Computer love (Part 1)

Is it possible to feel some kind of warmth through cold technology? Check out this live Kraftwerk video from 1981, somehow they are able to recreate the cool, smooth sound of the studio, but the vocals sound so warm and wanting...a perfect marriage of the made and the grown. Lately, as I have been looking into data dating I've gotten so turned off by personal profiles that are just a list of stats with some vague generically "hot" photos of body parts. It seems to be so easy for so many guys to sort of reach out and hide at the same time, to not get too personal or specific for fear of.....what? Someone might not like them? This is all so confusing and counter intuitive to me......it seems like one should be as personal as possible...to come across as unique, to give potential suitors something specific to respond to in your profile....

Let me look at my own history here and maybe that will give me some insight. I know that when I was in my 20's and very much unsure about my own sexuality I certainly didn't identify as gay and I was very reluctant to explore that side of my sexuality....for starters, Aids was rearing it's ugly head and well, that was a pretty good deterrent. I had girlfriends, many of whom had gay friends and I compared myself to those guys and concluded that I was nothing like them so, of course, I couldn't be gay and that was reassuring...but a little bit sad too because I knew I really was gay, but since I felt I was nothing like these gay guys that my girlfriends knew, I also felt that gay guys wouldn't be attracted to me so I better just forget all about that.

I tried to and couldn't and when I finally accepted, rather shamefully, that I was gay I immediately tried to conform and figure out a place for myself within the gay milieu. I pretty quickly figured out that I wasn't a drag queen or a sweater queen and I felt most comfortable around guys in leather bars and the newly happening Bear scene...although I am not by any stretch of the imagination a bear, as I was reminded by attending last night's Furball. I tend to like bearded guys in masculine drag and set about trying to figure out how I could make them like me....jeans boots and the motorcycle jacket that my high school sweetheart had given me were a natural, but when I hit upon the winning combination of ripped camo army pants and shaved my head i was in heaven....I had figured out how to look HOT! ....and that became my number one criteria for that final once over in the mirror before going out. Anywhere. Day or night. ....."Do I look hot?" I asked myself and more often than not the answer was "Yes"! I had found my uniform and learned not to stray too far from it.

Then, through my friend Mark, I discovered designer clothes. Mark took me to Jefferey and all the guys there had these four little stitches on the back of their shirt, or sweater, or vest and I wanted something with those 4 stitches too! I wanted Margiela! So I found some pretty butch pieces by Margiela including a brown leather bar vest and a tight dark green football jersey that looked great with my torn camos. Every time I tried on the Margiela football jersey with the camos in preparation for a Sunday evening at the Dugout and looked in the mirror, I was able to answer myself with "Hot" but then I started to think.....what if some hot leather bear that was interested in me noticed that my shirt had the same four stitches on the back that that faggy guy down the hall had on his shirts. I concluded that designer clothes were a dick softener and went back to my uniform and happily stayed there for years until this whole new crop of younger bear guys started showing up in their smart new Dries Van Noten sweaters and Patrick Ervill sport shirts and Surface to Air flannels and opening Ceremony fluorescent plaids. It was like my cage got unlocked....I had options, I could throw away the uniform.....I could be....me!

It took a hell of a long time to get here but I finally realized that people like me! They like me for how I stick out and not how I fit in.

To be continued.....