How to do the wrong thing right
We have quite of lot of angst this month over young men looking for daddies and daddies looking to be taken as something other than a wallet with a penis. Let’s get right to it.
Dear Howard,
I’ve a fossil-crush on one of my SMU professors. He’s, like, every gay freshman’s wet dream: late fifties, maybe even early sixties (I purposefully haven’t Googled him yet); he sports a gray lumberjack beard, shaved head and geeks-out a bulging pant zipper that I — apparently — am laser-focused on class: Dr. ____ smiles during his lectures when he catches me looking. A couple of times, he’s even winked my way as I’m leaving class. I’ve tried every hormonal ruse I can think of to seduce Dr. Pencils-In-His-Shirt-Pockets, short of literally scrawling, “Will you fuck me, please, master?” across the top of my essays. Then, finally, the other day when I was dawdling behind, wiping my forehand with my shirttails — just so Doc would, hopefully, notice the invitational, fuzzy blond “happy trail” snaking down my abs. I was the last student exiting his class, as usual, and he totally grinned at me, all initiation-like, but sighed, “Robert, not only is it professionally unethical, but I’m old enough to remember all the blonds who died first.” WTF? Howard, I’ve been racking my 3.8 brain ever since, trying to figure out what that even means: Your code-breaker assistance, please? — Bob
Dear Robert,
You’re over-racking, too hard, that encrypted-blond brain, Bobby: He means he still “geeks-out” too many painfully harbored memories of former blond friends and/or lovers, who are no longer with us for him to enjoyably accept your not-so-subtle invitations. Bob, my dear ignorant boy, a huge swath of sexually-active blond gay men born between, say, 1950 through to 1965, is tragically now gone, taken too young. After all, as you well know, blonds are pretty much required to be bottoms in our culture —the younger the blond, the more bottom he’s prettily required be: “All the blonds died first” is your prof’s way of saying he’s lived through too much loss to spend much effort on another blond. Try, dizzy boy, dying your “happy trail” brunette; maybe you’ll get to sample Dr. ___’s professorial bulge then.
Dear Howard,
I’m 58 years old. I was lucky in love for a little while: I got to enjoy the one true long-time partner of my life for a too-brief, 14-year span: He passed away in 1996, on the cusp of the new lifesaving meds just coming out. During these two decades since, I’ve occasionally dated, and twice even met someone who I thought might be worth making a commitment to again, but both times things fizzled after only a few months: My “ignition” spark wasn’t there. I’m not clinically depressed, apparently — enough shrinks have told me as much. Lately, though, I’ve noticed a sort of sea-change in the way men I’m attracted to behave around me: all of them expect me to foot every bill, irrelevant of whether it’s a dinner date that I’m asked out on by another man or whether it’s just a bar that I’m hanging around in, talking up a cute guy ordering drinks. Suddenly, I’m the old fool required to reach for his wallet first, no matter what! I hate, hate, hate, growing older, being gay and single. You have any hook-up recommendations for a man my age to follow— a list, maybe, sans being too overly brutal towards me? I look great for my age. — Bert
Dear Berthold,
“Overly brutal” … moi? I assume these days you’re now capable — while pushing 60, Miss Havisham — of no longer confusing brutality with honest candor? If so, have you truly looked in a mirror since last the love of your life tragically departed way too soon some 20-plus years ago back? Have you reset your personal calendar ahead during these two decades since of dating evolution, “great” though you may indeed look (for your age)? You now must pay to play, sweetie, or else you jerk off to laptop porn alone; or you can be that old lech lurking in a bar’s dark corner — the one who always tried picking you up at 2 a.m. back when you were but 23.
Ain’t no man your own age, Beatrice — no matter how hot you still think you are, or he is — who’s going to give you the time of day anymore. At 58, face it, single gay men have but three options remaining for getting laid in old Gayville: 1) Are you wealthy enough to afford gold-digger boy toys who’ll pretend they love you, in direct relation to the correlating value-amount of gifts and prizes you bestow upon them? 2) Are you minimally well-off enough to hire, for an hour or two, the occasional male escort who’ll actually justify keeping your Viagra prescription refilled? 3) Are you at least willing to cruise the local bath houses from the hours of 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. and pray you snag that horny stud muffin desiring to just desperately get-off fast, and beat the hell out of there quickly, no matter what sleazy sorts of fossils still lurk about such unholy corridors as he’s hornily strutting at zero in the morning?
Cheer up, Bertie: A 21st-century gay man being 58 and single isn’t fatal, in and of itself. As last resort, there’s always, oh, OurTime.com, or MatureSinglesOnly.com, or, SingleAndOver50.com … or, of course, everyone’s tried-and-true, favorite hookup site, Grindr. A few slutty boys out there go for daddies exclusively, so long as you take “ignition” charge, and don’t whine. Always be a bit flexible. You’ll thrive, Bert.
— Howard Lewis Russell
Do you have a question — about etiquette, love, life or work — that needs an answer? Send your problem to AskHoward@DallasVoice.com and he may answer it.