Back to my old ways (had I ever left them?) I recently “met” a guy on Manhunt. He had a hot profile - cute face, great body, and his “about me” basically described him as a bottom who liked sex. I had actually noticed his profile about a year ago. I wrote him then, he wrote back, then he disappeared. He popped up a few months later - we exchanged quick emails, then again he disappeared. The third time we emailed, we actually traded phone numbers, I assumed with the intention to text each other. But we never did.

Until yesterday, when once again I saw him online, and typed a Manhunt-mail asking when we were finally hanging out. I pressed send, and was totally unprepared for what happened 2 minutes later. My phone started to ring. Sure enough, up popped his name, in my phone from 3 months ago.


What? He’s calling?! I panicked. “DECLINE”.

The ringing stopped, and a minute later I had a voicemail. “Hey, it’s ManhuntBoy, just seeing what you’re up to this afternoon. Give me a call.”

I pondered. He sounded normal, if a bit stoned. But nice enough. Maybe I should call him back. It went against my better instincts, but what was so bad? Sure, I’ve never been much for phone chatting, but I thought: maybe he just wants to hear that I sound normal, and maybe we’ll make a date.

I decided to go for it. I pressed the Call Back button. Little did I know I was about to embark on the Sexterview.

As soon as I identified myself, he started asking questions. Where do you live? Where do you work?

I played along, trying to keep the conversation light with my own questions, like Whats up? Hows it going?

He gave one word answers, and immediately went back to questions of his own. Do you workout? How tall are you? Are you an exhibitionist?

I answered, and then again tried to bring it to the conversational: What are you up to? Lazy Sunday?

He avoided my questions, and dove into his serious list.

Do you like to cuddle? You’re more a top? Do you like to suck cock?

I sighed, wishing I had stuck with my impulse. DECLINE. But it was too late now. I answered: Sometimes. Yes. Of course.

He continued, and I imagined him holding a clipboard and checking off boxes.

What gym do you go to? Do you live alone? Are you safe?

I gave up. I decided there was nothing to do but wait until the sexterview was over and the questions finally ceased. I answered, and the barrage continued.

Do you do groups? Where do you like to cum?

And then he got to the truly perverse.

“How old are you?”

“How old are you?!” I shot back, outraged.

“23.”

I sighed, and I swear I heard him flip a page. “So,” he continued, “You definitely like to cuddle, right?”

From now on, I’m sticking to texts.

One Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed to make the trip with AuntPharm to the Brooklyn IKEA. As we navigated the maze of trendy swedish imports with his friend Decibella, (who at various points would bellow “I think I like this... GAAAAYS!! OPINION!!”) we began discussing dating.

“So,” AuntPharm told me, “now suddenly EverybodyLovesAden isn’t talking to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I went on one date with this guy that he’d been on a couple dates with. But I asked him first if it was ok!”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t seem to mind too much... at first...”

“Clearly,” I dead-panned, “he minds.”

“I know,” said AuntPharm. “It's totally taboo to date your friends' exes.”

I was immediately resistant. “Why?!”

“Be-CUASE!” Decibella boomed, “It’s your EX!!”

“Thanks, that clears it right up,” I sarcastically quipped. She threw a sofa cushion at my head.

“Well,” asked AuntPharm, “Would you want someone dating XJosh?”

“Someone is,” I replied.

“I mean a friend of yours.”

I paused for a second to consider. Then I said, “but that’s totally different. He and I dated for like 2 years. Aden only dated that kid for what - a month? Three, maybe four dates?”

“Exactly,” agreed AuntPharm, “that’s why I think it’s OK that I go on a date with him.”

I nodded. “It depends on the relationship.”

“Was that EVEN a RELATIONSHIP!?” cried Decibilla. Neither of us answered. “GAYS!!! OPINION!!!”

“It was not,” declared Aunt Pharm. But I kept pushing.

“Maybe the real question,” I said, “is What defines a relationship?”

That remained unanswered for the rest of the day, and I decided to do a little informal research.

