YOU’RE JUST NOT THAT INTO EACH OTHER

Dating can be a bitch, take it from someone who does it a lot. After the first and possibly every subsequent date there after is over you try to sort out how you feel about the guy as well as try to gauge how he feels about you. You don’t want to be too exuberant nor too apathetic if you are interested in pursuing him further. Nevertheless, those that don’t turn into relationships eventually end some way or another. Here’s a quick guide of how you can tell that it’s over before it began, and how you can let him know too.

He doesn’t call or text at all. You may have had a nice time, but it wasn’t enough for him to want to work you into his calendar again. Like going on an interview, he’s looking for the right man for the job—and you just didn’t meet his basic requirements. Don’t worry, if you don’t click at first it’s not worth trying to force a connection.

He cancels the next date and doesn’t reschedule. Maybe he’s sick, has a last minute meeting, birthday, or work trip, but if he doesn’t offer to pick a new day for the next date, he’s not interested, and you shouldn’t be either.

He only wants to see you on the same days and infrequently. You happen to live near his Tuesday night Pottery class, making casual drinks easy to work in, and that’s all you’ve done three times in the last five weeks. He’s not interested in including you in more of his life, and you should be looking for someone who works with your schedule and interests as well.

You are making all the effort. Sure he responds when you text or email, but you always pick the place, set the day, and choose the time. Maybe he feels too guilty to decline, or maybe he’s not assertive, but if it persists without balance you should think about finding someone who broadens your horizons as well. Time to walk away.

Be honest. You don’t have to break up with him after one date, radio silence from either party should let the other know where they stand. If you go out on more dates than that and he continues to try to communicate with you even after you may have avoided setting another date, just be straightforward and tell him you’re not interested, or just don’t see it working.

He’ll appreciate it. And be honest with yourself, don’t make excuses for why it didn’t work and accept that it’s ok that it didn’t.

Dating is supposed to be about meeting new people and having fun; compromises are for commitment. Don’t spend time worrying about why a guy you barely know rejected you, or about hurting his feelings by telling the truth, save that energy and attention for the important relationships you already have with your family, friends, and coworkers and eventually you’ll find someone that won’t force you to guess how they feel.

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005.

Appeared originally on Homo-Neurotic.com on 3/11/10

SEX & ETHICS: PART I (THE BASICS)

To define ethical sex, I’d argue, only a few criteria that need to be met: that it be consensual, honest, and safe. Sex that is not consensual is rape. Sexual partners that are not honest about preexisting conditions or their intentions and or are not safe, can be a death sentence. I’d say that’s fairly obvious to all of us, but what about the psychological effects of sex? What about the mental and emotional side-effects that can accompany intercourse? How does one navigate the feelings and expectations of their partner ethically?

When I was in college I didn’t take sex too seriously, something that’s easy to do when you’ve never been in love. I thought myself too mature for most college boys so I flirted with older men, tempted them with my youth, and taunted them with my carefree attitude. That, or I just got drunk and threw myself at them and if they were drunk enough themselves they’d take me home. Sex was just the cost for a one-night stay and the reward for so generously offering to share myself. But beyond being technically consensual and safe, I can’t help but feel there was hardly anything honest about these encounters.

Honesty is the cornerstone of all ethics, and it’s no different in the bedroom. Though we may share past history, favorite positions, and statuses with our partners, there is so much more we can lie about. We pretend to care about someone more than is really true, maybe to get them in bed, or maybe just to keep from hurting them. In the long run though they will inevitably get hurt. One person feels the sex as a connection with someone they care about and see a future with, and the other is just getting his rocks off. I’m not saying this is unusual, even in long-term committed relationships two people are not always going to feel the same level of intensity for each other, but if you are intentionally misleading someone about your feelings while you sleep with them, it can’t be anything but unethical.

Now some may feel that cruising sites or apps like Grindr, Manhunt, Craigslist, Adam4Adam, etc. have made sex all the more unethical, but I’d have to argue the opposite. These sites are not designed for us to find love, but rather to satisfy our carnal desires, and when pictures and details are posted honestly it could result in perhaps the most ethical sex possible, that without any feelings attached. Anonymous or casual sex has its share of hazards, but those can be prevented by safety and intelligence.

