Picking Up Men in Bookstores

Quick -- you have the choice of spending an hour in this guy's apartment, or in this bookstore.  Which will you choose?

I'm going with the bookstore.

Pecs, abs, and cocks are great, of course, but there's nothing like browsing through the stacks of a used bookstore.

Not new bookstores, with their coffee shops, rows of junk "bargain books" and bestsellers, and history sections devoted entirely to war.  Those are depressing.

Used bookstores, where you can wander amid the books of yesteryear.  Penguins with the old covers. Ace science fiction doubles.  The qui-sais-je series of small French paperbacks.

The first thing I do when I visit Paris is browse at Shakespeare and Company.  In New York, the Strand. L.A. used to have a great used bookstore, the Cosmopolitan.

The Book Trader in Philadelphia.

The Book Exchange in Amsterdam

Powell's Books in Portland.  Sigh.

They are also good places to pick up guys.








Surprisingly, the gay/lesbian section is not the best place to meet gay guys.  Many used bookstores don't even have a gay section, either because the owner is homophobic or because there aren't a lot of gay-themed books before the 1980s.  And when they do have one, it's in the same stack as "sexuality," which means books about how heteros have sex.

Most gay men give it a miss.

Theater, art, and music. Star biographies. It's a stereotype that gay men are all into the arts, but it's a stereotype that everyone knows, so if he is interesting in meeting someone, that's where he will hang out.

And it gives you an easy way to determine if your target is gay: ask if an artist, musician, or celebrity was gay.

It doesn't matter if he was or not; gay men will know the answer, or pretend to.










The foreign language section is another good bet. At least, it works for me because it allows for easy conversation starters:

"Have you studied Polish?  When I was in Poland a few years ago..."

"What is the difference between Hindi and Urdu?"

"I studied Mandarin for about a semester, but it got frustrating because I kept accidentally saying dirty things."

You can also try picking up the bookstore owner.  90% of the owners of the bookstores I have been to are quiet, shy, reclusive middle-aged men who live alone and rarely date anyone, ostensibly straight but open to suggestions.

Play with the bookstore cat, compliment them on their selection, let them vent about how young people don't read books anymore, and they're inviting you back to their apartment.

Of course, most of them don't exactly look like Tom Ellis, but every guy looks hot surrounded by books.



















Well, almost every guy.