

they are out there

In case you missed part 1, here it is.

hello mo’s,

yesterday, i set out to answer, and probably failed, the common query for the young gay homosexual man who wants to meet other hot young gay homosexual men because he, quote, does not do the bar scene.

of course you do the bar scene. what you mean is, you don’t do THAT bar scene. that’s ok. it’s probably the same people who were there last week, and i certainly didn’t ask any of them out. no judgment here! at the same time though, due to the sheer power of numbers, you’re not gonna have better luck at Bourbon Street. (p.s. firehouse and barcode on the other hand…!) thus, i continue attempting to give you insight as to where to go on your journey of searching for the hot mens, and specifically, hot mens who look and act kind of like you. it’s an understandable problem, really. for example, if you’re super frat-tastic and you want fellow fratty guys, well, joining an actual frat will just mean a lot of time watching what you can’t have. after the hazing is over, anyway. (p.s. delta t….)

so, without further ado, (adue?) more places to go besides Blur, or Detour, or whatever they’re calling it now:

THE INTERWEBS

There is no shortage of social networking sites

don’t be a hater. you have a range of sketchiness of course: facebook, gay.co

m, manhunt.net, etc. again, rule number two: everyone’s either looking for a relationship or pretending not to. closeted people aren’t going to be visible on facebook, so if you want to meet everyone, and not just the people who are out to all of their friends and family, try the more obscure web sites. create a few free dating profiles and you’ll have tons of dates ready to go with people so similar to you you might get a little bit freaked out. want someone who’s also a math grad student and who also likes Snow Patrol and who also likes to get spanked while wearing a bunny rabbit costume? the internet is it! imagine trying to find that 200 years ago! people in the 1800’s had to go to the town well to search for that! Snow Patrol wasn’t even born yet! they were screwed from the outset, really.

if you do use facebook, or stumble on someone you like on there, don’t be a little bitch and click the poke option. send them a message telling them you do or have an interest in something they do. don’t just tell them you think something they do is cool. give them something to ask you about. people usually put the most obvious things about their life on their profile, and thus they’re usually tired of answering questions about whatever it is. identify something else to talk about. this goes for real life too.

START YOUR OWN GODDAMN WHATEVER IT IS

start a club or a frat or sports team or something. if you want to meet people like you, we live in the best age ever for finding people like you. you want to meet other gay judo black belts? other gay D&D players? use the internet! start a club! they’re out there. if there’s not a space for you to go, create it and bring them to you.

FRAT PARTIES

i don’t really go to these very much cause i don’t have the frat boy fantasy everyone else seems to have, but if you do, jesus your lord and savior has blessed you with weekly opportunities to meet 50 or so drunk and sexually frustrated young men with free music and free booze. wait about an hour for all of the straight ones to pair off with girls, and then go to work. again, not my thing, but if you want water, go to the sink.

also, some frat parties require an invitation. this does not really mean invitation. it means bring a hot girl with you. it won’t get you past a downtown dress code, but it will get you into a frat party. walk in like you own the place.

some more general rules…

GENERAL RULE #5

ignore the advice given to straight people. places that work for them won’t work for you. typical restaurants, coffee shops, art galleries, whatever, won’t work unless those are places that happen to be popular among the queer set. at least in, say, the ramsey weight room, you have a 25% chance that the guy you’re talking to is someone you could conceivably have sex with. regular places will drop it down to ten or five. don’t deal yourself bad odds. straight people have the luxury of sitting back and chatting up the attractive people that stumble by them. if you do that as a gay person, you’ll go on one date every twelve months. fuck that. go out and meet some people and do it on purpose.

GENERAL RULE #6

don’t pay attention to the clothes they wear, or other obvious, easily changed aspects of their appearance. clothes are something you exploit to get people to talk to you, but don’t let them be something that prevents you from talking to them. yes, this sounds obvious and trite and patronizing. but i see lots of people, particularly fratty people and indie rockers (although this phenomenon is not limited to them) avoid ridiculously good looking people because they didn’t portray the right image. nobody does a very good job of projecting the right image. whatever lifestyle you think will come across in someone’s most immediate outward appearance often doesn’t. all of the stuff you’re looking for probably isn’t going to be actively broadcasted; you’ll have to find alternative ways of identifying and searching for it. if you’re looking for people who go camping and know how to start a fire in the woods, you’re much better off typing in a facebook search with “camping” as an interest than looking for people wearing North Face windbreakers, and yet, the latter is the kind of approach people take. it’s inefficient. instead, whatever it is you like to do, ask them to do it with you.

