Never been Dated: A Gay Mans Unfulfilled Journey

It's not that I've never been kissed....

I've never been dated.

I've been kissed so much that every pair of lips feel the same. I've never had fireworks and a slow motion cinematic inertia of passion. For me, it's the dark side of the bar, drunk and hoping he doesn't have herpes. 

Being gay is hard enough in a society that is SLOWLY accepting it. However it is even harder to be gay in the gay community, after all, it isn't a community. There are more divides within the community than there is lack of acceptance at the straight bar. I've had my share of platonic dates with heterosexual men, and guess what, they even paid the tab. Gays don't seem to date in the conventional way, why? Because they don't have to. You get two men together, and the initial motivation is to fuck. It's not like with a woman, where you have to buy her a steak and a cocktail dress just to get a hand-job. 

This leads me to this; Hopeless romantics are truly pointless in the gay community. There is little romance in a world where poppers are offered before a glass of wine ever is. I've always been relationship minded but as a teenager, I was sucked prematurely into the carnal world of "The Scene", Full of tops, bottoms and the obscene. If you're not sucking it, someone else will and if  you can't take dick, someone else is a power bottom. 

Where does this leave the young naive boy with his petty thoughts of romance? It leaves him feeling worthless and he stupidly believes that in order to find love, he's got to put out. Yet it doesn't matter how many licks, because when you get to the center, there's just nothing there. 

I've never had racial hangups, I'd go for guys of all races, but that's not to be said about most guys in the community. Interracial dating is taboo as clubs are segregated and there are separate pride events for the different races. We are separate and unequal. Any white guy I've liked has told me he's not into Blacks and the White guys who are into me are pot bellied and going through a mid-life crisis, hoping to master a Tuskeegee experiment on a young Black male. 

Keep in mind, I am speaking for myself, not for everyone's experiences....

Overall, I have been the fetishism of most White men and I'm marginalized by Black men. My brothas were abused by the Black church culture which called them abominations and kicked them out of their homes. Brothas were forced into the downlow lifestyle as BET dictated how they should behave and their closeted Pastor dictated how who they should kiss. They are discreet and they want masculine downlow only, so you end up being an actor. You put on the Timberland boots and you grab a basketball and learn how to shoot. You do what you have to do just for his attention, but he can never date you. After all, he's not gay, no, never that, he's DOWNLOW. He is better than you, because he is unclockable and his sins are forgivable. 

So I grew tired of the demands of my brothas and I expanded my horizons only to discover that these far off places with lighter faces didn't date other races. I grew up being called an Oreo, someone who acted White, who talked White, according to my Black peers and it matriculated into the Black men I was interested in. They were so busy looking for a thug that they didn't let anyone real give them a hug. This barely touches the surface on how I never fit into any box in the so-called gay community, who supposedly fights for the right to get married yet it continuously dismisses it's own diversity. 

Where does a gay man seek out other men? Their options are limited to the bar, websites and apps. As our society becomes more of a technology than a social system, gay men rely more and more on Grindr type applications to find men. How can you expect anyone to be down for monogamy when they have an endless list of naked men available within a five mile radius? So here I am, competing with Johnny's six pack abs at a dinner table, wondering when he is going to look up from his phone at my lonely face. 

I've gone to bars, I've flirted with OKCUPID, Plenty of Fish proved to be plenty of risks and Grindr never interested me with it's many options of STD's. 

NOBODY ASKED YOU TAYLOR!!!!

I've had friends hook me up, I've had plenty of guys stand me up and my excitement for a future relationship was once interrupted by him calling me a nigger mid-stroke. Did I mention the tall handsome Black man who was more interested in dating his nineteen year old SON than me?

The dark, the light, the big, the small, the old, the young, the doctor, the between jobs, I've went out for them all. The one thing they all had in common, is that they all want the next best thing and they just aren't ready for a relationship, even if they are damn near forty. 

I was so excited to read a well written and thought out email from a guy who was a fan of my blogs. He said he was intrigued by my intellect and what he described as a brave personality that doesn't care how it's truth looks to others. I remember hoping that this was finally someone who would get me, but I wasn't too excited, because I've read long paragraphs before. Guys have made speeches but they've always ended up draining hope like leeches. 

So he picks me up, which already was a bonus point. He takes me to a pizza place of my choosing. We sit down and he immediately discusses how he doesn't date White guys. He's Asian and looking at me as if I am some new creature displayed on the cover of National Geographic. I am such a prize for him as he describes what he calls pretentious White boys of DC who are drug addicts and condescending. Already, his blatant assault on an entire race turns me off, because I think about how I'd feel if someone said that about Black gay men. A point is taken off in my mental score sheet. Another one goes after he describes the guys he used to date and two more points are gone when he discusses his sexual attraction to certain people. The bill comes and I have to pay for my pizza, at a restaurant I did choose, but a date which he sought after me for. 

This is another example of how many gay men just don't know HOW to date. Many of us never had real practice dating as teenagers, and if we were so pressured to date girls, we made it awkward, so awkward that we became completely turned off by the dating process. 

I grew up watching a female dog and a male dog suck noodles at an Italian joint. I watched a beautiful woman get courted by a strapping man who ends up kissing her with an orchestra playing some where in the background. I grew up identifying with every woman in these films, while having no gay relationships shown to me, and the entire time having nothing in common with that actress. After all, I have a penis, she has a vagina and a legal right to marry the man she falls in love with. That was then, marriage is legal for me now but there's no knight in shining technicolor. 

I still haven't been dated, have never felt cared for and the idea of being loved is so far fetched that I struggle with the lifestyle altogether. For what is the point of being gay if the chances of falling in love, much less getting a REAL date free of bullshit are slim to none? 

Should I still hope for love? Should I give up, or should I keep on chasing pavements like Adele? From my vantage point, I as a gay black male am at the bottom of the totem pole, a minority within a minority. Brothas seem to be out of stock and White guys seem to see me as an interruption in their regularly scheduled programming. 

Some call it being bitter, some call it painting a wide brush on a canvas when I should be looking to improve myself, But I have worked on myself. I've been my own best friend for years, gone through the roaring twenties, coming out changed in retrospect. I've done the Iyanla and my life is still not fixed, because there just doesn't appear to be a man at the table, only a mannequin selling regrets. 

Buy my own dinner, get sex free. 

That's just not for me.