Lucky number

Here it is May, and I realize once more that another couple of months have gone by, and I forgot to meet Mr. Right--or even Mr. Right Now. I haven't even gone on a date since February. And I haven't dated someone regularly since the Supreme Court overturned the sodomy laws in the U.S.

That was in 2003. Erp.

Nothing like making sodomy legal to make it less interesting, at least to some of us. "Oh sodomy, that. I can do that any ol' time now." And next thing you know, you're no longer doing it. Religious Right 1, Raplicious minus 69.

So to speak.

Certain times of the year--Valentine's Day, summer holidays, the annual renewal of my gay.com membership--I spend more time thinking about why I've had paltry win-place-show positions in the Blogtucky Derby of Gay Romance. While I don't focus on it constantly--and perhaps the lack of effort begats the lack of success?--there are times when I feel it would be quite nice to have someone special and significant in my life.

Nonetheless, despite this blog and the occasional need to express my fabulousness in public, I'm generally happy to stay by myself. I enjoy my own company and actually thrive on the solitude. As my mother, Vivien Leigh, notes, I was perhaps the only child ever born who cried to get back into his playpen, rather than to be let out. What can I say? I like my space. It gives me time to write (poor you), to rejuvenate, and to recover from my stark, dark visions of an America on the verge of apo-calypso. Day-oh. Day-oh. Come Mister Boogey Man, boogey me jihad-a.

You see, in my mind, there's something very torturepalooza-at-Abu Ghraib about modern love and dating. There are lots of hunky young recruits on the scene (good), but upon closer inspection, they all resemble Lynndie England (bad). If you're lucky, the new recruits are dressed smartly; if you're unlucky, they all look like they're donning evening wear as modeled by members of the Klan (bad). If things progress, there might be some some nudity involved (good), but as long as it's part of a poorly devised plot to further destabilize the Middle East (bad), then count me out. At a more intimate level, there's dirty talk (potentially very good), but it's all enunciated by a squinty-eyed Donald Rumsfeld (unequivocally very bad).

I didn't arrive at this catastrophic version of the Dating Game by being merely a malcontent or a cynic. No, really. It's experience that has taught me well. For you see, whenever I put myself out there in the marketplace for love, marriage, or even just a good time, something--and someone--strange happens.

I seem to attract the weirdest population of freaks and losers in the Western Hemisphere, and I'm sure if I traveled more outside the West, I'd get the rest of the world's freaks as well. My charms, such as they are, almost always appeal to people I'm not particularly interested in for either aesthetic or biological reasons. You might say I'm a little picky, but you would be, too, if your options involved snake handlers, pig farmers, biker chicks, boyfriends who get p.o.'ed if you don't serve real butter, and guys looking for father figures, or more accurately, sugar daddies.

Let me explain . . .

* * *

It all started to go wrong from a very tender age. Two years into my outness, at the ripe age of 20, I went to Washington, D.C., for the summer to work. Ah, nothing more Mary Richards-tossing-her-hat-into-the-air than a nascent career guy loose for the first time in the big city, perky, righteous, and serious. And nothing like a chance encounter at a bus stop with a gold-toothed Romeo to blow it all to smithereens.

How I ended up talking with this guy, I can't even remember now. Consider it psychological blockage--and I'll pass on a heaping helping of mental fiber (or even some Heavenly Desserts) to turn it loose, thanks all the same. What I remember is this: On a warm June day, while waiting for a bus to take me from Silver Spring Metro to White Oak, I was having a normal conversation with a human being of the male species (and I use all the preceeding terms very generously). I'm sure the nature of the conversation was something innocuous--"Wow, it's humid today" or "Gosh, is it always this humid in the summer in Washington?" or "No, really, I mean it, is it always this humid?"

I'm good at talking with people, anybody really, but sometimes only too late I realize that I've chosen the wrong person to talk with. (Remind me to share with you another day the time I mistakenly asked a flasher for directions in San Francisco's Union Square. Thank goodness I didn't ask him to point which way to go.) Because out of the blue, the man asked me if I was gay, and while nervous to answer in the affirmative, at that point in my life, I was determined to be out and proud, holding nothing back, no longer content to stand in the shadows of love and life. I was here, I was queer, I wanted everyone to get used to it! After all, it was 1982. What's the worst that could happen to gay people from here on out?

