Dates

Have you ever had a date where the next day you thank god you screwed it up? Well, that was my new years date. I think someone is looking out for me.

I first chatted with Karl about a month ago, and we've talked a few time since on the phone. We decide to meet in person for some coffee on new years eve day. Show up at the coffee shop and it's closed early. Okay, so go next door to the sports pub.

We introduce ourselves and say hi and all the pleasantries. And somewhere in all that he said something referring to how I think. I said, and I'm paraphrasing here, Please stay out of my head, I don't like that. So don't you know that the rest of the night he was inside my freaking head, asking me emotions and feelings and analyzing. Like wow, that got deep real fast. (And yes, I am that shallow!)

Try changing the subject to anything but my head... Q: I like doing outdoor stuff, what do you like? Answer: Oh everything, hiking and biking and going to the beach and working in the yard to lots of stuff. Q: Oh, you like to go biking, mountain or road? A: Oh, you like being outside because you feel free? What do you think about that?

Argh!

So I went out last night all by myself. For the first time ever I really enjoyed the floor show. And the new people that I met. And I really liked the guy who came over to tell me I had the cutest ass he'd seen in a long time! Finally brunch today with some of my best friends made for a perfect holiday and the perfect start to the year.

Oh yes, 2010 is going to be a great year!

Raleigh Dating Scene

Okay, this personal ad starts on the positive:

you are the fairly hot, 30-ish married dude who cruised me at a certain raleigh gay club last night.

and goes downhill from there...

Per Hour?

I think I've found myself a new job!

Audible Gay/Lesbian Category

I'm not sure if I want to be insulted, outraged or just plain mad. But I'm not any of those moods, instead just sort of surprised and dismayed. Over what?

It seems that when I peruse the Audible books category, Fiction/Gay & Lesbian, I can find all the porn that I might ever want. Straight porn at that! When listing audible books in that category, these are the first 15 titles that appear:

1. Am I Blue? (Unabridged)
   
2. Old Glory (Unabridged)
   
3. Michael Tolliver Lives (Unabridged)
   
4. Cry Destiny (Unabridged)
   
5. The Best American Erotica 1993 (Unabridged Selections)
   
6. The Best American Erotica 1994 (Unabridged Selections)
   
7. The Best American Erotica 2004 (Unabridged Selections)
   
8. The Best American Erotica 1995 (Unabridged Selections)
   
9. The Best American Erotica 1996 (Unabridged Selections)
   
10. The Best American Erotica 1997 (Unabridged Selections)
    
11. The Best American Erotica 1999 (Unabridged Selections)
    
12. The Best American Erotica 2000 (Unabridged Selections)
    
13. The Best American Erotica 2002 (Unabridged Selections)
    
14. The Best American Erotica 2001 (Unabridged Selections)
    
15. Chocolate Sangria (Unabridged)
    

Ten of the 15 books are porn. Yes, gay & lesbian refer to sexual matters, but it also is an entire lifestyle. And I suppose it wouldn't bother me if all of these were gay/lesbian porn, but it is straight porn. I mean, c'mon!

Getting Past Hangups

For this particular entry, I will be going in a slightly different direction. Or maybe it is more of a revelation into things unseen from me. You see, there are some activities that I do that I haven't talked about directly, although some have been alluded to in various writings here.

In my opening entry for this blog, I said there were a lot of things that I would be writing about: Entertainment, finances, and fitness. And "getting over any remaining sexual hangups" that I felt I had. So just as I have been diligently working on getting fit, bicycling, weights and all, I have also been working on sex.

Go back a few years and you would find that I wouldn't even think about having sex with someone unless we had dated for awhile. Since dates were few and far between, actually getting laid was about as rare as a santorum in Saudi Arabia! Add in that I wasn't getting out and being social much and it was looking like a complete dead end.

So that's when I decided to make some major changes. I had already undergone Lasik, and that helped, upgraded a bit in work clothes and paid off all the remaining bills. The BIG change came from stopping smoking and getting fit. The beef that I put on from that gave me the courage to get out to more social events and meet people.

The problem with going to the social events is that I am still mostly introverted and quiet. I'm taking that problem as a 2 pronged approach to overcoming. The first is getting out to more social events and meeting strangers. The second is one-on-one with people, especially in a sexual way.

My first (and last) experience with one-on-one was through the more "classic" routes that frustrated men engage in. It was an experience, but one that I am not going to repeat any time soon. It was, how shall we say, utterly useless!

MyThis is where Gay.com comes in. I had written earlier about the "talking chests" that I had experienced. That picture actually turned out to be a turning point during chat. I had other pictures up prior to that, but they sucked. After posting that picture I started getting hit up by some of the very men I was really interested in meeting.

I've had a couple of interesting encounters and expect to have more. The worst had to have been the gym bunny. Not the worst in sex, just the least satisfying. I think part of that came from his most likely being on Viagra or other similar drug (instead of a real aphrodisiac). Near the top came the guy who smoked a lot. I enjoyed that day quite a bit, except that when I got home I had to shower to get rid of the smoke smell.

And that brings me to finding out that almost everyone has hangups. Some of those can be funny as hell! For instance, there was one guy, 31 years old at Gay.com that had been hitting on me most every weekend for over a month. We would chat a bit, but in the end I just wasn't all that interested in him. Then one day I figured sure, why not. He seemed nice enough and it could be fun.

That's when his hangups became clearer the longer we chatted. He had said he wanted to get together because, in his own words, he "really needed to be fucked." That sounded clear enough to me, and as it turns out, he meant exactly that.

Except....

It had to be in the dark. (This was daytime, so there goes my bedroom with the bay window opened to the woods!). In the bed. Under the sheets. On our sides. On our left sides! He was concerned that his balls weren't shaved and was that okay? Huh?!?! But he explained that I didn't have to suck him. That's a relief, I suppose?!? And he want to know if I had a lot of pre-cum. What?!? It seems he doesn't like that. Good Grief!

Interspersed with all of those details was that he was nervous and didn't want to. I said okay not tonight then, and he was right back with needing to get fucked. He always used "needed". That whole not today, yes, no, yes, no got real grating. He asked if I was "very aggressive?" By that time I'm thinking "boy, you've got me so ticked by now that I might hurt you in my aggression!"

But I knew long before then that nothing was going to happen. That was just too many rules and hangups to have to deal with.

I know I have a few hangups, but nothing that would make me that dysfunctional. Or at least none now that I am out actively seeking out both friends and copulation, and hoping the two come together some day!