GENERAL RULE #7

shoot big. if you only set up one date with one person two weeks from now, your whole life will revolve around it, and you’ll be so nervous that you’ll probably fuck it up. so go on more than one. you’ll be more relaxed because at least if you fuck up on date #1, guy #2 is meeting you for lunch next monday at that cookie joint at the intersection of clayton and broad.

as a side note, i actually hate dating. it feels more like a necessary evil to meet someone cool for something more substantive. the only way i can tolerate it is to always go to a nice restaurant, because hey, at least i’m eating something tasty, and the end of the meal is an easy place to end the date and go home if it isn’t going well. on that note, DON’T do a movie as a first date. terrible idea. if you like them, you’ll wish you were able to talk to them, and if you don’t, it’s two horrible hours of close proximity. sitting across from someone at a table is much better for getting to know them. you have a barrier, but it’s small. a conversational condom, if you will.

CONCLUSIONS

you should have picked up on the overriding theme here: figure out what you want and be proactive about getting it, don’t be a little bitch, don’t be afraid to play with your own identity by checking out a bunch of new spaces, and search for the partly-hidden signs of the personality you’re after so you don’t end up with some charlatan.

next week’s topic, in the unusual event i get asked to write again for GayInAthens.com: I’ve Got a Date, What the Fuck Do I Do Now?

Finding a hottie in Athens may be easier than you thought.

alright mo’s,

so you want to know where to meet hot guys in athens, and you don’t want to go to the local gay bar.

first off, you’re right. the gay bar sucks for meeting people. at least people for sex, or relationships, or relationships that might one day lead to sex. it could be because people there are lame. i’m lame, and i go, so that’s probably why. in any event, in the years i’ve lived here, i’ve never met anyone at the local gay bar that led to anything. i think it’s something about being around fifty people you kind-of sort-of know that makes it impossible to hit on anyone.

but not to worry. back when i was a freshman, i had maybe one date every three months, and each one was something i got really excited and nervous about. two months ago, i set up five dates with five different people on five consecutive days because i was bored and felt like doing it. i look the same then as i do now, it’s just there’s a trick to it. which hopefully i’ll explain.

GENERAL RULE #1: put aside all the crap you have in mind about what you think the person is going to be like, and where you think the person you’d be attracted to is likely to hang out. you probably find yourself in all kinds of weird places where you find yourself uncomfortable. so do the people you could hit it off with. go everywhere. don’t worry about what people will think. don’t just sit in Nowhere Bar all day long because you think one day your pool-playing doppel-ganger will come in. maybe he plays in the Tate center. maybe he’s on facebook. be everywhere.

GENERAL RULE #2: nobody’s just after sex. the people who act like they’re just after sex are actually having sex in the hopes that they’ll find someone for a relationship, or more frequently, not having sex at all and just pretending. the only people i know who have tons and tons and tons of hookups are impossible to distinguish with the naked eye. so don’t avoid places because the people seem sketchball. everyone’s sketchball. given the right circumstances, you would be sketchball. whether you’re at a star trek convention or a leather party, 95% of the population is equally sketchball. so relax, and talk to everyone. college is not high school. you don’t have a fixed identity. be everything.

GENERAL RULE #3: don’t rely on friends. don’t ask friends to set you up with people. don’t ask friends to talk to people you think are interesting. friends suck at this. setting up friends is a lost art, as in, lost lost. it isn’t coming back. do it yourself. friends are a crutch. note that this does not apply to gay friends. gay friends can introduce you all day long. they still suck at it, but not quite bad enough to make it pointless.

PLACES TO MEET PEOPLE BESIDES BLUR:

you probably want something more practical than the stuff above, so i’ll just run through all of the types of places i met people who i liked enough to date.

ORGANIZATIONS

obvious. there’s lots of them. there’s lambda, which you’ve already heard of, queer graduate group, the queer athletic group, the vet school group, and so on. they all have vastly different types of people and it may vary from meeting to meeting. stop in for a few of the more popular events, and ditch if it gets lame.