A few days later, I was out on the town with some friends, and as we were in a cab hopping from bar to bar, I threw out the question. “When you’re dating someone, at what point is it considered a Relationship?”

“If you had unprotected sex, it's a relationship!”

We all laughed at the absurdity of MinnieSoda’s response.

“Guess that explains why you’ve had so many boyfriends!” I quipped.

“Shut up!” he cried. Then, “Ok, seriously... three dates. After you’ve gone on three dates with someone, that’s a relationship.”

That satisfied the rest of the cab-full, but seemed a little cut-and-dry for me.

A week later, the subject emerged again when I met up with J-Blo at Vlada.

“How’ve you been?” I asked as the server presented 2 Absolute Madras, J-Blo's drink of choice.

“Well, Bazooka and I broke up,” he replied.

“Aw, I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it - I knew that J-Blo really liked him.

“Yeah,” he said. The he looked me in the eye. “All I ask... is that you don’t sleep with him.”

“WHAT?! Why would I... I wasn’t going to... I would never...”

“I didn’t mind,” he continued, “when you slept with Shirley Temple.”

“Wooooah!” I exclaimed, suddenly so far on the defensive I didn’t even gulp my cocktail before rebutting. “First of all, I didn't just ‘sleep with him.’ That was a full-fledged Summer Fling. Gay Pride to Labor Day. That’s the closest I’ve been to a relationship since... well, never mind. And speaking of relationships, you and he were not exactly...”

“It was a relationship!” J-Blo exclaimed.

“It was a threesome,” I reminded him, “that turned into some kind of crazy thrupple, that then went on to...”

“To become a relationship.”

I sighed. And downed my drink. Clearly J-Blo had defined that relationship. And clearly friends' exes were off limits.

It shouldn't have come as a shock to me. It wasn’t even 2 months prior that I’d hooked up with a cute twink, who had recently broken up with another twink, my cute-trick-turned-friend Kenny. For some reason, I thought that Kenny either wouldn’t find out, or wouldn’t care that I’d slept with his ex. And for a while, he didn’t find out. Then one night at 3am the chiming of my iPhone woke me up. It was a text from Kenny. “You fucked my ex boyfriend!?! We’re very mad.”

My first thought was: who’s We? I almost replied, but made the wise decision to leave it unanswered. In the months that followed, Kenny never brought it up, so I assumed he’d let it go... but his feeling at the time was very clear.

I was almost ready to report back to AuntPharm with the results of my research, when I found myself out one night in a group with a rare manifestation: two gay brothers. Both were very smart, very charming, and very attractive. Of course, they were also very popular with all the gays, wherever we went. As the night of drinking went on, I couldn’t help but take the opportunity to question one, in between my flirting with him.

“So,” I asked, as innocently as possible, “do you two ever fight over guys?”

“Yeah, we occasionally cross with the same guys,” replied Tweddle Cute. “There’s a rule.”

Jackpot.

“The rule is, as long as one of us hasn't had sex with him, its ok. The other can... whatever. But if a guy has had sex with one of us, he's off limits to the other.”

I should have known. As in so many cases, it all came down to sex.

I told AuntPharm all my findings, ranging from three dates to wacky relationship to just sex.

“Overall,” I said, “You were right. Dating a friend’s ex is totally taboo.”

He nodded solemnly. Then he said, “Two gay brothers?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Hot brothers?”

“Mmmm Hmmmmmm.”

“Just sex?”

“Just sex. If someone has sex with one, he’s totally off-limits to the other.”

“Wow,” mused AuntPharm. “Imagine if you had that rule - anyone you’d had sex with was off limits to all your friends. We’d all have to turn straight just to get laid.”

On a typical Saturday night of bar-hopping in New York City, a friend’s birthday brought a few buddies and I to Evolve. Formerly know as O.W. or Oscar Wilde bar, Evolve is located on the Upper East Side, a section of Manhattan which is rarely gay and rarely frequented, a least by us.

“Oh my God, look at that go-go boy,” a friend exclaimed.

“Hideous!”

“He’s so ... old.”

“And just not cute.”

“Is he flexing his pecs to the beat?!”