Sex in the context of dating and relationships is a bit more tricky because there are no condoms for your heart. Young or old, we have to try to be as respectful and truthful as possible, because we never really know how the other person is feeling. It make take sex to figure out if we want things to move forward, but if it’s the only thing keeping you together it may be time to walk away. So if there were such a thing as ethical sex, perhaps it would be more akin to an online hook-up then a gay wedding night consummation. But removing the passion and connection from sex is like assuming an ethical decision can be reached from the mind alone, there must be heart and soul behind it as well.

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005. Follow me on Twitter @BBNichols.

Appeared originally on Homo-Neurotic.com on 2/24/10.

Salinger, An Introducion: J.D. SALINGER, ZOOEY GLASS, AND COMING OUT

Like many of us, I was first introduced to J.D. Salinger as a freshman in high school. On the recommendation of my older brother (or a friend who’d already made the discovery), I read “Catcher in the Rye” with rapt attention and the unwavering faith that I was going to absolutely love it. By then, 50+ years after its initial publication, “Catcher” had far surpassed its early cult status (it was censored and banned for decades) to become required reading for all teens, especially among those who floated on the fringes of high school society—perhaps closeted teens like me.

After all, there’s nothing a gay teen feels more acutely than the isolation from other kindred spirits, and nothing he or she desires more than to express singularly how different he or she feels.

I took refuge in Holden Caulfield’s mind where it was not only acceptable but also seemingly cool and fashionable to look down on one’s peers. It was necessary to critique and challenge the value and existence of others, because doing the opposite would threaten one’s individuality.

I pored over “Nine Stories,” but it was “Franny and Zooey” that cemented my love for Salinger. I felt like an entirely new world had opened up to me, and I wanted more than anything to inhabit it. In his novel and his stories Salinger created a class of misfits that were both admirable yet insufferable. For all their wit and aversion to social expectations, they remained weak due to their unwillingness (or inability) to navigate everyday life. They were elitists; sophisticated beyond belief, and acutely self-possessed yet remained isolated. In a word, I was them, they where me—or at least that’s what I thought at 15.

But I never clung to Holden Caulfield as much as I did Zooey Glass. Holden was a rebel and a troublemaker, but in Zooey I discovered a young man who felt at odds with society, one who’d learned how to play by the rules, all the while inventing his own.

As he counsels his baby sister Franny on how to survive, it’s almost as if he is speaking to us all, when he says, “An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.” I knew I could never be exactly what my parents, my teachers, or society in general wanted me to be. So, instead I had to find a way to be myself genuinely.

Authenticity always seemed like the driving concern of both Holden and Salinger. And in seeking that legitimacy they both made significant sacrifices. Holden resigned his sanity, (“Catcher” is narrated from a mental institution). Likewise, Salinger lived out his life in seclusion. If the belief that society will never understand or embrace us leads to insanity or seclusion, is there really a choice? For that reason—perhaps subconsciously—Salinger helped me to come out.

I picked up Salinger because his book was mandatory. I never thought that in doing so I’d discover the conviction to live my life honestly and courageously. Say what you will about Salinger’s cliché status among teens and the self-appointed literati, but we cling to his work because his books recall a pivotal time in many of our lives—a time from which we never hope to return, but love to revisit every now and then. Unfortunately, Salinger never escaped that time. The greatest gift he ever gave us was to withdraw. And in doing so he allowed many of us to emerge.

Appeared originally on Homo-Neurotic.com on 2/4/10

Up In the Air

When afforded countless mediums to meet new mates, and overanalyze our previous dating decisions, do we let our fear of the future keep us from being honest with ourselves and others? Why do we spend so much time looking before we leap if the chemistry is there and you know you want to see someone again whether or not you’ve been in bed together, but maybe just the logistics seem to be working against you? We pour over their profiles, cross-examine their photos, favorites, and resumes, but do we let the baggage of previous breakups follow us around forever, or are we able to check it before the next departure? We love the take-off, and loathe the landing, but can when ever just enjoy the ride?

