You see them from the corner of your eye; while walking on the road; while talking to a friend on the phone; someone cute, someone gorgeous. You move to go make a move, full of exasperated determination and unbinding will.
The only hitch in the plan? There are at least a dozen others who do so at the same time.
It’s a man-eat-man world out there (no puns intended, apart from the blatantly obvious one). When Darwin said that the evolutionary chain depends upon the survival of the fittest, he wasn’t kidding. We are all stacked and surveyed, like the wares of a super market, in a pyramid, the higher you are, the more you get noticed. Glossy and shiny, polished and scrubbed, displayed in our best. It’s no surprise that sex is as readily available in the world as a Harlem Shake video on Facebook. But to the average gay boy, it’s doubly so.
(Note to reader: When I say average gay boy, I don’t mean the trolls who live under bridges or the models who live in penthouses. I mean everyone in between.)
From the corner streetlight, to the local bookstore, all the way to the neighbourhood theatre to the dark alley behind your house- No area is safe. We are all but Midnight children, plotting our moves, scheming to get to the next check point as soon as possible. They say that sex sells? No, I don’t think so. It’s free, and it’s right there.
A couple of years ago, I sat sipping mojitos with a close friend one day, staring longingly at the plate of French fries on our neighbour’s table.
“I need some action,” he said, nonchalantly, looking around the bar, watchful and wise while I devised new ways to get to the plate.
“How, and when?” I asked wide-eyed with wonder, momentarily distracted from said plate of fries. I was young and stupid.
“The question is not how, or when, the question is why not?” He said coolly, smiling over my shoulder at a cute boy wearing a cardigan in the next booth.
I gasped and gawked, like any half-wit who hadn’t seen the world would do. My friend and I were two different individuals back then, all I needed to satiate myself was a fry, and he wanted a guy. Was it really that easy and inconsequential? Wouldn’t you just wait around and mull around the mill till the perfect someone came along?
Like I said, I was young and stupid. In the years to come, I saw the world, and changed, but then, in that booth, I was still the same old me. No prizes for guessing which one of us went home alone that night.
It’s sad but true, to a point where playing a game of “Never have I Ever…” becomes redundant. Why?
It’s simple, because everybody’s done everything. Not to be preachy, but is it easy to presume that promiscuity is our middle name? Booty calls are not uncommon, and one night stands, unsurprisingly are not frowned upon. To everyone who sappily and secretly cries about wanting to find true love every drunken night, phone ready in hand, ready to call the latest conquest, I ask you one question, do your ideas of being mutually exclusive mean being mutually monogamous too? Why do so many people never stop looking, even when they have someone along all the time? When does one stop the whole hungry-wolf-in-waiting syndrome? It all boils down to one thing. Can you afford to be a prude, or even worse, downright crude?
Either way, you are doomed.
The answers might not be with me, but I am sure it’s a journey of self discovery.
I might still be young (depends on seeing the glass half full there, but always the optimist, Me.), but I am no longer stupid. If I have to go through half a dozen boys to find myself, to find these answers, then so be it. I gladly will, wine bottle in hand, boy in heart.
Which brings us to the single most important question of them all; how do you know when all the games end? When do you remove the infamous belt with all the notches on it? When ‘your number’ does finally comes to a grand finish? How do you finally know he’s the one?
Now, that, my friends, is another story.