“EWWWWW!” we all chorused. We couldn’t stop looking at the train wreck on the make-shift stage.

"He’s really not a go-go BOY," I pointed out.

My friends jumped in with, “Go-go man?”

“Go-go guy?”

“Go-go home.”

We soon did, or at least off to another bar, but I left wondering: are we too judgmental?

It reminded me of the night in January when Martinifun and I went out in Miami before leaving on the gay cruise the next morning. We went to Twist, one of the larger and more popular gay bars in South Beach. One room in the back was full of rotating go-go’s who may or may not have done a little more than dance, if the right amount of cash were offered. But as we looked at them, we couldn’t believe anyone would pay them for private time. There wasn't one we found attractive. We reached that agreement just as a host announced over a microphone: "Welcome to Twist! Hope you’re enjoying the dancers - we got some of the hottest guys in the United States!”

We gave each other wide-eyed looks, and gulped our margaritas.

Back in New York, a new gay bar opened in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Have you been to Bartini?” asked GarrettJuice, as we sipped grape vodka at The Ritz.

“That’s that name of it?” I exclaimed with disgust. “Awful!”

“It’s a cute space,” he replied. “It’s the crowd that’s the problem.”

“Not cute?” I asked.

“Oh they’re all cute,” he replied. “They’re just all bottoms. I look around the room like Cute? Bottom. Cute? Bottom. Cute? Bottom. It's Bottomtini.”

I slammed my empty glass on the table. “We’re going immediately.”

Bartini did turn out to be a cute space, and on a Saturday night was indeed filled with lots of cute boys. We stood at the bar, looking around.

“That bartender is hot,” GarrettJuice said. “Do you think he's good in bed?”

“No,” I replied after watching him for a moment. “See how he shakes that martini?”

“Lazy?” Garrett observed, as the bartender listlessly waved the shaker back and forth.

“Exactly. He's lazy in bed.”

“Probably just lays there,” added Madambien.

Just then, one of their friends who was visiting from out of town walked up.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. We explained our theory about the bartender.

“Y’all are crazy!” he exclaimed. “That bartender is hot, and I bet he’s great in bed. You New Yorkers - y’all are just too judgmental!”

“Shut up,” replied Madambien, “you’re crazy!”

“Yeah,” added Garrett, “You’re from the South, you don’t know anything!”

I just shrugged.

A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post about the number of men my friends and I sleep with, and whether it’s too many. After posting it, I didn’t think the subject would be resurrected so quickly.

Last month, Time Out New York published their “Calling All Singes” issue. “Meet 104 eligible New Yorkers inside!” the cover exclaimed. I quickly paged to the main article, anxious to look at the gays (TONY always features some gays when publishing an issue like this one.) I began scrutinizing the tiny headshots, paying close attention to the males who’s pictures had the little blue man symbol in the corner: men who liked men. I had only covered about half a page when my eye settled on a cute boy.

Hey! I thought. I know him. Actually, I’d slept with him not too long ago. How funny - someone I hooked up with is famous! Well, has a one-inch-by-one-inch photo in Time Out, anyway.

I continued browsing, noticing a couple cute boys on each page of the article. Then I noticed another smiling face.

Hey! I Know him, too! Actually, I’d slept with him, too. This one was a while ago, years in fact, but nevertheless, I’d had sex with 2 out of the hundred and four New Yorkers in Time Out.

Really?

I frantically scanned the article for the next ten minutes, to be certain that it was only two. It was. I put the magazine down, and laughed. It was funny, right? I decided it was, and Twittered about it.

Not long after, I sat down to dinner with my friend and colleague, AccidentallB. She’d seen my Twitter post.

“You’ve slept with TWO guys in Time Out?!” she exclaimed.

“So what?” I laughed. “You’ve slept with more than two people.”

“NOT the same,” she scolded. “How many singles were in that magazine?”

“A hundred and four.”

“And half were men,” she said. I nodded. “And,” she continued, “how many were gay men?”

I shrugged. As if I hadn’t counted. “Eleven.”

