Three million's a crowd

By Adam Kuhn
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007

There are a grand total of 3,394,751 people in Connecticut. A little under half that number, or 1,645,607, is male. Assuming that 10% of any demographic is gay, that gives us about 164,561 gay males. 20% of those gay males are in relationships. That leaves 131,649 single gay men in the state of Connecticut, or almost the entire population of Bridgeport.

There’s one peculiar pattern in this demographic that has fascinated me, and often times, infuriated me. Single gay men are split into two groups: those who want relationships, and those who want to sleep with you and never see you again. Some are fortunate enough to find others like themselves. Two people can find each other and last. Two thousand people find each other at Gotham and buy, sell, and trade. What happens when you're in the pathetic spot of looking for love, but only finding the dark room?

We met in typical fashion. A friend of a friend was having a house warming party in Hartford and I had just come from a writers’ workshop at the Hilton that had proved itself a total washout. The same could not be said for him, however. The intelligent conversation we had, with easy flirtation slipped in at certain points, came as a refreshing surprise. It was the first time in a long time someone had expressed interest without trying to get my clothes off within the hour. I ended up going home with him, and it was the last time I saw him. Two weekends later came the second weekend he blew me off. Clearly, although the mask was well crafted, he was just the same as the others.

To prove I wasn’t on a wild goose chase, he would occasionally send comforting text messages, interesting picture messages, and other little things to show me he’s still alive. The night before we were to get together, he couldn’t talk enough about our plans and how excited he was to see me again.

Saturday, however, was a different story. His messages were filled with suggestions that he didn’t want to do anything tonight, but I, naïve and cocky, was too euphoric at the attention I was getting to notice until just now.

He had mentioned that he would be buried in work all afternoon and all evening and wouldn’t be “free” until very late. He described his job to me as very demanding, often traveling back and forth between New York and Washington, but something was telling me ‘I don’t buy this’.

There’s no way to truly to tell if the man you’re interested in is banging another guy. You have to go on your gut; and my gut was screaming in my ear. I was previously warned that this guy was all about sex, but foolishly I went ahead anyway. I’ll never learn my lesson.

People’s desires, when it comes to the dynamics of sex, love, and relationships, are a puzzle that no one can solve. There are some who seek quick, anonymous romance and like to skip all the hoo-hah that comes with relationships, there are some who seek companionship, and will have it with anyone and keep it out of fear of being alone, and then there are those who willingly embrace the fact that he just hasn’t shown up yet, and until then, have fun.

There are countless stories I can tell that follow each of these criteria. Either friends or I have all been through the endless field of hook-ups, the dead-end relationship, and of course, the “Ehh, I'm single.” The guy who never called back after that one night, the two who stuck together through the fights and bad sex just so they could say they were taken, the friend who came home every night talking about the weird guys that tried their luck.

All of this, or so we convince ourselves, is in pursuit of love. We’ll do anything, because we are biologically driven, to have it. Asking friends, browsing profiles, going to the clubs, going to the theatre. We have to have it. And with all the activity, all of the pursuit, all of the hunting… do we ever find it? Or are we just having fun?

I’ve just recently come to find that there are 114,603 males in the state of Connecticut between the ages of 18 and 24. Do all the math and you have about 9,000 single gay men in my generation. Maybe college and things like that keep kids my age away from the census, but either way, that’s a sad number. No wonder we’re all getting laid so much; we’re playing musical chairs with each other.

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