THE DATING D I E TThe T & A TEAM
ANTHONY PAULL
I’d like to report otherwise, but I’m finding a lack of maturity on the dating scene. In fact, I don’t see much dating happening at all; rather, I spy a lot of game-playing with men bored to pieces if sex doesn’t come before a hello. Is this common? They say the fastest way to kill a love life is to have a kid. But tell me: In order to have a love life, must you act like one? The truth is I had been going out quite often, but I discovered that if I’m not ready to be a slut, there’s not much out there for me. Therefore, I’ve been sacrificing any form of intimacy in the name of charity. Yes, I’m so giving when it comes to everything except my asshole. Consider me a swell guy except nothing swells on me and if it dares, I swat it away as if an offer of water to a barfly; tonight, I can relate because I’ve been around the sort, ‘celebrity’ bartending at a local watering hole, where afterward, I’m invited for a dip in a friend’s condo pool. Mind you, it’s a million minutes after midnight, and I’ve fed my fellow party people enough beer to fill the pool, but no matter. I’m half-drunk, and I’m up for an aquatic adventure. Being newly single, it beats sailing home to bob on a sea of bad thoughts. Or so I think.Now, you know how a plethora of petite stars on a clear night can trick any poor soul into a sudden case of the ‘sexies’? Well, it’s that night. Therefore clothes are off and vodka’s on the menu as I settle in the pool, surrounded by a small selection of barely clad sex sharks. I must admit; feeling sultry in my see-through briefs, I fall under a moon spell too.Then slowly, I lock on to the people’s faces around me. Supposedly, the majority of them are straight, so I don’t flirt. Instead, I cling to a circle of females without a care, until one guy – a firm, foxy man named Jay – swims at me. His slurred speech tells me he’s drunk. “Hey man, why won’t you kiss me?” he asks. Honestly, I hadn’t known it was an option, specifically after an earlier chat where he boasted about his ‘girl’.
“Uh, because you have a girlfriend,” I say. He flinches as if punched. “Dude, she’s not here. Besides, she’d think it’s hot,” he insists. Then, twisting his tongue ring, it catches the magic of the moon as he opens his mouth for a kiss. Still, I push him away. Can you believe that? I’m barely able to contain my boner, but somewhere in my maxed-out mind, I’m not at a point where I can settle for less or want more. Does that make sense? I can’t tell. I left a relationship behind because my boyfriend started kissing the dog before he found me barking for the same attention in the next room, and now I can’t say what I want, but I know I want something sexier than a sloppy kiss from a straight guy who slides up to me in the heat of my confusion. To top it off, as the president of the condo association comes down in her pink cotton ‘nighty’ to scream at us for swimming after permitted hours, one of Jay’s female cohorts takes a chance at turning the chaos into a competition. Drifting toward me, tits above the water, her chest reminds me of alligator humps. Threatening, so threatening. “I know. I have tits,” she says, pointing them like torpedoes. “BUT they deflate. Come on, pretend I’m a guy and kiss me. Jay and I are in a fight to see who can kiss the most people tonight.”It seems Jay wins. His strategy: cornering gay men who label the entire bit ‘cute’.One such gentleman, I later find slugging from the vodka bottle while no one is looking. “What are you doing?” I ask him.“Killing the germs!” he hollers. “Did you see how many queens that boy kissed?”Honestly no, I stopped counting after I refused to count myself in. Looking back, I wonder if I was being a sore sport. Had I lost my humor or had I gained a new sense of self since leaving my ex? Funny, when I was younger, I’d fling myself around so freely; I would never weigh the consequence. Now, it’s different; my ex had me set the bar higher. Our love – when it was great – taught me what I want from a winning kiss. Still, I wonder if it was ‘great’ because now I expect too much even when I’m not ready for it. What gets me through troubled water is I know others are in the same boat. So I swim without a life raft, afraid to kiss because it’ll likely set me further adrift from him. True, I know that’s what I need to find my feet. But lately, I’m caught in a tow, and my toe can’t find a place to touch. So here, I think of my ex – the only way to get his attention – and I keep from drowning with a doggy paddle.Click here to add text.