So I answered him and received this as a response:

"That's cool, man. You know, I'd [copulate with] a snake if I had the chance. Maybe we could get together sometime."

Well. Hmmm. Hadn't expected that. Here I was all geared up for a lecture on gay rights and all I got was this lousy, sordid, disgusting come-on.

I declined the gracious offer, probably with a polite flinch and shudder, apoplexy, and a crimson-hued face. Luckily the bus came along soon after or I would have been treated to this Casanova Brown's X-rated version of Night of the Iguana.

* * *

Flash forward to Texas nearly 20 years later, and my version of the old Mystery Date Game ("I got a dud!") hadn't improved a great deal. There were lots of bad moments--guys who wanted to marry me ten seconds into the evening, guys I might have wanted to marry but who couldn't take their eyes off who might walk into the restaurant next, guys who are looking for financial support ('cause it's too late for moral support), guys who want nothing more than, shall we say, "athletic support"--with me as the jockstrap. And lots and lots of narcissists of the "Well, enough about me, let's talk about you--what do you think about me?" variety.

I'd like to think my lowest point was the night I met the pig farmer from Del Rio.

Him: "Hi, how are you?"

Me: "Good and yourself."

Him: "Very good, but very tired. I worked so hard all day. And I drove in from Del Rio tonight."

Me: "Hmmm, that's a ways off."

Him: "Maybe you would let me stay with you tonight? I would make it worth your while [begins rubbing my shoulder]."

Me: "Hmmm, well, I don't really know you . . . "

Him: "Well, what would you like to know?"

Me: "Ha, OK, your name first! Then maybe what kind of work do you do?"

Him: "Bob. I work on a farm."

Me: "Hi, Bob-who-works-on-a-farm. What kind of work do you do on the farm?"

Him: "I work with the pigs."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Him: "Pigs. You know, oink, oink, I work on a pig farm."

Me: "Ah, I see. Oh, hey, I see my friend Fouchat over there, let me go say hi . . . ."

Now I've got nothing against the working man--in fact, they can be quite appealing--but I'm from North Carolina, and I know pig farms. The smell greets you several miles before the farm, and while Bob smelled fine from where I was standing, I just thought it best not to take any chances--especially if he couldn't spin his career any better than "oink, oink, I work on a pig farm." Even a simple "I'm into pork belly futures" would've worked.

But no matter. That whole "squeal like a pig" scenario would have popped into my head, regardless of whether he was investing in pork or calling it to supper.

In retrospect, though, that was nothing. My truly lowest point, the Death Valley on the geological map of love, was when the one potentially strong relationship I had going fizzled out in the space of a week because of Dr. Pepper and Brummel & Brown yogurt/butter spread.

It all started out great with Egoslavia. It was one of those friendships that caught on fire, turning into the kind of relationship I had wanted for years, someone with whom I shared a worldview and some social and cultural interests, who had a sense of humor, who could be a lot of fun, got on well with my friends, was intelligent, thoughtful, sexy, and . . . oh wait, what happened to kind?

I forgot to look for kind. And kindness counts, because if you spend your time bitching out a waitress because the restaurant doesn't carry Dr. Pepper, just Pepsi products, how far do you have to travel to be mad at me for not having any real butter in the house for your morning toast?

Not very far at all, it turns out.

So it was Rumble in the Dairyland: Brummel & Brown vs. Land o' Lakes. All told, I'm sure it was much more than that. My car was giving me grief, and I needed a new one, so I was preoccupied with and distraught by that major financial decision. I was carrying some debt, which I and I alone was responsible for and intended to keep that way, but which made the jet-set take off and land no farther away than Houston for the weekend. I probably complained about my job a little too much, something I'm still doing--and I've changed jobs twice since then. (So caveat potential suitor there.)

I figured it out all too late--that I was supposed to be the daddy figure in the relationship. The sugar daddy. And for pity's sake, please make sure it's pure sugar and not some vile substitute.

I finally caught on when I met my predecessor at a party, his previous long-term relationship, all 350+ over-trust-funded, highly opinionated, snobbish and decaying pounds of him, who had lavished Ego with a new iMac (after they broke up, mind you), paid off his school loans, took him on trips wherever he wanted to go (hell, took his family on trips, too), bought him clothes (although, oddly, they never seemed to venture too far from the Nautica outlet store), catered to his every whim. So on and so forth.

