Could Tommy Give Up His Chat Sites For Love?
-by Jeremy Gloff
-appeared on TheNewGay.net
-October 25th, 2010

Gay men are animals. Predatory animals. With our spear in our pants we foam at the mouth as we machete our way through the homosexual wilderness.  During my youthful days I was always a successful big game hunter.  In a previous apartment the trophies over my bed were the faint stains on the wall. He came. I conquered. I won.

Throughout my teens and my twenties I advertised myself as someone looking for love and ready to settle down. In retrospect these proclamations carried little creedence because I was always looking over my shoulder. No matter how great a date was the first thing I did when I got home was log into gay.com.

I’ve found a dwindling interest in sex in my mid thirties. Surely that perverted mischievous voice in my head is always lurking somewhere in my subconscious. Of late I’ve found it best to ignore that little voice. Any recent bouts with casual sex have left me bored. Clearly it’s time to pursue new endeavors if the second hand on the clock is of more interest than the naked body in front of me.

Recently I’ve gotten better acquainted with a boy named Tommy. He is fucking adorable. His smile is devilish and he makes me laugh. There’s a guarded sincerity to his every move that’s endearing and alluring. I am eager to know just how bad his breath is in the morning.

I’ve known Tommy through PlanetOut to Gay.com to Manhunt and onto Adam4Adam. In my ten or so years of jumping on and off the online dating boat Tommy’s face has been an omnipresent fixture. It is truly easier for me to picture Tommy without an arm that without his online profiles. And so I wonder this...at what point does the actual hunt for partnership take a back seat to the habits we’ve formed living online? Has the A4A search become so ingrained in our lives that we have lost sight of what we were looking for in the first place?

A day in the life of a gay man - shower, shit, shave, and check the A4A account at least twice every hour. No matter how cute the boy in front of us is there will always be a cuter boy. Or a skinnier boy. Or a younger boy. Or an older boy. With the romantic economy in such rough condition are we endlessly window shopping because we are afraid of buyer’s remorse? Has the hunt become second nature to the point that it would be hard to live without it?

I’d like to get to know Tommy. I’d like for him to realize how absolutely perfect his hair is. I’d like for him to know that there is nothing about him that I’d want to change. And I’d give up my boycott of Glee for him. I wonder if he could he give up his gay chat site existence for me?

Or for anyone?