I promised myself that this year would be different. I promised myself that I wouldn’t force myself to pursue second and third dates with guys that didn’t thrill me on the first. I gave myself permission to text or call whenever I wanted and that if he felt the same way too he’d be happy to hear from me, or wouldn’t be concerned about the immediacy of my communication, but only the gravity of my message. I told myself I would stop worrying so much about the next stop and just try to enjoy each one in the journey. Well like all New Year’s resolutions, some of these promises are hard to keep.

We can go on four dates with someone over the course of the month and still obsess over why they didn’t stay the night. We might be committed for more than year, and rather than chose to recognize how happy we are with how things are going, we wonder if an engagement is around the corner. And it’s not always our fault. If love wasn’t meant to drive us crazy we wouldn’t spend countless dollars on books, movies, and music, that mirror our angst-ridden emotions, and an infinitesimal amount of time listening and recapping to our friends about our fractured love lives, or lack there of completely.

One of the cool parts about my job is that I occasionally get to meet with someone truly inspiring. This week I met with Sheena Iyengar, author of the upcoming The Art of Choosing, a result of more than a decade’s worth of research on why and how we make decisions and the power that choice plays in our life. Though her theory is more in depth than I can ever hope to accurately represent what struck me the most is her discussion of fate, chance, and choice. All three can be employed to discuss how and why we may have arrived at a job, an apartment, or even a relationship, but it’s only choice that empowers us to create positive change. Life that is left to the former two categories may sound whimsical, but it is ultimately a choice as well, a choice to wait around for something to happen, a choice to be lonely until destiny intervenes.

For someone who has the Asian character for destiny tattooed on his body, I must admit that I do find the idea of abandoning fate and chance a little unsettling, but this isn’t the case entirely. The choice to put ourselves out there, to pursue those that pique our interest, and to unashamedly be exactly whom we want to be, does not preclude the work of fate or chance. Both can be important vehicles in romance, but ultimately are the passive agents of change. I promised myself that I’d accept the fact that not every date would lead to romance, but that didn’t mean I was going to leave it all to luck.

Sometimes it’s easier to wish that fate could take care of our romantic lives for us. Though it’s not enough to sit back and wait for everything to come to us, we do have to be confident that if we are honest and upfront about our feelings, the one who is meant to reciprocate them will be happy to do so. We should enjoy the start of any new endeavor, but we can’t always worry about where it’s going, because at every turn we may be faced with new choices that may change the way we feel. In the meantime, try to enjoy the company you keep, after all you did pick him out.

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005.

Riding in Cars with Boys: An L.A. Story

I probably should have known that when a 76 year-old man in a 1990 powder blue Toyota Camry slammed into the side of our car on a rainy day, in L.A., that things were definitely not going to go as planned. The freak ‘weather’ and accident aside, the very act of riding in the front seat of a car with someone you’re not paying by time or distance is enough to make any New Yorker feel uneasy. As the debate between NY and LA always concludes, they have the sunshine, but we don’t have to get behind the wheel. Though I enjoyed my own brief journeys coasting slowly down the Hollywood boulevards — it is the one factor that seemed to truly separate us.

I’ve toyed with the idea of moving to L.A. since I began my career in NY, as I think many of us not strictly devoted to one coast often do. I thought that hitching my star to the future of publishing may be a fool’s errand and if I was going to do the Shylockian work of an agent I might as well go towards the hell mouth and make some real money at it. Nevertheless, fate intervened in my career and the fair maiden Manhattan has pulled me ever closer to her bosom. But to quench my curiosity, escape the cold, and avoid another NYE in NYC, I recently paid a visit to La La Land.

To summate the differences between these two cities into those that are vehicularly inclined and those that are not may seem unjust, but in truth in so many other ways they are quite alike. The same strata of wealth and celebrity exist, though individuals may be admired for differing qualities in each respective town. Both are cities of dreams, diversity, and escape, and we dictate what the rest of the country and the world view as entertainment. So, in many respects it does come down to cars and weather, geography seemingly being the determining factor.

