At Christmas, us single guys probably get a little more desperate. There is something about the festive season that makes you think you should be waking up next to someone in a plush city centre apartment you both share, while your chic and modern Christmas tree twinkles as you make egg nog latte's to drink in bed. Instead, I wake up surrounded by snotty tissues dowsed in Olbas Oil, next to no one, in my parents house, with a fat lip and a waning ego.
The other day I realised that the nearer to Christmas we get, the lower our standards become. But it's stupid because in less than 4 weeks you aren't going to meet someone, make a settlement and then be wearing matching Christmas jumpers on Christmas Day drinking frothy Christmas hot chocolate next to each other soaking up each other's Christmasness. No? Well, you might be. Gays go through the motions like no other, and everything happens at the speed of light. By New Years Eve you'll be divorced. By Chinese New Year you'll be at the Nightingale, waiting for your rebound, drinking cheap fizzle piss from a bottle with a straw.
The irony though, Christmas for an adult who has lost the magic (and let's face it, if you're single, gay and work in retail, the magic is hard to hold on to), and as much as you understand the consequences and the irrationality, you still go ahead anyway, making plans in your head, hoping to get off with the guy from the other department at the Christmas party or like me, hoping in vain to meet someone in A&E. When did I become this? Oh wait... I've always been like this. Just very much in denial "I refuse to be tied down to anybody!". Yeah right.
The reality is this: the guy at the Christmas party will have a boyfriend. You will go home alone, or worse, go on to a sleazy bar in town where you will drown the rest of mid winter away in a rummy wave of despair, and go home with a guy who's old enough to be your
So, in spite of all that, you still hold onto the hope that is Internet Dating. Internet Dating is a strange thing for me, and it's a permanent fixture in a lot of gay guy's lives, to some it's always been there, they still have the same profile from 12 years ago, I know this because each time periodically I make a new one, they message me. Or like me, it's a certain bane of your life, providing you with enough drama to at least have something to fantasise about before you fall asleep at night, but never amounts to anything in real life.
I think, for me anyway, Internet dating is doomed. I was at work, and one thing I do when I am bored of repetitive folding and 'helloing' is daydreaming about an imaginary boyfriend or a relationship. However, what daydream starts with an online message 'wanna meet for a coffee sometime'? Is this what I have been reduced to? Having to adjust my daydreams to an online agenda? Because in my fantasy, I meet a guy in public, face to face, at a party, anywhere, and I go home thinking about the encounter, it stays on your mind. It's something to think about.
When you're online, it's already mapped out for you. You're already expecting the worst. And with how Christmas goes for me each year now, I already know that clicking reply won't get me anywhere good. But I'll still do it because I already know how it ends.
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