DON'T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME

Okay. I tried gay.com. Signed up a few weeks ago, created a profile and then I avoided the site. Today I did a search.

I got an immediate stomach ache. That may be partly due to the fact I hate a whole bowl of potato salad for lunch. (Damn you, nugget potatoes!) But surely gay.com must take a big chunk of the responsibility.

There were 685 names that came up based on a search of gay men in their forties living in the Vancouver area. You know, that sounds promising. Surely there is a needle in that haystack, no?

No.

No, no, no, no, no!

I’ll admit that the growing stomach pains caused me to only conduct a cursory squint at the thumbnail photos. There weren’t any lewd snapshots—they apparently exist; you just have to pay for a Premium membership. Pass. Still, there were many fortysomething men posting shots of their potent pecs and admirable abs as their main photo. (My image is a headshot and you can tell I am wearing a tie and jacket. I laughed when I just realized this. A tad overdressed.) I know the impressive pecs and abs are supposed to entice browsers to click the pic, read the profile, start a chat, send a message.

Is there something wrong with me? Hey, you...CRUISINBTM. Just how many people have ogled your abs? Are they disappointed when you show up at Starbucks wearing a shirt? Silly me, one can always forgo the coffee.

In creating a profile, each member can indicate what he is looking for. The options: Friendship, Love/Relationship, Action/Sex, Conversation and what I see as the flirty/cryptic/creepy Ask Me. For myself, I chose Love/Relationship. Of course, you can select more than one. Every profile I did click had Action/Sex as the sole option or one of the options. If you select both Love/Relationship AND Action/Sex, what does that say? How committed might you be? Again, these were all guys in their forties. The big rainbow-waving parade was only a week ago and already I feel my Pride waning.

Each member chooses a moniker. Joining the aforementioned CRUISINBTM on the site are TheCockfather, Orgasmmm, Hot2GoMan, Spanking_ and the age-confused 41-year-old BoyToyPup (not to be mixed up with 46-year-old BoyToy1). I did not make these up! It’s one thing to go through life with the name Englebert. Blame the parents. But these names were specially created after much thought, designed to make a super-duper first impression. I stopped glancing at the names as my lunch starting churning.

Many of the more respectable photos were ones I’d already seen on Plenty of Fish. Yes, we’ve already rejected or overlooked one another on one dating domain. No need to slap the other cheek.

I must have clicked on ten photos, enabling me to read the profiles. While I bemoan the fact that many Plenty of Fish members are word/grammar/spelling-challenged, they are skilled communicators compared to what little people write on the gay.com profiles. It’s like dating on Twitter.

Suffice it to say, not a single profile piqued my interest. I do not belong on gay.com. Reminded me of the Bruce Springsteen song “57 Channels (and Nothing on)”, only up the number to 685.

I will, of course, happily explore other options. What are the options?

Suggestions?

An unfortunate side effect of this stint at dating research is that I may never want to eat potato salad again. Never been a coleslaw connoisseur, but I’ll give it a go.