She smiled smugly. “Eleven. Two out of eleven.”

“So what?” I asked, for the second time, though slightly less confidently.

“So,” AccidentallB replied, “that's a random sampling of gay men in New York City. Do the math. You've slept with 15 percent of all the gay men in Manhattan.”

I opened my mouth to reply ... and then closed it. A second later, I tried again. “That’s not... Are you... How could I...”

She looked back at me, cocked an eyebrow, and said nothing.

“Huh.” I sighed. “I really need to move.”

I was with a work colleague when I found a cell phone in the back of a cab.

“Should I give it to the driver?” she asked.

“No,” I sighed. “I’ll take it. I’ll do my good deed for the month.” I figured I could use some good karma.

I went back to my office and started looking through the phone - contacts, incoming calls, recently dialed numbers. Many were Italian names, with numbers that clearly dialed outside the U.S. Finally, I settled on the recently dialed number for Josie Cell, which also appreard in the contacts next to Josie Home and Josie Country.

“Hello?” a voice answered after four rings. I explained that I had found the phone in a taxi, and was trying to find its owners.

“Well that’s very nice of you,” she said. “Do you know who’s it is?”

“Um, no...” I replied. “Unless maybe it came up on your phone?”

“Oh! Well, the number did! It’s...” she proceeded to tell me the number. Useless.

“Well, I’m still not sure who’s it is,” I replied.

“Well, maybe if you read me some names in it,” she suggested.

“Sure,” I replied, trying to figure out how to set it on speaker phone and view the Contact List simultaneously. Who owns a Motorola Razr anymore?

Eventually, I figured it out and began reading her some contacts, no doubt butchering the names, which were mostly European. After only 5 or 6, she interrupted.

“Oh! It’s my mother’s phone! Or my father’s. Those are their people.”

I thought, “Their name didn’t come up on your caller ID?” but said nothing.

“Oh they’re probably in hysterics over it being missing. You’d never know it, but they are 85 and 92! They’re crazy artists who live in tribeca.”

“... Oh.”

“Thank you so much!” she went on. She gave me their exact address, which I wrote down though I had no intention of visiting. I was going for good karma, not sainthood. Then she gave me their home phone number, and their names. “Just call them at home,” she said, “and tell them you have the phone. They’ll send a messenger or something. Thank you so much!”

I disconnected, curious about these “crazy artists” who lived in what was probably a very nice loft in TriBeCa, judging from the address. Maybe I should deliver the phone in person.

“Hello?” a male voice answered when I dialed the home number. I once again explained I’d found a phone in the back of a taxi, this time adding that I’d gotten their home number from their daughter, and I thought the phone was theirs.

“Oh, thank you so much!” exclaimed the father. “That’s a very nice thing you’re doing. Where are you?”

I told him I was in the Times Square area, and he said to someone else in the room with him, “Can you go to Times Square?” After a beat, he said to me, “Talk to Christie, she’ll arrange to pick it up. And thank you!”

A second later, a female voice got on the line. Younger, definitely not the mother - a personal assistant? A Nurse?

“Thank you so much!” she said. “Tell me where you are, I’m happy to come up to you.”

I gave her the address, and she agreed to meet me within an hour. Then just as she was about to hang up, someone, presumably the mother, said something to her. She listened, then repeated it to me.

“Do you like olive oil?” she asked.

“Um... well, yes,” I replied, which was true. “I like it very much.”

“Well,” she said,”Mr. and Mrs. LostPhone make their own olive oil. They live half the year in Italy. They want to know if you’d like a bottle?”

SCORE!

“That’s so nice of them,” I replied. “I would love a bottle.”

“Great, see you soon!” she said, and hung up.

“HOMEMADE OLIVE OIL ON THE WAY!” I shouted to my colleagues as I hung up the phone.

“What??”

I told them the story.

“Crazy artists?”

“Half the year in Italy??”

“Homemade olive oil!?”

“You got it,” I laughed.

45 minutes later, we were dipping bread into some of the most amazing olive oil I’ve ever tasted.

“This is incredible!” cried a co-worker, licking her fingers. “It’s like crack in a bottle!”

