on-line dating?

When did going for coffee start to mean something else entirely?
  I have been trying to date and as I don’t really do the bar scene the only way that a workaholic computer geek can meet men is on the internet however I think I am missing some minutia in the language that internet daters use.
Going for coffee = pick me up for sex?
Going for dinner = Blow job in my car?
Meet me at my office = (you don’t want to know what that guy wanted.)
I shudder to think what going to a movie might mean.
I talk to these guys for three or four days of nice texting back and forth and finally get to the point where I think I am comfortable enough to maybe meet them in a well lit room to see if there is a spark. What was once a nice date turns into a situation where I have to have an extraction protocol similar to a C.I.A agent in deep cover? This is disturbing.
Going for coffee.

I started to talk to this guy and things were going well, his picture seemed normal and not to out-there so when he asked me to go out for coffee I thought “cool maybe we can connect”. Well we connected alright. We got to the Tim Horton’s about 7:30 and started to chat. He was charming and I really liked the look of him, professional and handsome in an understated way. It took about 20 min of light chit chat before we got to the meat of what was really going on. He was in a loveless marriage to a woman that he has known for 15 years (no shit its loveless YOUR GAY.). He proceeded to tell me all kinds of crap as to why he was still with her and that she was O.K with him seeing other guys because she was as well. I started to get the feeling that the parachute I had on was really a knap sack.
This is a scary feeling to have on a first date.
 He was making plans to take me back to my place and we could fool around a bit before he went back to the little woman.
This was never going to happen, I have a little woman of my own at home (my roommate) and doubt that she would have appreciated a random stranger in our house. I told him this and things got cold very fast. You would have thought that I had turned on the air-conditioning in minus thirty while making him sit on a block of ice.
 Now I know what you thinking, why did I not just up and leave after I heard that he was married? Well to be frank he pissed me off and I wanted the opportunity to get back at him for not telling me that all he was after was a fuck buddy. I started asking questions about his marriage and the moral implications of his cheating on his wife. How was he ever going to have a relationship if he couldn’t be honest with himself let alone anyone else? You know things that make this type of douche bag uncomfortable. This ended the “date” and we went our separate ways with the usual online catch phrase “good luck in your search“ which loosely translated means “fuck-off”.
I went home and felt kind of sick to my stomach because I really like this guy. From what I saw he had all the parts I like in the right places. He was well spoken and interesting.  Then I remembered the fly in the ointment, He was MARRIED.  NEXT.

Going for dinner.

The next date I had was a little better. We had been talking for about a week and this time asked the question about being married and he answered no not married but his brother and he shared a place. I thought O.K that’s not too weird.He asked if I wanted to meet him. I thought what the hell.

 We met at my local Boston Pizza for dinner and I knew he had a long drive in as he lived in Camrose which I thought was nice of him. The least I could do was buy him dinner. The night went well and I thought we were connecting he told me about his family and his Siblings and his family and his mom and dad and his family and his dog and his family and his faith and his family….. I had no idea what the hell the family was until I had it explained to me by some friends of mine what it was. I guess it’s a rural cult that has had such distinguished members as David Koresh.

I had no idea of this at the time but the rush of air that blew past my ear that night must have been a bullet.

Anyway after dinner we decided that going for a drive might be nice so we got in my car and drove down to Hawrelak Park to see the festival of lights (didn’t know it was canceled). We sat in the park and decided our next move. He kissed me. It was kind of romantic. We kept kissing and kissing then I felt a slight pull on my neck so I kissed his chin but the insistent pressure of the hand on the back of my neck kept pulling me down and I thought “shit I think he wants me to give him head” at that point I pulled away and looked him straight in the eye and told him that I don’t let people eat in my car let alone do that. He looked at me and blinked and blushed a bit (how lady like) and said he was sorry. I told him it was O.K but maybe we should go out a few more times before we end up in a situation where I need to have hand towels available.

We drove back to the Boston Pizza and he got in his car.

The next day he sent me a nice text saying he thought we wanted different things out of a relationship and "good luck in my search".

Meet me at my office

I can’t even go into this one. This was not a date but a blatant request to hook up with mounds of dirty talk and again someone married (to a guy this time but no difference in my mind).

 I thought it would be safe to meet him in his office for a first meeting. You know safe, lots of people around, it was lunch time what could go wrong.

Needless to say I got the hell out of there in a hurry and did not stop to tell him "good luck in his search".

I have come to the conclusion that I need an on-line dating translator. I wonder if iphone has an app for that?

To all the asshole in the steam rooms.

Look I get that you can hang out in a steam room and be yourself but seriously if you have to blow your fucking nostril nuggets out of your nose don't do it on the floor of the steam room. Go out and blow your nose for Christ sake. Unbelivable. 

Its the little things

I find as I grow older (over forty) I am fascinated, not by the things that used to drive my attention when I was in my twenty’s and thirty’s but by the stupid little things that I never noticed before. Like what happened to my ass. Was it always this shape? Did it always dimple in that way when I squeezed it together?

I think that I am concentrating on these stupid little things because my own sense of mortality is getting to the point where I have to actually acknowledge it. Forty. Four Oh . Now to someone eighty, that may seem young and “wait until your my age” but that is the point. I look back and see just as much time back there as I probably have before me and it scares the shit out of me. Was my ass always this shape? Did my toes always curve that way? Little things to grasp onto just so I don’t go insane from the vast amount of time behind me and the inevitable declining years in front of me.  

As an aging single Gay man there are no books to tell you what the landscape is to look like.

I was at a play the other day “August: Osage county.” Excellent play by the way and the reason for the name of this blog, but I digress. There was an obviously gay man working the crowd and by working I mean skulking from group to group listening to snitches of conversations and then moving on. The only reason I noticed him was because he was very flamboyant and wearing the most amusing full-length black beaver pelt coat and carrying a matching purse or “man bag”. I started to wonder what motivated such behaviour. Why so obviously flamboyant but skulking around like Gollum looking for the ring of power? Then it hit me. He was a lonely old queer that wanted to feel involved but not sure how to quite break into the conversations of the people around him and frankly I think he made most of the people sipping their champagne a bit nervous. This is what old and gay has always been to me. Eccentric, odd old men hanging around closed groups trying to find a way to feel loved and accepted.

I find it odd that after all the years of fighting to be accepted in a world that either hates us or is so ambivalent to our existence that they stop seeing us after we turn forty that we still feel the need to ingratiate ourselves to this mass of norm. Yet I can feel myself drifting in that direction.

I would hope that it’s different when you’re in a relationship. Having one other person that loves you might stop the madness of over tanning and plastic surgery and all the little things that older gay men do to grasp desperately at their youth so that they can find that other person that loves them.

Someone once said to me “well you have to love yourself before you can expect any one else to love you” well I have been loving myself for about 20 years now and I think I would like to try it with someone else in the room for a change. I think that would make all the difference.

It’s not that I haven’t had great loves, I have, just none that loved me back.

Now looking back I see a laundry list of shit that really doesn’t matter to the now.  My divorce, The cancer, the broken bones, the vascular bleed, the restaurants that I opened and then closed or sold, the men I slept with, the pets that are gone, the family I no longer talk to, houses I owned, the cars I’ve had. All of it a mess of human garbage that at this point in my life formed who I am but doesn’t help me wake up any brighter in the morning.  I am terrified that one day I am going to wake up from this dream that I am walking in and realize that (as the Matriarch in August: Osage County did) all my life has changed, all the people that I have loved are gone and I have an Indian living in my attic and I have no Idea how she got there.