THE PRINCESS AND THE PEE-PEE
ANTHONY PAULL
Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. Screw me three times, we’re dating! Yes, isn’t it a wonder how fast we slip into relationships? Sure, we take our sweet-ass time in so many other aspects of our convoluted lives – forever pondering the purchase of a phone, car, or house – but when it comes to acquiring a partner, a life commitment, why do we so fall so fast for a beautiful face when we know the ugly truth: relationships are never perfect, and eventually, loved ones are destined to reveal a flaw, imaginary or not.“But everything looked perfect on paper!” Drew drunkenly slurs, guzzling his third beer of the evening. Home from college for the holidays, he has his fancy, black Prada scarf wrapped coiling his neck like an anaconda – a gift from his rich, sugar-daddy boyfriend. “Well, perfect until I saw his pee-pee. For the love of God, it’s so GROSS!”Yes, meet Drew. He’s um, well, special. Yes, since he was a wee, little bitch, he’s earnestly portrayed the princess role, disturbed by even the slightest bit of an imperfection in each of his string of boyfriends. The problem is he finds the most trivial things to pick apart. For example, take his last boyfriend. Drew ended their relationship because of the poor chap’s table manners. “He brought his face to his spoon instead of his spoon to his face,” Drew attests. “You should see how he eats soup, with his nose to the bowl. How could I live with that?”“But you can’t keep sabotaging your relationships over stupid shit,” I argue, as we depart from the pub, in route to the mall for some holiday shopping. Fanning his face with his scarf, Drew silences me with a slap on the arm as we greet mid-day traffic. Grid-locked in between snowbirds and a semi-truck, he tells me, with a slight whimper, that his boyfriend’s penis looks like a bonsai tree. “You don’t understand. It’s like, all crooked, and the hair is bushy, like in clumps. And veins everywhere. Really HARD veins. Like his shaft is made of bark.”“How awful,” I callously reply, with an eye-roll. “How ever will you make it work?”“Not funny,” he cries. Feverishly fanning his face, his baby-powder scented perfume filters throughout the car. “You need to help me. What should I do?”“Turn out the lights and squeal when you feel it.”“That’s not helping,” he says, far from amused. Meanwhile, text upon text, his I-Phone is lighting up with ‘I-love-you’ from his boyfriend. “It’s serious. We’re not even having sex anymore. Well, at least, not naked.”Afraid to inquire about what that means, I remain quiet as Drew comes up with a bright idea as we head into the mall, surrounded by a sea of frantic holiday shoppers. “I got it!” he announces. “What do gays do best when presented with a problem?” Bored, I stall with a reply. “Decorate it!” he answers. “You know, make it pretty. That’s how we raise the market value of neighborhoods. We buy a horrid house, hollow it, honor it with enhancements, and reap the rewards.”“I’m not following,” I admit.“Well, maybe I can…I don’t know…manicure it,” he says, heading into Bath and Body Works, where he finds a bottle of mint exfoliating cleanser, moments after purchasing a grooming kit at JC Penny. Texting his boyfriend to check on his cats back home, he informs me, “I’ll just, you know, prune his pubes with scissors and soften his pee-pee veins with this cream.”“WHAT?! Who wants a soft dick?”“Well…,” he begins. “You’re being stupid. This is fucking stupid!” I state, losing patience.“Stupid enough to be in your column?” he bites.“Ugh! Don’t you get it?” I respond. “Everything in life can’t be perfect. Life IS ugly!”There, frozen in place, he torches me with his baby-blue eyes, deflated by a hit of reality. So to ease the pain, I remind him of beautiful things – like the gifted scarf around his neck, and the ‘I love you’ texts from a doting boyfriend who cares for his cats. And in my boggled mind I wonder if this is where the conveniences of modern time have led us? Are we so cushioned by our pretty houses, the labels on our clothes, and our designer Starbucks coffee mugs that we can’t be bothered by the shadow of something less than ideal? So your boyfriend has an ‘ugly’ dick. So what? Enlighten me; when will we evolve to the point where we realize that we’re human, and not every trivial thing needs to be fixed? Lately, it seems we’ve begun taking cues from the media, inventing problems during life’s lulls or exacerbating small ones, leading us to a world where ugliness primarily comes from within.“Fine! You’re right. You win. So what should I do? Should I still buy this?” Drew asks, clutching the exfoliating cream to his heart. “Nah, you better save your money.”“For what?” he replies, flustered.And for once, I don’t sugarcoat the ugly truth, because I know it won’t help. “Therapy.” 
