The Eye of the Beholder Part 2

I was talking about my first time in a gay bar.  I was seventeen and finally, perfectly at home in a place I had never thought to dream of.  In the bars I made a few friends, mostly acquaintances though; and because of these people my trips back and forth became more commonplace.  Within a month, I’d met a man and not long after that, we moved in together.  By this time I was eighteen.  Ray was thirty, a bit round with a very hairy chest and a doughy, expressionless face.  His hair was dark and curly, unkempt.  He was a sweet, sweet man, but not terribly smart.  And I am certain that I hurt him.  Even though, like a kid in a candy store, I wasn’t at all certain what I liked, I knew what I didn’t like. Ray worked nights and I spent mine at the bars.  I was, I guess what you would call, a regular, never having difficulty getting in and being served. 

This world that I had found in two gay bars in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s was fascinating, full of colors and sounds I never knew existed.  It was like I had been living life in black and white, but now the world was before me in full Technicolor.  I basked in the beauty of the men around me, wallowing in desire and occasionally wading in deeper.  It didn’t take me long, then, to figure out what I liked.  I did have a type after all.  The men I was attracted to, then, were all older, but not by much.  They were twenty-one, twenty-two, not much older than that.  At eighteen, the difference in age between yourself and someone in their early twenties can be colossal.

The Urban Dictionary defines a twink as such: “an attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent.” I don’t know about the unintelligent part.  It certainly isn’t a prerequisite for the rest.  But the slender with little or no body hair and certainly the age bracket describes to a T the kind of man, boy really, who I am attracted to.   I was attracted to twinks when I was a twink myself and I have been for the couple of decades since I was twink age appropriate.  Remember when I said that I was young and skinny?  I looked, amazingly enough, 18 or 19 and weighed around 130 pounds from the time that I was 17, first venturing into the gay community, until I was in my mid-thirties.  Imagine my horror the first time I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t pass for twenty anymore.  Even the twink state of mind had flown the coop. 

In gay men, I believe there are two things you are likely to find in common nearly across the board.  I’m sorry, but in my experience it’s true. Many gay men, including myself base their attractions on the physical, primarily. I’m not saying that mental, emotional, even spiritual attraction never enters the mix, but physicality is paramount.  I’m also not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing.  I balk at those who call it shallow.  I’ve always said that, if physical attraction wasn’t extremely important, there wouldn’t be any such thing as gay or straight.  If in a soul mate, I was merely seeking a spiritual connection, I would have, long ago, married a woman and settled down happily.  If all I required of a romantic relationship were things in common, similar tastes in music or movies, oh how much happier I would have been my entire adult life.  No I needed smooth skin, a flat stomach, smaller stature, maybe a treasure trail, but no more hair above the waist than that.  Muscle men never did it for me, bears neither.  I liked jocks, maybe even slightly nerdy types, and especially twinks.  It’s a funny sort of conundrum to find one’s self nearly flip flopped in a role.  Who once was a twink had become a daddy.  At least that’s the gay group I fit into if merely looking at my age and who I was attracted to, if not always how much money and how many credit cards I had in my wallet.

Back to the Urban Dictionary, a daddy is defined as Gay slang for an older gay man with money.  You might hear someone say, “I'm on the hunt for a new daddy. My last one lost his job,” or, “I'm tired of working all of these hours. I need to get me a daddy.”  Oh how the mighty had fallen.  How could this have happened?  Time marches on, I guess.  Thankfully, though, I seem to have gone into a new phase where I still don’t look my age.  For the last ten years or so, I have looked to be in my early to mid thirties, even now as I am more than a decade past my mid thirties.  Maybe it’s genetics, maybe it’s the expensive moisturizers and exfoliates I have become addicted to.  It certainly isn’t lifestyle.  I drink, smoke, and consume massive amounts of crap, especially diet highly caffeinated soda.  Remember how I said much earlier that I wasn’t born with skin that tanned easily?  This fair skinned Irish boy spent a number of years burning my pale skin into submission.  Sunshine and tanning booths, god I even remember the years we used to grease ourselves down with baby oil and literally fry our bodies in the sun.  That can’t possibly have been good, but vanity said otherwise. I only stopped when I had a small skin cancer scare seven or eight years ago.  By then the damage should have been done, but still, you’d never know. 

