It’s been quite a while since I lamented being single – I figured out some time ago that there is nothing I can do about it, and I may as well enjoy myself while I’m still in this strange queer playground of a city. A couple of years ago, my therapist at the time, a wise and twinkly woman unafraid of putting her finger on the jugular, asked me what I would do if I didn’t find a long-term partner in my lifetime. Quick as a shot, I replied “I’d kill myself”. I was convinced of the truth of that, it came from the gut. That’s how deep the fear was, that I was unlovable inside, and the world would prove it by keeping me single.

Now, I feel very differently. It was a vital question to ask – for unless one addresses the reality of one’s present life, and accepts it, there is bugger-all one can do to change it. That’s annoyingly irrational to those who like to know how the mind works in cause-and-effect terms, but, again and again, I find that where there is a healthy sense of paradox about life, there’s a reasonably well-adjusted human being.
I am, to all intents and purposes, a confirmed bachelor, over these past dozen years. I used to be very angry about this, raging at everyone who came along into my life and who then disappointed me/confirmed my worst fears. But I also used to think it was my fault. I used to wonder what it was that I was doing wrong. I began to think, without a sense of irony, like Pollyanna, that all men were bastards and I fell prey to the many “seduce and destroy” characters (a la Magnolia) because they could tell that there was something victimy in me that was written in neon across my forehead. I’d identify as the one being courted, which was easy when I was younger and fairly pretty. The “lying hound of a man” that I would chat up and meet on the dance floor, or via the internet, or a chat line, would, later on, play out his more active, philandering role, almost as requested, because that’s what men do when in relationship with clingy needy controlling partners, the role I played almost instinctively.
In each romantic opportunity (or each sexual opportunity that I misread as being romantic), I’d try to be more cool, more warm, more confident, more comic, more aloof, but, nevertheless, I placed myself, by being so willing to adapt and control the situation, in the position of ready-to-be abandoned victim. There is no middle ground.
I happen to like “men’s men”. The more direct, “I’ll have you now” their attitude is, the hornier I find them, and of course – the five star paradox – the less likely they are going to settle down with anyone.
Players don’t want to stop playing. It is madness to think otherwise.
I have become deeply suspicious of the romanticism of the dance floor, I now invariably try to kick for touch anytime I “click” with someone I meet on the scene. By which I mean: I won’t play the game that everyone seems to want to play: a piercing gaze shooting electricity through the foggy room, a few flirty glances, a scowl or a smile, depending on the sexual mood, and then a confident stride across the room, towards a grinning hello and a stab at an original opening line from someone. When that happens, if I’m on the receiving end of it, I just don’t believe it. I am firmly convinced that he’s stuck in an unrealistic romantic bubble, that he wants his own fantasy fulfilled of “having a boyfriend” and that his advances are nothing to do with me, except for the (not unimportant, but still not top of the list) confirmation that there is a mutual sexual attraction. Given that I’ve lost so much weight over the past year and am quite fit now, I take even that with a pinch of salt. Nice, but it’s only a waistline.
All is transient. If someone is meant to be around in my life longer than a romantic snog and shag, then it won’t be something I have any control over. I like men because they’re men – and that includes the almost default tendency, if pushed, to remain self-contained. Germaine Greer, tartly enough, referred to the “solipsism that is man” recently. Go, girl.
There is a truth to the man-child, hopeless-hapless, hen-pecked, dominated by“her indoors” stereotype of a man in relationship – that is how a lot of men feel. But, and this is the mystifying thing for many queer men – heterosexual men will pay that price gladly for the sake of a strong relationship. Men do far better in general if we are in a relationship.
Today, as I’m struggling mightily with a flu that people have been talking about for months now in London, I feel hot and a bit lost with a painful cough and a stupid head and a bit in need of someone to cook for me and take care of me and make me laugh.
Wanly. b