In New York we meet our friends or lovers at crowded bars, desolate diners, on street corners, in parks, or at the top of an exhaustingly long staircase. In L.A. they arrive at the building where I stayed. Each time a new friend or suitor arrived I stepped blinking into the sun wondering just what I was looking for, not trained to see the people inside vehicles, merely the absence or presence of a light on top. As they chauffeured me around the city, pointing out sights among the strip malls, I felt almost trapped, like I would suffocate if I left the confines of their car before we parked safely at a destination.

So rarely do we share our subway ride on dates, or with any other party. We come equipped with ipods and books, or sunglasses if we feel like hiding the fact that we’re staring. We’ve come to individualize the process of transportation so acutely; it becomes almost if not palpably uncomfortable when we do encounter an acquaintance on our commute. The same I assume must to be true for the Angelinos in their cars, as they start and stop their way to work, and at home in the evening. Such a personal space that they in fact own or lease it for themselves. I felt like an intruder, like a guest who must behave as expected lest I offend my host.

There are no rules like that on the subway. Even when a one night stand awkwardly joins us on our commute, we both can pretend like it’s merely coincidence we’re seated together, enjoy our music and morning papers, and offer vague acknowledgement when the first of us departs. Alone with another in the car, the silences fill with awkward longing. Longing for meaning of the silences, meaning for the absence or presence of hands held or kisses exchanged, something we would only stealthily or brazenly attempt on the train.

In New York transportation forces us to be on top of each other, in L.A. it demands that we not be. But the closeness bears no more intimacy than the distance. If it was distance between one another that was all that had been keeping two people separate, it could be bridged in one brave leap of the heart. No, it is that insistence that our cities and our lives are so different that truly keeps us apart. I suppose nothing ever does go according to plan, when you come from two different worlds.

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005.

Appeared originally on Homo-Neurotic.com on 1/7/10

When Work Takes Over, A Yea Yea

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that New Yorkers think we’re smarter than the rest of the country. We work in the most creative industries, run the financial markets, and find ways of purchasing exorbitantly priced footwear on our (usually) meager salaries the majority of which usually goes to rent. So when it comes to dating we eschew the impulse to settle down with our college sweetheart and begin reproducing before our 30’s and instead take our sweet ass time dating a seemingly endless carousel of potential til’ death do us parts until we find someone who meets our requirements for eternal bliss.


When we’re young we’re told to wait to settle down, to focus on our career, ourselves, and not to be in such a rush, and that’s something I’ve clung to throughout college and my first few years of adulthood. But I’ve begun to wonder, is there ever a bad time to look for love? Is there ever a time when we would wish above all else to be uncertain, unsettled, and untethered? I suppose that there is. There is that time when only having to worry about our own needs and wants is primary to worrying about those of another, but then again in this economy, and ever-changing landscape of the workplace where we never know what will happen from year to year, wouldn’t it be nice to have a lover to see us through?

Because of the demands and benefits of our jobs we often find little time to cultivate singular relationships. Long hours, commutes, daily parties and events, and other social commitments make it difficult for us to find the time to devote to screening future mates. Those of us ambitiously minded approach our careers with a tenacity that avoids an ability to prioritize dating until we’ve reached a certain plateau and instead is viewed as an intermittent diversion, like gambling, not truly expected to garner successful results.

But if our resume read like our dating history we’d be mortified. If every failed relationship or series of dates that lead us to nothing further than aborting numbers from our phones were a line on our CV we’d ‘never work in this town again.’ At work we shrug the everyday failures off like we do with our personal lives at times, and celebrate the successes with at an appropriate level, but the difference is that eventually we will hit the pinnacle of our career. There will come a day when we will ultimately plateau and then we’ll slowly decline into retirement. There will be ups and downs in every relationship and for those that fail, a high point may be able to be defined, but for that one that perhaps will last a lifetime, nothing as static will exist.

My parents have been married for almost 40 years and after about a dozen homes in cities all over the country and as many positions and companies for my father what they have to show for it isn’t lauded for them by a healthy retirement fund and vacation homes, but rather their most successful investment is the friendship they have with one another and the pride they share in the success, health, and love of their children and grandchildren. I can only imagine how different life would have been or if it would have been possible had they put their feelings aside at 23 and decided to wait until they felt more established.

