How Blind Guys Handle Sausage Sightings

Dayton, March 2006

In gay communities, there is heavy competition for men who are disabled: blind, deaf, on crutches, in a wheelchair.    

Maybe being physically different makes you stand out in the crowd and seem more attractive.

Or guys fantasize about being your "knight in shining armor," protecting you from the bad things in the world.

Or they are hung up over their minor imperfection, such as belly fat or acne scars, and they believe that you will be more accepting. 

But however many guys clamor to go home with you, few are willing to stick around the next day, begin a romantic relationship, and participate in your daily struggles with accessibility and visibility.

So disabled guys tend to be a little leery of romantic overtures.  They may even try to scare you off by describing their daily maintenance routine on the first date.

That may have been a problem with my date with Tommy the Blind Guy.

I saw him at the Columbus Metropolitan Community Church one Sunday morning in March 2006:  In his 20s, shorter than me, pale, with short brown hair and a solid, muscular frame -- plus religious!  Three of the five traits I find attractive.  He walked arm-in-arm with a friend, so I assumed he was taken.  But during the coffee hour after church, the friend, Marcus, left him eating doughnuts by himself to cruise someone on the other side of the room.  Therefore, single!

How do you go about cruising someone who can't see you?  I went with a strong handshake and a deep voice, and it worked!

The next weekend, we saw The Libertine (yes, blind people go to movies), followed by dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant.

You would think that Tommy would be tired of being asked questions about "what it's like to be blind," but he told me in detail how he ate, how he shaved, how he found his way around a strange room.

It turned out to be less a date than a lecture from Blind 101 class.  The only interesting part was how he judged a guy's physical characteristics without having to reach out and touch them:

You had a strong handshake, so I knew you had nice biceps.
That doesn't really....

The angle of your voice when we're talking tells me your height and weight.
My height, maybe.  But my weight?
He guessed it within 10 pounds.

I can figure out how hung you are by listening to you in the bathroom.


Doesn't sound possible, but we went into the bathroom, and he did it!  Something to do with the force of the splash.

Other than the few magic tricks, I was a bit bored.

After dinner, we went back to the apartment he shared with Marcus.

Tommy was certainly passionate in the bedroom, but a romantic relationship requires more.  Did this guy have any interests, hobbies?

The gym?  There have been several blind bodybuilders, like Greg Rando  Not really.  I do a little jogging.

Pets?  Seeing eye dog?  No.  I get along fine with a cane.

Religion?  I go to MCC for the companionship, but I'm not really into it.  

Paranormal?  You believe in that nonsense?

Literature?  Dickens?  Stephen King?  I don't read a lot.

Um...politics?  Not really.

Music?

That got a rise out of him.  Oh, I love Cher, Madonna, Barbra Streisand...

Oh...I don't really listen to pop music.  It's so heterosexist, all about girl! girl! girl!

Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson.

Any classical in that mix? A little Mozart here and there?

Jessica Simpson, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez...

Opera? Jazz?  I'll even take show tunes...

Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, Beyonce...

Ok, how about a male performer?  At least somebody for me to look at -- Justin Timberlake, maybe?

The Pussycat Dolls, Ciara, Fergie...

We didn't have a second date.

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.

The Boy Hooks Up with the Christmas Ghost

Rome City, Indiana, December 1974

The boy sat on the bed, reading about fairies.

It was very cold in his aunt's attic room, so he was under the covers.  A space heater glowed orange beside the bed.  Downstairs, a Christmas party was going on, with his parents and aunts and uncles and friends from town.  Most he didn't know.

But they were all paired up into husbands and wives, male-female couples extending in all directions to infinity.

Even Santa Claus had a wife.

The attic door was open, to let some heat up.  Downstairs he heard talking and laughter, and a song, "Winter Wonderland."

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He'll say "Are you married?"  We'll say, "No, man,
But you can do the job when you're in town."

Wife, kids, house, job, his destiny.  His doom.

Suddenly he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.  A dark shape that quickly resolved itself into the form of a young man, probably college age, tall and slim with thick reddish hair and very pale skin.  He was wearing a red sweater and jeans.  Oddly, he was barefoot.  The boy didn't recognize him from the party downstairs.

"Can I come in?"

"You already are in."

"Fair enough."  The stranger sat down on the edge of the bed.  "I saw you come up here, and wondered if you were ok."

Bogus!  Why would a complete stranger come upstairs to check up on him?  Why not his mother, or Aunt Nora?

"I'm fine, just tired.  And this is my room. Mine and my brother's while we're visiting, so I can be here.  Are you friends with Cousin Joe?"

He ignored the question.  "What you reading?"

The boy had hidden the book -- his parents disapproved of non-religious books in general, and especially science fiction and fantasy.  "Um...science homework."

The stranger reached up and pulled the book from under the covers.  "Fairies?" he asked in surprise.

"Not that kind of fairy," the boy said, cutting off the criticism,  He wasn't reading fairy tales -- he had always hated Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and their ilk, stupid boy meets girl stories with some flittery things added, shouting that the meaning of life is to be found in feminine smiles.  He was reading about fairies, the dark, sinister figures of European myth, like Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. 

"Midsummer Night's Dream!" the stranger exclaimed.  "I love Shakespeare.  I used to be a grade-A riot on stage!"  He flounced about the room, reciting:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.

"You look pretty solid to me," the boy said.

"Who cares?  It got you to smile.  Cold up here -- got room for one more, Jackson?"  Without waiting for an answer he climbed under the covers next to the boy and put his arm around him.  His hard bicep bulged against the boy's shoulder.

"I'm not a little kid," the boy protested, while he instinctively cuddled against the stranger's hard chest.

"I never said you were.  You've got all of your grownup parts in place.  You shave?"

"Once a week!"  He actually hadn't started shaving yet.

"I can tell."  The stranger brushed his open palm against the boy's face.  "You've got some hair under your arms..." he caressed the boy's shoulder.  "A manly chest,  a regular Jack Dempsey..."  he caressed the boy's chest.

The boy began to get aroused, and quickly placed the book over his crotch.

The stranger chuckled.  "You have other adult parts, too, I see.  Have you spooned yet?"

"Huh?"

"You know, kissed."

"Sure, lots of times!" Adults often asked about kissing girls.  Other boys asked about screwing them. You were always supposed to answer "lots of times."

"Banana oil!  Not the stories you tell your friends.  Have you kissed anyone yet?"

The boy looked down at the book barely covering his arousal. "No."

"Would you like to?  Be honest, now."

"No.  I don't like girls."  It was a heavy admission to make to a complete stranger.

"What fools these mortals be, to tell you it has to be a girl!  Any fairy can tell you that boys kiss boys, too."

Boys kiss boys?  Was that possible?  

As if in response, the stranger pulled the boy close and pressed his lips against one cheek, then the other cheek, then his mouth, and they were kissing.  It was bright like fire.

Suddenly he raised his head.   "That was intense.  I gotta go, but we'll see each other again before you go back to Rock Island, ok?"


"Sure."

Then the stranger left.

Through the closet door!

Later the boy was looking through an old photo album, and he saw a picture of a teenage boy who looked like the stranger. He even had the same red sweater.

"That's Bryant, one of my high school friends, at a Christmas party a thousand years ago" Aunt Nora told him.  "You never saw such a cut-up!  After graduation he went to Indiana U., and then I lost track of him.  He's probably got a wife by now, and grown-up kids."

"Or not," the boy said, smiling.

See also: The Gay Ghost Who liked oral