Where Are All the Dudes??

Hey Guys,

First off, thanks for all the advice regarding the Lindsay situation. It means a lot to hear such thoughtful responses from you all of you, so thanks again. I ended up following your guys' advice and have kept my mouth shut on the whole issue, and instead just focused on enjoying our time together as friends until Lindsay left on Tuesday. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be; it was still hard to come to terms with not having her around so readily available to hang out with, but I didn't really feel any sort of need to profess my feelings to her after I wrote that post. And now that she's away and we've been in communication every day since she's left, I don't have lingering thoughts of whether we'll ever talk again and how things are going to be...they're all happening now and it's going pretty good. We're going to try and Skype each other sometime this week and completely fill each other in on what's going on in our lives.



I think where part of the frustration and confusion with my feelings toward Lindsay in my last post stemmed from was the uncertainty and difficulty of finding my type of guy. It feels like the majority of gay guys my age are into the clubbing/bar scene, which is fine by me, but I'd rather be out hiking/playing pool/bowling/having a night in with friends, etc. and I'd like to find someone similar minded, but it just seems like they're blending in too well. My solution to try to draw them out of the woodwork has been to go about my business meeting new people,etc and outing myself where appropriate. Keywords there being WHERE APPROPRIATE. I'm finding it's sort of an awkward balancing act: on the one hand, I want to be out enough where masculine gay guys like myself are aware of my sexuality and there aren't really any questions about it, so perhaps maybe one of us will make a move. On the other hand, I don't want to be "that" guy who shoves his sexuality in everybody's faces too (the cliche "straight people don't go around saying how much they love the opposite sex", right?). So lately I've learned to do it by making subtle corrections in conversation, for example:

"Matt, would you care if your girlfriend made more money than you?"

"You mean boyfriend, but no, as long as we lived comfortably, I really care how much he makes."
 
One of the things I did try though, was a social group specifically catered to gay guys. It was interesting, and much like your comments, enlightening, to hear other guys' perspectives on relationships, social acceptance and life in general. But after a while, it sort of lost it's appeal. A huge factor was the age difference between myself and most of the other guys. There were a handful of other 20-somethings, but most had at least a good 20 years or more on me, so my overall lack of life experience really showed and it was hard to find things in common with them. Add to that my disconnect with the gay lifestyle/culture that many of them were immersed in, and I just felt like I couldn't contribute much to conversation and didn't really fit in with the group all that well. I did, however, get hit on by one of the guys after the meeting one week =). It was really flattering, but at the same time a little startling because the guy came on REALLY strongly. Normally, I don't know when I'm being hit on or not, but this dude intentions were pretty clear. He purposely went out of his way to walk me back to a Skytrain station and dropped not-so-subtle hints about his type (which I fit) along the way. He even offered to let me hang out at his place near campus after class (uh...). Colour me naive, but I got the impression he was nervous, a little awkward and didn't do this that often, so I chalked up the forwardness to that...although it still didn't lower my walls any. That being said, after the fact, I considered taking him up on a date if he had asked. After all, it was a real ego-boost knowing that somebody is interested in what you've got to offer, and he had the balls to do it despite the awkwardness. Alas, I never saw the guy again after that. For now, I'll stick with the volleyball class I've been attending recently...gotta build up those skills and impress those guys on the beach...

Anyway guys, I'm sorry about the extended silence...AGAIN (seems like this happens a lot with my blogging). I've taken on an awesome internship between hanging out with my friends/keeping my shit together/making an attempt at finding a dude, which has been taking up my time. But I think that's my life in a nutshell the last little while, so now I have no excuse to not blog on a more consistent basis. I hope.

Later Guys.