| Gay.com and the Single Guy
By John Olski
posted 8/29/03 My summer fling for the rural gay guy: an encounter with Gay.com personals. I
decided to try the popular Internet site for a couple of months and, while I didn't exactly become a CEO of love, I managed to rise somewhat above minimum-wage desire.
Anyone can post a free personal ad on Gay.com simply by completing a personal profile. One can also enter chat rooms at no cost, to view profiles and promote one's own. Imagine people going to gay bars with UPC codes on their shirts and scanners in their hands, chatting on one level while scanning and reading
about each other on another.
Unfortunately, it's easy to lose interest in the chat room routine: "Hi Skeeter28 -- LOL -- ;^) -- Bye!"
The alternative is to do a profile search, entering criteria for a love match and sorting through a list of results. This is "Premium" service, costing around seventeen dollars a month or less, per month, for a year's commitment. I couldn't imagine searching Gay.com profiles for a year, so I settled on two
months.
One responds to a match via e-mail, making the Premium service a bit like responding to newspaper personal ads. That I had tried before, so Premium service didn't seem too intimidating.
Personals force you to define who you are. To begin with Gay.com personals, you need to create the profile. This means providing personal statistics and preferences on height, weight, drug and alcohol use, best attributes (body, face, personality, etc.), hobbies, activities and the like. Much of this can be accomplished by checking appropriate options, though text boxes provide additional opportunity for self-expression.
Personals force you to define what you want. You can do a "Relationship" search on Gay.com based on profile preferences. Don't like smokers? Check the appropriate box. Essentially, after filling out a profile, you can also do a profile for your ideal match and use it as a search tool.
I wasn't convinced that a Relationship search would help me find a compatible match. Sure, an atheist would be like me in terms of the label, but in experience I haven't found atheists to be any nicer (or worse) than the rest of the population.
I stayed with the "Quick" search, which looks for matches by sex, age and distance from any U.S. zip code. One can also search any populated region of the world by starting with a major city and specifying a cardinal direction and distance from that city. In Wisconsin, the default cities are Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay.
I began with all men within 10 miles of my own zip code. Being that I live on the Door Peninsula, that search yielded just eleven results, though I was surprised to know two of them -- one of whom I would have thought was seeking women, not men, an eye-opener that was almost worth seventeen dollars.
Expanding my search to all men within 20 miles of my zip code yielded 38 profiles. But again, because I live on the Door Peninsula, 14 of those profiles were men from Marinette, Menominee or other areas of Upper Michigan, all within 30 miles of my house but at least 90 miles around Green Bay by car. (An 80-mile search, I learned, won't just take me to Appleton, but also to Michigan's Lower Peninsula -- at least 200 miles by car.)
Searching within 30 miles of my zip code yielded over 250 results. Out of curiosity, I compiled some statistics on the first 100.
67% of the men were ages 25 to 40. There were six 19-year-olds, followed by a general rise from one 20-year-old to seven 30-year-olds. Each year of the 30s decade was represented, while the 40s showed a few blanks: no 43- and 49-year-old men. Only four men were in their 50s and one man in his 60s.
38% of the men didn't post a photo, including all four of the 46-year-old guys. That's a rough observation, however, as some photos aren't of very high quality, while others aren't even of people, but rather of items that represent hobbies or interests. Also, some of the guys who did post photos cropped off their heads to display better views of their genitals. Those men I avoided, fearing that a first date would be an X-rated Halloween tale with me as Ichabod Crane.
47% of the men I surveyed had "Adult" profiles, additional information on their sexual preferences, body hair, genital endowments and such. Generally, no age group was more likely to go Adult, though five of six 29-year-olds on my results list did, as well as all five 40-year-olds. Only one of the six 19-year-olds had an Adult profile.
Personals force you to choose. It may be politically correct to give everyone due consideration, but that's logistically impossible, as there are a lot of people on Gay.com. It's also biologically unrealistic, since most of us do have physical preferences.
I decided to search for men within four years (plus or minus) of my own age. As one can receive a couple hundred matches in a profile search, I also narrowed my choices by avoiding people with adult profiles, who I thought were looking more for quick sex. Also nixed were people with no photos and dumb screen names, such as "HotKolbergBoi4u." Gay.com lists weight and height in its search results, and again (as with age) I chose to remain close to my own statistics.
Personals offer practice in beginning conversations. I tried to keep my e-mail replies short, to the length of the box Gay.com provides. This meant responding to a couple of items in the profile of the man to whom I replied, maybe something he noted about his work or recreational activities. Gay.com sends e-mail to a person's account without revealing the e-mail address, making it easy for people to avoid replying.
Personals offer experience with rejection. Many of us aren't going to find replies waiting in our inboxes, and we have to be satisfied with just making an effort to find a match. That may be good to keep in mind when approaching potential romantic interests in face-to-face situations, where rejection packs a bigger wallop. At least I tried!
To be sure that my Gay.com e-mail account worked, I did a test by responding to my own profile. For an ego boost, Gay.com gave me the same message it gives when I reply to other men: "Congratulations! You just responded to that cutie."
Of a dozen personals I responded to, I got one reply. This occurred when I tired of Green Bay and searched the Madison area. The man I spotted was four years older, had three photos posted and wrote about his love of the outdoors. I replied by asking for camping recommendations for northwest Wisconsin. When he wrote back -- a thrill just to score a hit -- he included his full name. A closer look at his photos confirmed that he was someone I had known in college but hadn't seen in a dozen years, again making my Gay.com fee worthwhile, though not necessarily for a romantic match.
In the end, I don't think on-line personals can replace real-time interaction, though I'd say they offer good experience. It helps to see other men, read what they're looking for, and take some initiative in responding to them. It might not make me really suave in a gay bar, but I know I can walk into such a place and better imagine who the men there are. As the relaxed public speaker imagines his audience naked, I'll do better at picturing men stripped of their attitudes.
I cancelled my Gay.com Premium service, but might consider picking it up again at some point for a refresher. In the meantime, I still have a personal profile and can enter a Gay.com chat room whenever I feel like it. And maybe, just maybe, someone will respond to me. |
