Memoir of a Gay Date

Kyle reaches across the table, gingerly plucks one French fry from my plate and coos “Oh, I really shouldn't eat this; a girl has to watch her figure.” He bats his eyelashes, which I suppose he thinks is adorable and then asks “Am I just horrible?” A mudslide that destroys an entire neighborhood is horrible.  A plane that crashes in a terrific fireball is horrible.  Stealing a single French fry from your date’s plate is not horrible. Unless you are a forty something year old man who calls himself a girl, while attempting to feign an adorable devil-may-care face. Then yes, this is horrible.

“Why don’t you take the rest?” I offer. My appetite has vanished.

“I couldn’t,” he smiles and then glances sideways at me, “Well, maybe just a few.”

In his profile picture he looked blonde, complex and devilishly impish.  On the phone, his personality was a mixture of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Katharine Hepburn.  There was a certain “je-ne-sais-quois” quality about him. 

“I just arranged a birthday brunch for my friend,” he says rolling his eyes at the word brunch, as if to say it has come to this, then continues “I simply cannot stay out all night like I used to. My friends tell me I’m a bitch. I am!”

In person, he is not a mixture of anything, he IS Katharine Hepburn. In short, he is simply not my type. He is Spencer Tracy’s type. I wish that I could just go ahead and tell him this.  But, I am new to the dating scene and have not learned how to be ruthless.

“You know, you should change your profile picture,” he says.  Kyle has learned how to be ruthless.

“Oh, what’s wrong with my picture?” I ask

“Well, there is nothing wrong with it per se. It’s just that you’re not smiling.  You look so serious in it, well like now,” he says.

That is when it strikes me how deceptive the thumbnail profile photographs are.  From a distance many men look really attractive, but when you expand them, you see all of their flaws.  The eyes are too close, or the teeth require work, or there is something just not quite right about the way all of the parts are put together. And then there are the photographs that look too good.  The lighting is soft and reminiscent of a Parisian sunset in autumn, the skin flawless and the features chiseled like Roman Gods.  These men are too beautiful to be in love with anyone other than themselves, or else they have become extremely proficient in Photoshop, in which case they are still in love with the image of themselves.  

I chose a photograph of myself that was truthful, yet flattering.  It was one that my daughter had taken of me.  In it, I am standing in a church parking lot, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pensive look on my face. In the background, you could see the steeple surrounded by blue skies and billowing clouds. But, the photograph was less about what was behind me and more about what was in front of me. From her angle, my daughter captured someone who appeared solid, tall and ready to move forward.

We finish dinner and Kyle insists on walking me to my car. He pops a breath-mint in his mouth, puts his hand on my waist and offers “Mint?” I am in danger of becoming a human French fry. I do not mask my horror.

“You know Kyle, I just want you to know that I think I'm becoming serious with another guy,” I ruthlessly lie. Time to move forward.

Am I just horrible?

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Say what?

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, where are gay men from? Let’s avoid the obvious potty-mouth “Uranus” answer, shall we? Like most self-help books, the 1992 best seller took a broad swipe and ended up stereo-typing genders. I should probably preface my comments by saying that I never actually read the book. But Wikipedia does a pretty good job of summarizing. The premise is that men and women communicate differently, as if they were from different planets. Men grunt, retreat to their man caves and consider taking out the trash to be huge displays of affection. While women whine about their feelings and are like Glen Close in Fatal Attraction: I will not be ignored, Dan! I’m sure there were some witty observations, funny anecdotes and nice workshops, but that’s all you really need to know about the book. The only truth is that everyone, EVERYONE is from different planets.


Paul and I are both men, but we communicate as if we speak different languages. Over the years I have figured out about 50% of his language. Throw in some alcohol and there is less than a fifty-fifty chance that I am going to understand Paul-speak.

The Eskimos have eighteen different words for snow. Paul is like an Eskimo in reverse, using one word to describe eighteen. That word is “little”. He uses it constantly. It can mean cute: as in “Look at your little shorts!” or it can mean low-calorie: as in “I had a little salad.” But sometimes he throws it together with cute for a more nuanced effect “There is a cute little restaurant over there.”, which actually gets me confused, because I’m not sure if it is a “cute- cute” restaurant or a low-calorie restaurant, or really a small restaurant.

There is one thing that is never allowed to be called little whether it means cute or not.

Another phrase that Paul uses is “You need to”. I am told that this really means “I would advise you to.” I discovered this bit of lexicon after a “discussion” that we had early on in our relationship. After the third “you need to” was uttered I became very quiet, which Paul quickly learned was “you better shut the fuck up.” But he never gets angry with me. He may get “frustrated” or “tired” or “confused”, but never angry, which makes arguments extremely difficult to figure out.

The other evening we had a “discussion” by telephone that I would like to share for educational purposes. Allow me to deconstruct it for you:

Paul: “I read your little blog post.” Translation: (It is too early in the conversation to figure out the meaning of this “little” yet, we will translate the rest before deciphering.)

Me: “Did you like it?” Translation: “I need validation!”

Paul: “Very cute.” Translation: “It sucked.” (Intonation and brevity are key here. Also, we can now decipher the first “little” to mean “trivial”)

Me: “Oh, you didn’t think it was funny?” Translation: “My humor is above you”

Paul: “I think I was too close to the situation.” Translation: “I can’t friggn’ believe that you wrote about me again!”

Paul: “You sound tired.” Translation: “You’re pissed”

Me: “I am tired.” Translation: “You’re right I’m pissed!”

Paul: “OK, why don’t you go to bed and I’ll talk to you in the morning.” Translation: “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Call me when you’re not being such an ass.”

Me: “OK. Love you.” Translation: “I may not like you right now, but I love you.”

Paul: “Love you too” Translation: “Ditto.”

As you can see this whole translation business can be extremely tedious. Throw in some wordplay, intonation, regional differences and as you can imagine, complete understanding becomes downright impossible. But when Paul greets me on the train platform after a week of absence we resort to the most basic of all, body language, which is never misunderstood.

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