My friends are oblivious.  Just…oblivious.  Either that, or they think I’m hopeless and I need to give up trying to find a lifemate because they’ve decided I never will, and they just don’t have the nerve to tell me so.  I’m not good looking enough.  I’m too geeky.  I’m too old.  They checked my Use-By date and it’s expired.  It must be that.  Or they just don’t care.  I can’t believe they don’t care.  So they must be oblivious.  Or they think I’m hopeless. 

Last night I made another attempt to get some people I know to introduce me to someone they’d told me about months ago.  He was a guy that they’d noticed was yanking my chain at The Miss Gaye Universe DC Ball some months ago.  I found out later they’d tried to get us together in the same room at one point but it didn’t happen for some reason.  They told me about it afterward, and everything they told me about him seemed too good to be true.  He was they told me, single, an IT geek like myself, a really nice guy according to his friends, and into older guys…which alas I guess I am these days.  In the weeks becoming months that followed, I’ve been nudging and cajoling my friends to Fucking Try Again! and it never happened.  If I had any contact info for him myself I’d have taken this matter into my own hands long ago but I don’t.  He’s just a first name to me, and a few photos I took of him at the ball.  Last night I brought it up again to one of them and the initial response I got just floored me because it seemed at first he didn’t even know what I was talking about.  And then he realized.  Oh…him…

WTF???  And then I get The Advice every lonely person who ever fucking lived gets…  You need to lower your standards…broaden your view…   Blah, blah, woof, woof.  Wow.  Great Advise there!  Just imagine the happy couple years later, whose significant other followed that advice, strolling hand-in-hand down the beach one romantic evening…  "I love you…"  "I love you too…but that’s because I lowered my standards…"

It’s like they’ve made up their minds that I’m not making any effort myself to find a boyfriend.  It’s frustrating.  I have to assume it’s because it was so easy for them, and that it’s excruciatingly difficult for me can only mean I’m making it difficult somehow and I just need to stop doing that.

I’ve tried the bars and clubs.  But I am shy.  When it comes to approaching people cold I just keep drawing a blank, and all the more so when it’s a beautiful guy that’s yanking my chain.  Tell me I need to get over it all you want but that’s the way I am, and any successful strategy for finding a mate either takes that into account or it’s doomed to failure, plain and simple.  Or to put it another way, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  I may be shy, but I’m not crazy.  The bar scene is a great place to socialize with my friends.  But it is simply not somewhere I can go to Make friends.  Unless I have other friends with me and they’re willing to help me break the ice.  Which…they’re not.  Well…one of them seems to be.

I need someone willing to introduce me to potential boyfriends.  What I’ve found actually, is that most people find their other half that way.  Most Heterosexuals that is.

I did an informal survey of my heterosexual neighbors some time ago, asking them how they’d found their other half.  I only asked the ones in long term relationships.  What I discovered, unsurprisingly, was that about three fourths of them had been introduced to each other by mutual friends or by a friend of the family.  Sometimes it was at a party.  Sometimes it was a church or community social.  Sometimes it was some other activity.  But almost all of the couples had found each other via the networking of friends and family and community. 

Obviously, because of the enormous cultural hostility we have to live our lives in, this isn’t how a lot of gay couples are going to find each other. If the gay son is the shame of his family, they’re probably not going to introduce him to the gay son of a neighbor or friend.  If a heterosexual’s gay friend is merely the "some" in "some of my best friends are", then obviously they’re not going to give a flying fuck how lonely their "friend" is, or even notice that he might be a good match for that other gay guy another friend of theirs told them about.  The very thought of getting two gay guys together for a date probably squicks them out enough they don’t even consider it, and meanwhile their gay "friend’ spends one day of his life after another alone.  The social network heterosexuals live in every moment of their lives and take for granted just doesn’t willingly want to work for us.  But the damnable thing is often our own networks fail us too when it comes to relationships.  And I think that’s because so many of us seem to have internalized the message of the haters, that homosexual relationships either don’t really exist, or they only really amount to brief, barren assignations. 

Stanley Kurtz bastardizes a Dutch study to prove that same sex couples don’t last very long and are never monogamous. The Family Research Council bastardizes statistics on domestic violence so they can claim that same sex couples are more likely to assault each other then love each other.  Orson Scott Card claims same sex couples are only playing at house and insists that acceptance of bogus same sex marriages will lead to the end of the human race.  We get angry and counter with real science.  We laugh and mock the haters.  We fight back however we can.  But the assault on our human dignity is relentless and we as a people, need to look, really and honestly look, at how much of that crap we’ve internalized despite ourselves.

We need to, as a people, stop and look at all the ways that hate has made our love lives desperate, and fight it, because there is no more noble a fight then that one.  In the face of a venomous hostility that insists, absolutely insists, that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, we can wage no greater battle then, in addition to proudly embracing our sexual nature, nurture relationships, and nurture as well a social ecology where lovers can find each other, and make a home for themselves in a world that keeps throwing up every barrier it can to their love.  You want to wage the radical war on homophobia?  Next time you see two lonely hearts who might be right for each other, bring them together.  Even if they don’t find that place of joy and contentment within each other, every time, every opportunity you take to nurture love, you defeat hate.

So much, so obvious.  At least to me.  But not apparently to everyone.  So on the way home last night, finding myself taking yet another drive back to Baltimore no closer to finding my other half then I was last week, I tried to think of what I could do differently now.  Hanging out in a bar is never going to work for me.  My friends won’t help, frustratingly even when they happen across someone who might make a good match.  So once more my thoughts turned to dating services.  It’s one of the bitter ironies of my life, that I’ve probably spent as much on dating services as some gay guys have spent on ex-gay therapy.  Yes, it runs into the thousands over the course of my life.  And like the ex-gay ministries, the dating services charge you up front for something they don’t even promise to deliver.