PLACES OVERRUN WITH QUEERS BUT WHICH AREN’T EXPLICITLY AIMED AT THEM

mixed crowds are the best. this is where you’ll find the widest range of people, because people who aren’t quite out to the entire world will feel comfortable going to these places. the scene varies… a year or two ago it was krush girls. now, maybe mercury lounge or go bar, but probably somewhere else. the ramsey weight room: overrun! ask to alternate sets with someone using the bench press. maybe they’ll chat you up, maybe not, find out. hit up concerts by artists with a big queer following: metric, ani difranco. the places where the mixed crowd hangs out will shift, but if you pay attention, you’ll find these places.

CRASH SOME PARTIES

queer people in athens love having their parties crashed. if you hear about a gay friend of a friend of a friend throwing a party, go. the more degrees of separation, the more reason to go, because it’s all the more likely you’ll meet someone you wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. and for that reason, all the more happy they are to meet you. talk to everyone. if you’re not having fun, leave.

TO BE CONTINUED…

i’m told that in the modern world nobody can handle reading anything longer than 1000 words, and thus i must continue my exposition tomorrow.

by the tenth date, i could have written a script for them.

so i will.

SCRIPT OF GAY FIRST DATE

1. moment of truth: each person discovers that the other is at least as good looking as they are in their photo.  unless they don’t, in which case, DATE FAILS.

2. idle chatter about how cold it is outside.  observe who opens door for other.  if neither one attempts, you’re both bottoms.  DATE FAILS.

3. decision over whether or not to order appetizer

4. questions about what the other person does, usually a very subtle equivalent of, “so, are you going to be rich and successful?”

5. either A) yes response.  example: “i’m going to be a tax lawyer working in private practice.”

or B) “no” response.  at this point, they have the opportunity to make a joke about their liberal arts degree, at which point you can evaluate their sense of humor, and thus whether or not they’d be more fun to fuck than the tax attorney.  if jokes bad or nonexistent, then hell, you might as well roll out with the guy with some cheddar. DATE FAILS.

6. by this time you’ve gotten a glass of wine.   if the dude’s lame, hopefully you’ve ordered a big one.

7. now test for whether other person is adequate conversationalist.  if so, they will find an appropriate segue from the answer to the “rich and successful” question to talk about something else.  alternatively, they will stare at you for a few seconds and then ask you what movies you like.  DATE FAILS.

8. evaluate eye contact.  people good at fucking will sit back and look you in the eye and not worry about whether they’re responding immediately.

9. there is now a race to see who can be the first person to find a way to keep the flow of the conversation and still ask how the other person’s last relationship ended.

10. the only acceptable answers to this question are “it was only three months in and i got bored” or “he/i moved”.  much more likely: “he didn’t call me enough, and i need someone who’s there for me.”  DATE FAILS.

11. after drinking, and sharing about prior relationships, other party finally feels comfortable enough to complain about something they don’t like.  if you don’t soapbox about something at this point, you’ll seem like a stale loser who’s stuck in smiley date mode.  but you also risk complaining about something the other person likes, destroying everything. millions of otherwise good dates ground disastrously at this point when only one person is morally ambivalent about the environment, prostitution, or capitalism.  most likely: they go on a tirade about how effiminate gay men are ruining the image of the rest of gay society, and that if gay people would just act like straight people, then they could fit in with straight people, at which point you reveal that you pseudoanonymously write a blog espousing violent queer takeover and forced sex changes for the non-believers.  DATE FAILS.

12. check comes.  sneak glance at how much other person left on tip.  if they notice that you’re looking and they still leave less than 20%, well, you know what happens then.

13. they invite you to come over to their apartment. if not, it’s because they don’t like you.

14. you feign work deadlines, illness, or death.  or you agree to come over, either because they were especially witty or interesting, or you know from their internet profile that their dick is gigantic, and if you had to endure a dinner that lame, damn if you’re not going to at least see it.

Next time: You’re at their place!

this of course introduces a great problem, which is what the Queer Nation does with all of the heterosexuals after the violent queer takeover. there are several possibilities.

1. RESERVATIONS

the problem with reservations is that instead of becoming an authentic preserve where people are free to live out their lives unburdened by the restraints of the majority culture, everyone on them instead seems to end up resorting to alcoholism.  and that’s alchol that we could be drinking!  we can’t go to all this trouble of a violent queer takeover just to make a reservation off-site that’s more fun.  reservations would also just end up being a tax drain, and we need the heterosexuals to carry their weight.

