QI’m a 23-year-old homo who came out one year ago. Life has done good and bad things to me. Good things include success in the intelligence lottery, a full ride to college, and now a job with a six-figure income. Sadly, I find that my place in life is different from the place occupied by most other young gay men. When meeting someone, I am often bummed to discover that they are in a state of transience (between cities, between degrees), or bummed because I detect a difference in socioeconomic upbringing/status that will make it hard for us to relate to each other, or bummed because they are not as smart as I am, or most often bummed over a combination of all these things. These thoughts sap my interest in new people, telling me that “it just wouldn’t work.” Am I right to think that and keep looking, or should I do some substantial “rounding up to one” and go on that second date, even though the odds of compatibility seem slim? —Lots of First Dates
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Look, Gloria Upson, if dating gay men your own age means exposing yourself to guys who are in “states of transience”—completely normal states for dudes in their early 20s—then date guys in their 30s and 40s. Not that dating older guys is a surefire recipe for romantic success: your snobbery, classism, and elitism are so repulsive that most older guys will be blocking your number before you can call about a second date.
“There’s nothing like dating or fucking a person of another background, race, or class to help you see the humanity in everyone,” Andrew wrote. “How do you get scared of generic young black men when you’ve danced with them all night long? . . . In that sense, I’ve always felt that being gay was a real moral blessing. I could have been so much worse a human being if I’d been straight.”
A”It’s pretty rare, but yes, it happens,” said Debby Herbenick, a research scientist at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, the author of Sex Made Easy (among other books), a frequent guest expert for Savage Love, and the only woman who has ever chased me around a room with a vulva puppet.
ASome suggestions: Use a hormonal birth control method and a condom and pull out before you come. Don’t have penis-in-vagina intercourse—you can stick to oral sex, mutual masturbation, and doing her in the butt (if being done in the butt is something your girlfriend enjoys). Deposit a few loads at a sperm bank, keep ’em on ice until you want kids, and get a vasectomy.
