Dilemma

to settle- 1. to make a conscious effort to reject all other offers and accept one that seems most appealing. Often times, settling occurs due to fatigue in the dating world. 2. To remove oneself from the meat market in order to create a foundation with one other person (who is, hopefully, not opposed to occasional threesomes or sex toys).

A friend wisely pointed out that 2006 is the year for saying, "YES!" to everything. My roommate has declared 2006 a year to "be more slutty." Somehow, the two don't seem all that different to me. Perhaps I'm taking their resolutions out of context. Let's examine.

After yesterday's indiscretion, I was obviously a little divided. But I always get this way after meeting someone through a medium that I myself ridicule. Even if I met the love of my life on Craigslist, or through Robin Byrd's "number", I don't think I'd ever allow myself to actually form a committed relationship with this person because I'd always judge them for going to one of those chatrooms, etc. And it's not really a double standard because I end being the hardest on myself for indulging such a ridiculous desire in the first place.

Concurrently, while I am judging serious relationships created in this online dating medium, I end up overthinking possible new relationships. For instance, last night I met a friend of one of my new roommates (for simplicity's sake, let's name my roommates now; the boy is Todd and the girl, we'll call her Oreo). Anyway, Oreo has a friend named Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee immediately caught my eye, but I was just kind of going with the flow of the conversation. As it turned out, Mr. Lee and I have a lot in common, and he has so far been easy to talk to and hang out with. But that's just it. Suddenly, I start to think that, well, just because he's one of the first decent guys I've met outside of the online dating world doesn't immediately mean a) he's interested in me or b) that he's even worth dating. In fact, I start to tell myself I'm just settling, which is ridiculous because I hardly know the guy, and even at that, Mr. Lee is not the kind of guy you end up settling for. He's just not.

It does get a little complicated, but in that very fun, friendly-competition way. Todd was definitely flirting a little with Mr. Lee both last night and tonight at dinner, which makes it interesting because I'm just not sure how to compete with a friend for the attentions of a gentleman caller. It's to the point that I've tried to level with Todd to see if he's totally into Mr. Lee or if I should back off. I've decided to let Mr. Lee make his own decision, and in the meantime, focus some attention on Mr. Lee, but to keep my options open and my guard up. I'd hate to get burned or into any kind of awkward situation with Todd.

Of course, I seem like a total flakey "Flavor of the Week" guy seeing as how I was convinced Oliver was "the guy for me" last night, and now tonight I'm raving about the dating potential of Mr. Lee. That's exactly the problem with the oversaturated gay market. Too many dating venues are presented for gay men now, and it's to the point that everyone is confused and prices and product quality are at an all-time low. It's like, even when Todd is online looking for guys, he ends up signing up for Gay.com and adam4adam and checking out AOL (wisely, he avoids Craigslist, but that's because he's a more quality person). There's just too much gay going on around us, no wonder our community has a rampant prescription drug addiction problem and no wonder so many people have ADD/ADHD/learning disabilities. With all these half-naked college boys sticking their asses in the air and waving their hard-ons at you from cyberspace, how in the hell are you supposed to settle for just one?

I think that's just it-- you don't just settle for one, you settle for THE one. However you meet him, wherever he comes from.

I should make THAT my new Homosexual Suspect mantra. So it shall be.