2. SLAVERY

heterosexual people could become our gardeners, house cleaners, pool boys, etc.  but there’s another problem: what fun is it to have a sinewy pool boy if you can’t fuck him?  because if you do have sex with him, he’s no longer heterosexual, and thus, you’d have to fire him.  it’s a no-win scenario.  the queer nation would be deprived of the dramatic stories of love across class lines, and the queer nation must have drama.  in the literary sense.

3. BABY FACTORIES

darien proposed that women work the fields while the men raise children, like some kind of gender-inverted little house on the praire dystopia.  the problem is that straight people are simply not good at raising chidren.  stalin, hitler, and osama bin laden all had straight parents.  case closed!

another problem with the little house on the prairie plan is that it requires that the heterosexuals form couples with a husband and wife, and the Queer Nation has no plans to recognize such relationships.  without any kind of official structure laid out for them, the heterosexuals woud devolve into a haphazard orgy of polyamory.  this raises the same problem as the reservations.  we cannot go to the trouble of a violent queer takeover just so we can deport the heterosexuals somewhere better.

4. THEY LIVE AMONG US

none of these options is acceptable, so the best plan is to allow them to live among us.  they could work the same jobs, use the same buses, share the same apartment complexes. and not only that, the Queer Nation will ensure that they are kept safe from danger, discrimination, or radical attacks in the street.  so long as nobody discovers that they are not in fact queer.  otherwise they’re fair game.

“they’d have to go too,” i said, “i just haven’t written a blog entry about it yet.”

my straight female roommate darien asked why.  i replied that “sure, maybe the oppressors are mostly men, or women propped up by men.  but the women are still ultimately responsible.”

this is because straight women have failed, for the past ten thousand years, to explain to their respective boyfriends and husbands that they are not achieving orgasm.

society would change overnight if women actually told men that they are not achieving orgasm. but instead, they let their men go to their respective jobs or voting booths, thinking that a pump-and-dump in the missionary position is not only the best that it can get, it’s god’s way.

it’s not like they’re failing to point out that sex would be just a little more pleasurable with a vibrator, or some candles, or vibrating candles, it’s that they’re not even claiming an orgasm.  if straight men were forced to do what was necessary to get women to come, e.g. rimming them while stimulating their vagina with a vibrator powered by gasoline, then all of the things gay people do wouldn’t seem so freaky anymore.  they’ll say to themselves, “sure, maybe gay people do a few strange things, like making molds of their own penises after fisting each other, but that’s nothing compared to what i have to do to get my wife off: scented candles and yeats!  i’d rather get double-fisted!”

my straight female roommate pointed out the suppression of women as a mitigating factor.  but they’ve had the right to vote for 88 years now, and they outnumber us 51 to 49, more than enough to vote in a referendum informing the straight male populace of their sexual failures.

straight male readers might be asking themselves, “am i part of the problem?”  if your straight femae wife or girlfriend or F.B. hasn’t told you specifics about what it takes to get her off, then i promise you: you don’t know.

there is no way to guess.  just like there’s no way to guess that you have a secret urge to dress up as a bunny rabbit while somebody spanks you.

this brings me to another reason why straight women are not exempted from the violent queer takeover.  queer people, in particular gay men, must listen, without payment, to the details of your sexual inadequacies, because it seems that straight women are determined to complain to everyone except the person at fault.  occasionally we hear about the successes–the guys who open up with rim jobs or an excruciatingly long and intense carpet munching marathon.  these men, unsurprisingly, are not the ones oppressing us (and thus, after the violent queer takeover, we may anoint them as Fertilizers).

*

“Oh man guys, you will not believe what I saw at the porn store.”
“What?”
“Miss Miriam.”
“Oh man!  Miss Miriam!  I thought she stayed home all day, bakin’ cookies.”
“Oh but Linda, that’s not even the best part!”
“It’s not?”
“No!  I ran into her when she was browsing through a copy of, get
this, S&M World!”
“Oh man!  That’s awesome!

*

“Oh man Linda, the funniest thing happened at work today.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, there’s this little old school teacher who comes in like
clockwork every month to buy the latest copy of S&M World, and get
this, she runs into one of her students yesterday while she’s buying
it.”
“Oh man!  That’s awesome!”
“And that’s not even the best part!”
“It’s not?”
“No!  He’s on page five!”