So like I've explained before, the top three questions in any gay chat online are:
1. A/S/L?
2. Have place?
3. What are you looking for?
There's also a fourth here, actually, which springs into use when you don't have a picture of the other person to check out: What's your type? And this is where that great big phenomenon called the Gay Sort comes in.
In case you had no idea before, gay men can be divided neatly and without much of a whimper, into 'sorts'. As the gay interior designer/ decorator explains, he looks at the entire exercise as a folder, with its own little partitions, A-Z, which have little leaflets bearing the biodata of several personable and not-so-personable young and old men. So when he feels like he's in the mood, he flips the folder over to type 'A' and dials a man. Simple and sweet.
What are the types, then? Well, the porn sites online delineate gay men according to body type. So, we have a) the bears, big and swarthy, with oodles of body hair, b) the twinks, fresh and bratty and below 19 years of age, c) the hunks, who're between 20 and 35 years old, call the gym their second home, and don't have too much body hair, d) the matures, who're the oldies above 40 years, and so on and so forth. There are also several subcategories here, for example, the bearcubs, who're not so hairy and not chubby at all and quite young, and the cute guys, who're in the same age group as the hunks, though they may not have the rugged muscles, and they make up for that lack with a certain twinkle in their eyes or their smiles. For the thinking man alone, beware.
;-)
And then, there are the other types, that personable young gay men like d/d and I decide upon, over a glass of chilled white wine and a story about an ex. There's the penguin, who's the very nice young guy but who fcuks your love life completely because he's not in the same emotional space that you are, and it's so much more fun to blame the other guy than it is to blame yourself. There's also the cute, but unattractive tag that fits some guys - the classic guy who's perfect for a relationship, has excellent taste, but you're simply not sexually attracted to him. There's the underage kid, who's really not that underage at 21-22, but then you hate the idea of being in a relationship with someone who's always going to be the 'younger one' and for whom you'll have to be the 'mature guy', so that there's no hope in hell that there'll be anyone to handle your tantrums when they come. There's the other twenty-one year old skanks, whom you despise, because they get all the attention at every damn gay gathering, just because they're twenty-one and you're twenty-four, though they're more or less on the same cuteness scale as you.
And a million others.
So that, when you get asked that question, What's your type?, you have a vast array of answers to choose from. And yet, I wonder if it's ever possible to choose. I never can, actually.
Take me for instance. I would probably fit the bill as the cute guy between 20 and 30 years old, who can also be a sort of bear cub. But what's my type? Tough question. The guys I've dated have been all sorts, really. Bearcub, muscle-hunk, penguin, cute but unattractive, underage kid, yadayadayada. So, very often, the Great Folder Theory just comes a cropper.
But the importance of classification is very often not for rigid swearing-by. That's never the case, even in science, the motherlode of classification theory. You need the theory as a sort of yardstick, and sometimes, for nothing but to measure how you've changed. Types are not meant to remain as the be-all and the end-all, as in I slept with a bearcub when I was eighteen, so that means I'm always attracted to bears, but rather to see how you make that progression from a bear to a penguin.
In case I forgot to say so earlier, Welcome to the Zoo.
No comments:
Post a Comment