As I creep into the last half of this decade before fifty, I am surprised to find that brown hair I found so boring as a teenager is all still here.  It shows no sign of thinning.  Where other men in my family have watched their hairlines recede, mine is barely further back now than it was at twenty-five.  Fortunately, things haven’t been as dire as my teenage self predicted either. AS a gay man, I certainly haven’t remained the wallflower I was resigned to play in younger, straighter years.  There is shyness, not quite as painful as in my adolescence.  I have no problem approaching, chatting up women.  Some of the performer in me has returned over the years and my command of a room with it.  The shyness I have is around men I like.  This seems to be mostly in person, as I have no problem flirting shamelessly via the internet. 

There’s a movie called The Broken Hearts Club about a group of gay friends living and in Los Angeles.  At the beginning of some of the scenes, against a dark screen, flashes a Webster’s Dictionary looking definition of the group’s adopted slang.  One such definition was this: Meanwhile - red alert message amongst friends signaling them to take immediate notice of a attractive passing stranger.  I saw the movie with friends and my group adopted the same vernacular.  Once at Gay Pride, maybe a year or so after the movie came out, one of us said, “Meanwhile,” to which a few dozen people turned around.  The secret was out. We had to come up with a more subtle phrasing to alert each other to approaching hotness.  Our term became NEVERTHELESS. 

Once while leaving a different movie with my best friend Melissa, the two of us were on an escalator going down.  Another couple clearly like us was on their way up on the escalator across from us.  He was gorgeous, I had noticed out of the corner of my eye, whispering with his female friend.  Melissa and I were still discussing the movie we’d just seen.  Once we’d stepped off the escalator, Melissa leaned over and asked, “Did you hear that?  That guy just totally NERTHELESSED you.”  Thank you, Mother Nature!  The point, though, is that I am never likely to notice that sort of attention, maybe it’s just that I don’t expect it.  Thank goodness for friends, the varied wingmen, or predominantly women I have had along for the ride throughout the years.  Hopefully they’ve enjoyed the flirting on my behalf at least as much as, occasionally, I have reaped the rewards of their efforts.

So I have said that my tastes have changed very little over the years.  I still love twinks; the age appropriateness of this attraction diminishes with each passing year.  So does the likelihood that someone I find attractive will return the finding.  Obviously there are those who are attracted to older men for whatever reason. There are all types in this gay culture, the aforementioned twinks and daddies, fetishists, those who are into bears.  I recently heard the term otter used to describe a much thinner version of a bear, slighter of stature, but just as much body hair.  I guess you could say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and thank god for that!  There’s hope for everyone after all. 

In the dating game, I haven’t had many opportunities to close in on the scenario I painted earlier, when speaking of my mother.  Remember I theorized that my love for her only served to enhance her beauty in my eyes?  This is common.  Couples who have been together for a long time, I think, see their attractions to each other grow and change based obviously on more than just the physical and as these changes take place, they must only serve to enhance the physical.  But where did it all begin?  The ideal for me, I think, would be to find someone I am physically attracted to and then see that attraction grow as we fall in love and discover everything there is to know about each other, the things we have in common and the differences we must celebrate in one another.  Sadly, I am forty-six years old and have yet to really experience anything like that.  The love of my life, to date, very likely exposed me to HIV, twenty-five years ago.  Our relationship continued, off and on, for years after that.  We had friends in common and our shared past continued to bring us together.  I haven’t seen him in about ten years, but I hear of him from mutual friends.  Thank fully, the news doesn’t affect me like it once did.  I no longer live for his attention; no longer crave any scrap of affection he might throw me as I had, for years, even after he shattered my trust so irrevocably.  I do expect to find someone.  I need that hope like I need breath.  My friends sometimes suggest that I am too picky and perhaps that’s true.  Again, I place physical attraction pretty high up on the list and I don’t really see that changing.  Why should it?