Sorry, I guess I just lack the income and the interest to compete with that. Nor would I want to or even know how to. Although that doesn't make the disappointment and hurt any less real.

* * *

Will it be better in Central Pennsylvania? Too soon to tell. But among the pig farmers, heartbreakers, and snake handlers, I'm left wondering who my audience is? Who do I appeal to? If I were a TV show, would I be on basic or digital cable? Would I skew so freaky that I'd be canceled in the first 5 minutes and immediately be replaced with reruns of America's Favorite Tractor Pulls? Would anyone TiVo me? Would anyone trade me as a cult classic, bootleg DVD on eBay?

On the way home from work the other day, I stopped off at the Distelfink drive-in north of Gettysburg to drown my troubles in a birch beer and some french fries. In the space of the 10 minutes it took to get my order, I got flirted with twice. Pretty good odds, if I do say so, but the key word here is "odd."

The first flirtation was from a biker chick in short shorts, boots, a death metal band t-shirt, and wild, wild hair. Her hair reminded of that witch from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the one who flies off leaving behind a trail of hairpins in her wake.

I have had women flirt with me before--and there's the infamous moment, which my friend Jean Naté loves to remind me of, when I was stopped at a traffic light in San Antonio and a young woman decided to flash her rather ample breasts my way, as a way to strike up a conversation (I'm guessing). I'm always caught by surprise at these times--both by the boob sharing and by women hitting on me in general. I feel like already I have a big sign over my head that says "WRONG TREE," but maybe we all enjoy a challenge every now and again.

Anyway, Biker Barbarella kept eyeing me, trying to get me to look her way. Paranoic that I am, I half-feared that at any second she was going to yell out, "Next to the Subaru! Richard Simmons in dress clothes! Smear the queer, fellas!" And then she and her biker friends would hurt me in like a totally Angels Hard as They Come way.

But no, apparently my imagination is as overactive as my gaydar is misguided. She merely smiled coyly, flicked her eyebrows my way, waved, and climbed on the back of her hog--that is to say her huge boyfriend/paramour, as well as the motorcycle they rode in on. Then they both sped off into the sunset.

Almost immediately afterwards, a not-unattractive mejicano in a pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot, walked up to the counter to talk with a friend, then came back toward his vehicle.

I noticed a rainbow-colored strip of dancing bears on the back glass of the cab and thought, oh ho, even way out here in Bumf**k, Mason-Dixonia, we've got ourselves some gay boys. Some *other* gay boys, I should say.

As he neared his truck, he tipped his cowboy hat at me, dazzled me with a brilliant smile, a friendly "hi there!" and before I knew it he was off toward the horizon without me. Probably heading home to his husbear.

So maybe just maybe I've still got a certain something that might appeal to someone, somewhere out there.

It's just that I have the sinking feeling that that someone is a truck-driving, hog-riding vaquero/biker chick, who handles snakes, prefers real butter and Dr. Pepper and will accept no substitutes, and slops the pigs on a ranch 150 miles from anywhere.

* * *

I've been listening to an old Lene Lovich tune from the '70s lately, a punkish dance tune called "Lucky Number." You can read the complete lyrics here (although I'm not sure they've got them exactly right), but the first part goes something like this:

I've everything I need to keep me satisfied/
There's nothing you can do to make me change my mind/
I'm having so much fun/
My Lucky Number's one

And then toward the end, the song goes:

This rearrangement suits me now I must confess/
The number one was dull and number two is best/
I wanna stay with you/
My Lucky Number's two

I'm not quite convinced that number two is best for me, that number one is all that dull, "the loneliest number" that I ever knew and all that. One may be who I am; that may be the arrangement that suits me best.

Still, I don't know that I'm quite ready to quit looking for my Ennis Del Midstate or my Jack Twist-and-Shout--and for the record, I'm ready for a Jack, who wants to be in a relationship, rather than an Ennis, who isn't sure and can't handle it. Whether my lucky number is a one or a two, whether casinos come to Pennsylvania or not, and whether I'm ever able to win more than $10 from a Vegas slot machine, I find that I still have a taste for gambling.

Here's hoping for lucky numbers from here on out. Here's hoping for a sure bet coming my way soon.