Maybe it’s just because it’s the holidays, work has slowed down and capitalist America likes to remind us just how single we are right now since we have no one to buy cashmere and jewelry for, but I think when we try to compartmentalize areas of our life and prioritize one or other for certain periods, we miss out on the excitement of surprise and the true challenge of personal development. There are many ways to be successful and I think the one thing many of us have learned this year is that jobs come and go, but if happiness remains, if satisfaction in how and with whom we spend our time with becomes our priority then who can tell us we aren’t smarter?

Wishing you all a happy holiday(s) and a wonderful new year!

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005.

Originally published on Homo-Neurotic.com on 12/25/09

WRAP IT UP FOR WORLD AIDS DAY

I don’t usually write about my job, but yesterday I was surprised to realize that today happened to be World AIDS Day, something I never would have forgotten the last couple years.Before I started a new position six weeks ago, I worked for a publishing house where I represented a handful of authors for speaking engagements. My biggest client in my two-year tenure there was a young woman named Marvelyn Brown. You may have seen her on ‘Oprah,’ ‘Tyra,’ BET, CNN, in a PSA on MTV, or as one of the “Divas on the Rise,” which aired during ‘VH1’s Divas Live,’ but if you don’t know anything about her, please let me introduce. Marvelyn is a beautiful 25 year-old African American woman who contracted HIV from her boyfriend at age 19.

He was her first love and she thought he’d do nothing to harm her, which is why when they consummated their relationship without any protection, she didn’t object. Since learning that she was positive she never remained quiet about her situation, as may have been dictated by her Southern and religious community. Instead she started her own consulting company, wrote her memoir ‘The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive,’ and has spoken all over the nation and the world to young people, educating them about the importance of safe sex.

When I came out to my family, they didn’t have to figure out how to love me, but I can’t even remember how many times my mother asked me, “You’re being safe, right?” Her generation had been raised to associate homosexuality with HIV/AIDS, and it seemed normal for her to be concerned that I may have a heightened risk of being exposed to the virus. Though I tried to tell her that I wasn’t stupid, that my generation knew about the dangers and consequences, I couldn’t help but feel afraid myself.

It wasn’t that I had been engaging in unsafe sex, or that I thought that I someday might, but I didn’t know enough about its transmittal to really be sure. We all know that any sexual contact can lead to infection, given certain conditions, but it’s true that some are more risky than others. That never mattered to me though, since every time my college offered free testing, I was there, sweating out my 20 minutes until the nurse gave me the all clear and my heart rate returned to normal. Though I didn’t think that anything I’d been doing was ranked among the risky behaviors, better safe than sorry seemed like an applicable policy to follow.


Now that I’m an adult, living on my own, with no Health Center on site to remind about semi-annual check-ups, I’ve found myself slacking on this necessary and routine check-up. The lapses in judgment are farther and farther apart, and as far as risky goes it seems like my love life has become increasingly safe for network television, but that is still no excuse for me or any of us to become blasé about testing.

As gay men we live with the stigma that our community is plagued by promiscuity that leads to incurable disease. But that stigma comes with responsibility. We are responsible to take the necessary precautions to preserve our health and the health of our friends and lovers. We are charged with not only changing the perception of the world at large, but with fighting for funding, and policy changes that will ensure our loved ones already afflicted will receive the care they deserve and that one day HIV can RIP.

What scares me the most is thinking about what I would do if I ever found I was positive. Would I have the strength and courage to use my life to educate others like Marvelyn, or would I even be able to tell my family? I can’t say for sure. It’s sad to think about all the wonderful men and women we’ll never get to meet who’ve already passed on, but today we celebrate the hope that it will someday be a thing of the past. So take responsibility, get tested, and practice safe sex. If we’re going to makeover the world we all have to stick around long enough to see it happen.

B.B. Nichols lives and works in New York. He has been writing Everybody Does It since 2005.

Appeared originally on Homo-Neurotic.com on 12/1/09