“Better,” I said. “It’s Karma in a bottle.”

I bumped into The Sexican at a house party in Chelsea, and as we sipped our cocktails the conversation immediately turned to our dating lives.

“Oh just the other night I met this really hot guy,” he was telling me. “We met at a bar, and he bought me a drink, then I bought him one... we were talking, flirting, touching - it was going really well!”

“Mmmm hmmm,” I prompted, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“And he was hot - soooo hot. Just SEXY.”

“So?”

“So, we finish our drinks, and we go outside, and he has a motorcycle! Sexy!”

I laughed a little, but nodded in agreement.

“And THEN,” the Sexican says, dramatically holding his drink in the air, “he gives me his CARD.”

“What!?” I exclaimed.

“I know.”

“His business card??”

“I KNOW.”

“A guy with a motorcycle shouldn’t even HAVE a card!”

“I KNOW!” He took a huge gulp of his vodka. “I wasted all night on this guy! I was sure I was getting laid! And he gives me his card!?”

“I guess that’s one of the risks of meeting a stranger in a bar,” I said. “You just don’t know what they’re thinking.”

“There’s a lot about them you don’t know,” he replied.

Really, he was right. It reminded me of a conversation I’d had months earlier, when MuppetDinnerTheater and I decided to go out for a cocktail, and for some reason chose Cleo’s. Now officially named Ninth Avenue Saloon, Cleo’s was the first gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen, established years before HK became gay and trendy. And in 20 years, nothing has changed except the removal of “Cleo’s” from the sign, leaving just Ninth Avenue Saloon. The decor, the bartenders and the crowd are all exactly the same. No one knows what happened to Cleo.

MuppetDinnerTheater and I took two stools at the dark bar, ignored the toothless old men eyeing us from either side, and ordered two drinks.

“Why did we come here again?” I asked.

“Because the drinks are cheap, and strong,” he replied.

“Cheers.”

He was right, on both counts. But after a few sips, I couldn’t help looking around. We brought the average age down to about 57. He saw the look of distaste on my face as I scanned the crowd.

“It’s not so bad,” he said.

“C’mon, you could never meet anyone here,” I replied.

“Oh, I have.”

I waited.

“The last time I was here I was flirting with this guy. He was sitting right here when I came in!” MuppetDinnerTheater said, then started to laugh.

“And?”

“And he was cute...” he went on, “and he was buying me drinks...”

“And?” I asked again.

He started laughing, hard, knowing the absurdity of what he was about to tell me. “And he only had one leg.”

“What?!”

“I mean, he was cute...from the waist up.”

“Did he have a peg-leg? Was he a pirate?” I asked, now also laughing.

“No! Well, not exactly...”

“Oh my God. Did you sleep with the Peg-Leg Pirate?!”

MuppetDinnerTheater shot me a dirty look. I’m still not sure if that signified a yes or a no.

Either way, for quite a while that topped the list of my friends’ Crazy Guys I Met In A Bar stories. Until last week.

I was having Thai food in Chelsea with two friends, one of whom lives outside the city and always drives in. I’m always fascinated by people who drive their cars around Manhattan, as the concept is so foreign to me. We were discussing sex of course, and the topic of older men came up. AutHoMobile jumped in with a story.

“I just met this older guy at a bar the other night,” he told us. “He was 49. Which is definitely older, but not crazy-old.”

We nodded.

“Plus, he was hot. So, I was totally fine, we’re having drinks, things are going great, we decide to leave the bar. So we go to my car, and totally start hooking up. Big time.”

“Big time?” I asked. “In your car?”

“Of course,” said AutHoMobile. “So, things are hot, pants are off, he’s blowing me, and everything is totally great ... until he starts really getting into it and suddenly goes: ‘Oh yeah, finger my tight forty-nine-year-old ass!’”

I almost sprayed vodka soda across the table.

“He did not!!”

“Dead. Serious.”

Five minutes later, when my hysterical laughter subsided, I managed to say, “Wow. From now on I’m only meeting men online, where people are normal.”