QueerComedian

Yesterday I posted three different things. I was bored. Two of these posts had pictures of celebrities in them, and in some cases those people were less than clothed. I guess I was trying to make a point, perhaps shock myself a little by posting them. I wanted to hide behind this semi-anonymous medium and say to the world "Look! These are the kind of men I like, but you can't judge because you don't know me".
But why should I hide? Am I ashamed of my feelings, my taste in men? Granted, some of the men I find attractive are less than conventionally hot. This doesn't mean I should apologise for finding them attractive and as I said in a previous post, as much as I may wish it, I'm not inferring anything about their sexualities at all. They're just nice to look at.
Writing this thing is like coming out all over again. Except this time I'm doing it differently.
I remember the first person I came out to was a friend of mine from school. I told her I was gay and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking through a shopping centre, my friend stopping every now and then (basically, every time a bloke under 30 went past) and hissing "What do you think of him?" in my ear.
Eventually I just started saying I found people attractive even if I didn't because it was so obviously what she wanted to hear. Picture the scene if you will - I'm fifteen at this point and my friend has never experienced someone craving the sexual attentions of a person of the same sex before. I mean, sure, we joked about it in school - who didn't? When you're fifteen, EVERYTHING is gay. "Gay" is just another word to stick in your teen vocabulary, like "cool" and "shit" and all the other words you'd hear out in the playground. You're discovering who you are. So how am I supposed to explain to my friend that the sixteen-year-old skinny blonde kid she just pointed out to me in a Virgin Megastore was not as hot as his dad, aged about 40, who trailed along behind him looking bored and carrying four shopping bags, bulging with stuff?
Of course, the whole things smacks of some nightmarish, Freudian father fetish, right? You're reading this even now, holding your breath til your eyes light on the words "never got on with my father" or "felt unloved and rejected by a male authority figure" or "lacked a strong male role model when I was growing up".
All of that is bullshit. I have a great relationship with my father, always have done, always will do. He's not a huge fan of me being gay but we just don't discuss it. The fact is that I don't know why I feel this affinity for older men, I just do. I always have - I have never yet dated anyone younger than me, I've always got on better with people older than myself (men AND women)... I guess I just perhaps feel older than I am.
Right now I'm seeing someone. He's a couple years older than me. He's got dark hair, a tattoo... But I don't know that it'll go anywhere. It doesn't thrill me when I see him, I don't get really excited every time he sends me a message. The kisses I send back are routine. They perform a function. He is gorgeous, his eyes sparkle.
It is a conventional attractiveness; he is very beautiful, very pretty. He's got a beard but only just - it's just a thin line of hair framing his jawline. His chest is home to sparse hair, recently grown, just pushing through the follicles of his chest. He does wax it quite often but he says he's trying to grow it out. As much as I do like him I can't help but think, every time we kiss, "If you grew your chest hair and grew a proper beard I would love you".
My problem with this thing is that I want what I don't have. Everyone does. It's this century's Human Condition. I'm pretty sure that even if he DID grow a full beard (not that he ever would) or have more chest hair than hair on his head, there would still be something about him that I would want to "improve". He'd be too camp, or I'd want him to lose his piercings (which I kind of do) and ultimately I've got to ask: "What do I want? What am I trying to get by physically "improving" him in this way? Why isn't he good enough, and will he ever be?"
I know the answer as well as any self-respecting gay man - I want a straight boyfriend. We all do, secretly. The straight man is the gay dream.
He is lovely though, and I feel so horrible for saying all of that stuff. I don't think I'm allowing myself to just be happy, you know? I think no matter which bloke I'm with, there'll always be a reason why that one over there, the one I'm not holding hands with, the one getting off with that other bloke, is better.
So perhaps I should throw in my lot and go single and celibate. For some reason I can't bring myself to like the blokes that like me. Maybe I think I don't deserve them. Maybe I still hate myself for being who I am and this is my grown-up version of self-harm that doesn't involve scissors and pins and blood.
Maybe.