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I'm afraid it's not very interesting: I was just at the 'willing-to-buy-gay-porn' level of confidence, had completely missed the (then-much-rarer) high school and college actually-social gay environments like whatever-they-called-GSAs back then or marching band, didn't drink alcohol or go to straight bars, and was pretty terminally clueless, so fish out of water is understating things. Absolutely unprepared and uninterested in a hookup, no actual gay friends, and no clue what the expected behavior was beyond hanky code horror stories, and I've got a face for radio and so little self-confidence I wasn't even bring that well. The whole train of logic was just 'gay and bi guys meet in bars, I'm a bi guy, so if I want to talk with other gay and bi guys I should learn how to go to bars'.
First time I showed up alone ten minutes after opening, bought a whole pizza and a diet coke, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. Nobody else there but the staff, and in retrospect they thought either I was stood up by a cheap date or about to run away from home, but about the only context I had was a couple years in high school having worked a family diner so took a hovering and constantly-asking-if-I-was-ok waiter as trying to get an extra dollar tip on a bad night.
The second was later enough in the day there were actually other clients there, but I'm still absolutely clueless and after how badly the first time went I brought a book, so when a guy sat next to me and ordered me a drink I said nope, and while I'd like to pretend that's to avoid leading someone on, I also still genuinely had trouble with the taste of beer and wine, and also had all the various then-prominent stories about never accepting drinks from strangers. And then went back to my book when he didn't start talking anything else. And then went on like that for a good thirty-plus minutes. Third was pretty much the same thing. In retrospect, some of the people on try three were probably trying to flirt, but in terms of social skill I’m not just answering how my day was with actual details of my actual day, but I’m not following up with questions back. I remember one guy complimenting my shirt, and telling him where I bought it.
Fourth was karaoke night. So you've got all that, and now people are much more drunk, and it's loud enough I couldn't hear most of what was going on anyway. Fifth was quieter (though not as dead as the first time) and finally had someone on staff read me the riot act/facts of life.
In some ways, I was pretty lucky that it went that particular failure mode -- despite a pretty subtle appearance and name, the place both oriented toward older crowds and was... much more high-energy than I would have been ready for, so to speak: karaoke night was the shallow end. But I'm glad that there's other options on both 'dating' and homosocial environments options now.
Yeah, that's fair. There's a lot of gay guys -- even gay guys that self-identify as sluts -- that want their (primary) relationships to be a lot more serious than a lot of natural equilibrium ends up, and that's a hard problem to solve and an easy problem to get jealous over.
Heh. I have a rough time telling how much of that's bisexual or closeted gay rather than prescriptive when it comes to its heterosexuality or just trans chaser, but it's definitely a thing with variations on both sides of the orientation aisles (for an undeniably gay version: himbo hooters). And there's definitely a whole variety of stuff that's spread around the fantasy of either being so attractive or fucking so well that you redefine what's desirable for someone. ((for furries, jarlium has some great stuff on those themes.))
And, of course, top shortages definitely don't help.
... I'm still a bit weirded out by that variation. I dunno if it's just my misreading it entirely, or if it's intended as a statement for people with open relationships to protect their primary partner, or what, but it seems like it's inviting people to bad understandings of what PrEP does. But probably something the CDC expects to be more effective.
Uff da, been there with the book.
I'm glad that on a couple other "just how oblivious can I be" occasions I had thoughtful friends nearby that recognized how dire the situation and coached me before it was too late and the opportunity lost.
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My God man, showing up right after open and buying a whole pizza. I literally laughed out loud.
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Good god, the level of obliviousness was off the charts haha. If it's not too late, I can send you an autism diagnosis in the mail.
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Maybe I'm just too sheltered, but I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating here.
I have no clue, either. But my read is that the "I'm a femboy and I fuck better than your girlfriend" is a strikingly common fantasy. Yeah, that line may have been used on me once. My take is that straight men are unbothered.