Earlier I said that I thought there were two almost universal things about gay men, number one being that physical attraction was of much higher importance than it is for women or even for straight men.  Secondly, I think many gay men mistrust other gay men. Even if there isn’t a deep seated mistrust, it’s far easier for us to turn to a woman for comfort, friendship, almost anything, except of course for sex.  I think that those younger gay men not into older gay men must mistrust their older brothers even more.  The term dirty old man comes to mind.  It’s a shame really because there are many more well intentioned, compassionate, and even wise men out there that have taken part in the movements towards gay rights and a treatment or cure for AIDS, many who came out of the closet in a time where no one even thought to dream of gay marriage.  Look at us now.  How fascinating it is experience an entire history through the eyes of those who created it.  I maintain that even if there isn’t a mutual physical attraction much can be gained by keeping an open mind when it comes to friendship within our community. 

That said, I have limited myself over and over.  When two straight women become friends there are reasons having to do with social and economic status, shared interests, spiritual and even emotional attraction, but rarely, if ever physical attraction.  It might not even exist, but if it did, why would it matter?  I laugh when I go to gay social networking sites.  Is Gay.com even a thing anymore or has it all but been replaced by Grindr and Scruff?  I don’t doubt that some of the men on, especially Gay.com are, as their profile says, looking for friendship.  Why then have they included in their profile a preferred age group and why, oh why have they listed their dick size?!  I have gay friends whose cocks I have never seen, nor would care to.  I know that we’re obsessed with dick size, but come on.  I feel that wilting under the weight of this common mistrust of each other; we are sadly robbing ourselves of a sense of community that goes beyond gay pride, beyond our common goals.  We do come together fiercely when our rights are threatened.  We certainly, many of us, come together, one weekend a year to celebrate our commonality, even as we revel in our differences.  That’s Gay Pride.  I wonder if when there is no parade, no festival, no gay day at Six Flags or Disneyland, no amendment to vote for or against can we still come together?  Some can certainly.  And do. 

Mistrust is mistrust.  Everyone’s feelings are certainly valid.  Where does my mistrust come from?  I suppose a large part of it stems from being objectified, though seriously isn’t that objectification what I sought?  The rest of it, for me anyway, comes from crap that was never foisted on me by gay men, but by straight men.  And yet, I leave it for the gays.  Why?  I shudder to think it has to do with protecting myself from hurt, being as I’ve rallied against others doing the same thing.  Certainly no older gay man ever hurt me enough for me to mistrust an entire generation of them.  So we’re back to physical attraction.  Is it really that confusing being gay men and separating attraction, sex and friendship?    Apparently so.  I have to do better.  I must remind myself that, even though I am looking for love, the romantic, soul mate kind of heart and mind altering love that has alluded me for three decades, I haven’t given up.  And in that pursuit, from time to time, I have dated men who turned out to be far better friends than sexual partners.  Also, I have stumbled upon gay men I had no physical attraction to and somehow, because of circumstance continually throwing us together, we, too, became friends.  Sadly, had life not demanded it of us, we may have never gotten to know each other. 

Most of us know that beauty is not skin deep.  There are many gorgeous looking men who seem to have very little beauty inside.  We all know them.  And there many not very physically attractive men with souls and hearts so beautiful, if you just take a minute to look, you’ve already forgotten what their appearance told you in the first place.  And there are those of us in between, the average looking ones, with personalities, senses of humor that for survival sake placed our looks in the backseat.  It really does take all kinds and it really is important to remember what our hearts and souls craved in the first place.