Well I am moving to a new city this weekend and basically starting over as I have very few friends in this city. I am excited. I am going to finally be able to be who I am, and if people don’t accept me that way, then so be it. It’s no longer like my old situation where if a few people do not accept me, I suddenly have to stop hanging out with an entire group of friends.
I think this new start is going to finally give me the confidence to come out to anyone. I will be developing a new group of friends, so my old friends are no longer important. I will no longer be dependent on my parents to help pay my bills as I will finally be making money rather than going to school. It is finally the time I have been waiting for over the last 6 months. Really it is the time I have been waiting for over the last 10 years. I am coming out and can be myself, not some guise I put on. I am gay and beginning my gay life.
Why is it that when you look on some of the gay social sites to try to find some guys your age it is nearly impossible to find below the age of 40?
Recently, I have started looking around some of the gay social networking sites trying to find guys in my area around my age I would like to hang out with. Not necessarily be in a relationship with, but just someone to have as a friend and be able to talk to. However, when looking at the site, it is very difficult to find anyone who is under the age of 40. I realize most of the gay guys out there anymore have come out by the time they turn 18, or they don’t come out until later in life. And I also realize, that the guys who come out by the age of 18, already have a good group of gay friends and don’t hang out on gay social networking sites.
However, there still have to be some guys in my predicament coming out at 22, just upon graduating college. Instead it seems I sit on the gay social networking site getting hit on by 50 and 60 year olds trying to throw up every flag I can, that I am not interested in them. I want someone between 18 and 30 I can hang out with. If it turns into more than that, great, but my main focus is just friends.
I just wanted to take a moment and point out an addition to the Blogroll. Recently, a women in New York had her Volkswagen Beetle vandalized with Fag and u r gay written on it. She determine this was most likely caused by a rainbow bumper stick she had on the car. After a short period of depression because of this vandalism, this lady decided to do something about it. She has continued driving the car without the removal of any of the vandalism to spread the work that homophobia and gay discrimination still exist no matter how much people try to turn a blind eye to it.
She is planning on starting a nation wide tour with her car, before she will have it repainted with rainbow colors and the word fag on the side. I applaud this ladies efforts and wish to thank her for what she is doing. The link is www.fagbug.com.
Being gay, the biggest problem I have yet encountered is how to tell a gay guy from a straight guy. Yes, there is this thing we all call gaydar, but as most of us have noticed it is not accurate. So, since gaydar doesn’t work how else are you supposed to meet gays.
In heterosexual life, a lot of guys and girls go to dance clubs to meet each other, and this is great for them. But if you are not from a major city, and instead a smaller city there may not be many gay dance clubs. In the town I live in right now, there are about 15 bars/dance clubs in a half mile radius, but there is only one gay bar in town. Some might say this is nice, because it means all of the gays are in one spot, but this could not be further from the case. This bar does not appeal to many, and leaves us with little or no choice for meeting other guys.
In addition, going to a dance club with your heterosexual friends can be difficult. Since you cannot tell who is gay and who is not, you have to pick up a woman to dance with. But as you have no interest in women, the motivation to do this can be extremely difficult. Yes, some gays may find this extremely easy to do depending on their personality, but many others like me find this reason not to go to dance clubs. Going to bars is okay because often you will just chat with your friends. There is no pressure to find a mate and dance.
So how do you meet gays in a smaller town. I am not talking a one stop sign town, but a town of 100,000 people. There may only be one gay bar, and that bar does not appeal to you. Well, you are forced to try to find gay advocacy groups. Yet a lot of these groups seem to be more about proclaiming they are gay every chance they get than they are about meeting other people. This does not fit me either.
Therefore, I continue to find myself fighting every single day to determine how do I meet gay guys without going to the only gay bar in town, and without joining these “everyone should be flamboyantly gay” advocacy groups. This leaves sites like facebook and myspace, yet many will not list their sexual orientation if they are gay to avoid discrimination at the job site or in other forms.
There just is not a good media in a smaller town for non-flamboyant gays to meet. The people I would like to hang out with are those who do not act gay all of the time and are not going to randomly come out and say I am gay. The people I would like to hang out with are those guys you would think are straight, but if you ask them will admit they are gay.
Meeting other gays, may be the most difficult part about being gay. Unlike heterosexuals who can say oh it’s a girl I am going to try to hook up, there is no way to visibly tell if someone is gay.