And a thought came to me, as it has often lately when I reconsider dating services…This is backwards isn’t it?  Imagine going out to a restaurant and having to pay up front just to look at a menu with only the Possibility of getting anything on it.  Imagine having an attack of appendicitis and having to pay the entire hospital bill for only the Chance of getting a qualified surgeon to operate.  Here’s a list of surgeons we’ve matched you up with Mr. Garrett…  Dr. Hideo has a degree in floor waxing from the Johnson and Johnson Institute…  Dr. Albatross has performed many successful tattoo removals.  Dr. Dustbunny is an expert on the biology of nose hair in south American primates…   We’re sorry you find our matches unacceptable…perhaps you should lower your standards…

Has anyone actually done a study of the success rates of dating services?  They all seem to have so many happy couples in their testimonials, but somehow I’ll bet the odds of winning the MegaMillions jackpot are way better. 

Suppose instead of us paying them just to throw a random list of other lonely people at us, they only got paid for the matches that actually worked?

I’ve been turning that thought over in my head for years now.  Bitterly.  But then it occurred to me last night that nothing was stopping me from doing just that myself.  Why not create my own dating service that works the way I think they should, and use it to help me find my other half…?

Some months ago I read a sad story of an elderly British man who offered to pay someone to be his drinking companion at a local pub.  Perhaps that sort of thing would work for that sort of companionship.  But for staringly obvious reasons you can’t just offer people money to go on a date with you.  The true heart would take offense, and the cheats would flock to your door.  And the prostitutes escorts.  You can’t buy love with money.  But you can buy introductions, which is what the dating services have been marketing to lonely people for ages.  Last night I realized something:  If Mr. Right is really out there, looking for someone like me, then all of Mr. Right’s friends are that dating service.  I just need to get them to work for us.

So. Instead of throwing myself at yet another dating service, I’m going to create my own.  And you’re it.  Maybe.  Possibly. 

Do you know someone who might be a good match for me?  Do you know someone who knows someone?  Probably you don’t.  But maybe I can interest you in looking over my dating profile and thinking about the single gay guys you know.  Probably you will draw a blank then anyway.  But maybe I can interest you in keeping an eye out for him.

Here’s how it works: I’m going to post my dating profile page here soon.  When I do, take a look.  If you think you know somebody that might make a good match for me, write me about him.  Don’t introduce us right away.  You tell me about him.  If I’m interested I’ll say so.  If not, I’ll honestly say why and maybe that gives you a better idea of what I’m looking for.  Feel absolutely free to ask me questions if you feel you need to know more about me before you introduce me to one of your friends. But probably the best source of information about the kind of person I am is my blog.  It goes back years.  Read it.  And the cartoon pages.  And the photo galleries.  Between them they really should tell you everything you need to know about me, about the kind of person I am and whether you want to introduce me to a friend of yours.  By all means, show it to him too.

So let’s say we agree your friend and I should meet each other.  You introduce us…maybe at a nice club or restaurant some place where we can all chat informally and have a nice evening out.  Maybe nothing more comes of it then we all have a nice dinner at a good restaurant.  But maybe what comes of that is I like him and he likes me.  So maybe we start dating.  One date.  A second date.  You can’t really tell if the spark has found tinder after only a few days, or even weeks.  But if it lasts at least six months…you get a thousand dollars. 

Another six months, another thousand.  And another.  And another.  The longer we keep dating, the more you get, every six months, up to six grand.  So, we date for at least three years, you end up with six grand. 

The point is this: I don’t want to be matched up with someone who isn’t looking for, or isn’t emotionally equipped for a long term relationship.  So, hopefully, stipulating that we have to both be interested enough in each other to date for at least half a year filters out the one night stand guys, and the cheats who only want the money.  But on the other hand even given the best intentions all around it won’t always work.  Dating isn’t an exact science or there wouldn’t be so many lonely people.  I can’t expect people to make an effort on my behalf if I make the rewards seem difficult to impossible to win.  So you don’t have to find me Mr. Right to get some money out of this.  All I’m asking for are the kind of good matches I never got from commercial dating services.

But wait…there’s more..!  If our dating manages to move us to the stage where we move in together and set up a household for ourselves, you get five grand more.   And if we ever decide to tie the knot (married legally, not civil unioned), you get ten grand. This is in addition to the five grand over two and a half years.  So for example, if we date the full term and then say it’s another two or three years later before we decide to move in together, you still get that five grand.  If it takes us several more years to work up the nerve to marry, you still get that ten grand.  Because you introduced us.  Because without you, we might never have met.  Because I made you this bargain.  Oh…and you get a wedding invite too.  And a standing invitation to every summer back yard barbecue we throw.

So.  Introduce me to someone and you could eventually end up with twenty-one grand out of it (and my eternal gratitude).  But even if it doesn’t go there, as long as it went Somewhere you could still make a thousand or more out of it, and I will still be grateful because even if it didn’t last more then half a year or so, as long as it was honest and real it will have been worth the try.  And I can still keep this deal out there for you, or someone else to give it another try.

I’m going to spend the next week working on a dating profile page I can send around, along with a more formal statement of the bargain I’m willing to make here, in exchange for an introduction that leads to serious dating.  And I’ll post progress reports, for better or worse, on the blog.  I’ve tried just about everything else.  Maybe this will do the trick.  And yes, my oblivious friends are welcome to participate.  Stay tuned.