That said, the "I'll just go gay/date a femboy/date trans women" thing seems to have a little purchase, but only in the way that Trump wanting to buy Greenland is. It's a memetic negotiation tactic, a way of asserting "I have power over you no matter what you do!" I don't think the femboys or the trans women have actually been consulted. (But neither was Greenland.)
But also straight men need to be real careful lest they start assuming that twinky femboys are drama-free sex machines.
I also thought it was weird, and commented on it at the time. Apparently this wasn't a CDC thing, it was Montgomery county public health. So in the NIH's backyard, though not with any affiliation.
I thought I had taken pictures of the posters, but I guess I took fewer pictures in Maryland than I thought. I did find Montgomery county's website for the overall HIV public health program, though, which has a similar banner, depicting two men and reading "Do it for HIM". Weirdly, the FAQs page for the program has a man hugging two elderly women with the phrase, "do it for THEM" which is mildly funny but also kind of seems to rebut the interpretation that this is advertising PrEP for protecting your partner. ("Do it for your mom?") Another page has a banner with a lesbian couple reading "Do it for HER" -- is HIV a big issue for lesbians? I remember seeing all of these variations at Metro stations in Maryland.
What's particularly strange is this seems to be the overall campaign for HIV prevention, treatment, and testing, but the banners I recall specifically were advertising PrEP. So maybe this was a situation of a generalized campaign being applied to a specific health intervention in a rather silly way -- "get tested for your wife, get treated for your mom, get PrEP for yourself" I guess seems reasonable, but the way in which all the posters I saw were about prophylaxis in particular just didn't make a lot of sense.
I mean it pretty literally: an employee sat down, explained what I was doing wrong, what the expectations for that specific space was, what likely failure modes I'd encounter if I continued as I was doing, and some alternative approaches.
I dunno what the guy's specific job was, but one of the older employees sat down and gave a ten or fifteen minute spiel, starting with the simple stuff like explaining what someone buying you a drink meant (only strictly speaking requires a conversation, but impolite to accept if you aren't looking for something more, with expectations of reciprocity, and how the tab worked under those circumstances) and how to handle it if the drink was unacceptable but the company wasn't (tell the bartender or waiter when you order your first drink that you're a teetotaler, even if you're not), that customers purchasing less than two beers worth were going to unspecified issues (hint hint), normal don't leave drinks unattended and know your limits for alcohol when you do drink. Eventually, what I'd missed about the name (a marijuana reference), what event nights were active for 'mostly' social stuff (poker or
betting onwatch football) and which were much more heavy on either hookups or otherwise might be a little too ribald for me (here's a flier; yes several include drag and/or guys in glorified speedos), and other spaces that might be easier to get friends to go to the bar with (admittedly, not very helpful given three of the recs were explicitly political orgs).I have no idea how many of those conventions were even common back then and I'm sure many aren't common now.
Uh... yeah. One of my first crushes was on a straight guy, and it wasn't the only such crush, add in a general shortage of tops, and there's a lot of reasons it works as a fantasy. And while I've never pursued it, you only really need one or two closeted guys for it to feel like it could work.
Maybe? I dunno how much of it's kidding on the square. A lot of soccons have looked at the number of younger generations self-identifying as bi and then not doing anything about it, but there's other explanations for that behavior that could end up changing pretty fast.
But that may just be me assuming many other people share my interests, and there definitely are starting to be people who try to take that approach and get surprised to find out exactly how poorly it works in practice.
Hah! Fair point. Even 'always up for sex' isn't anywhere near realistic, and that's assuming a lot of frot that straight or 'straight' guys aren't probably gonna be feeling. And it's very much just a different sort of drama, and not even that different, rather than as overt a difference in quantity as a lot of straight guys expect.
Hell, some of the times you don't even avoid the shoe-explosion.
Interesting. I'll have to put some feelers out; this seems like the sorta thing where everyone involved was sure they were just presenting the most palatable experience, but by the end of the game of telephone it's somewhere between useless (like dental dams, PrEP for lesbians is probably not a high impact field: I think there's been literally one case of cisF/cisF HIV transmission through oral sex documented) and actively counterproductive (expecting partners to use a drug they can't get and wouldn't be helped by).
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