Aussielicious

The average length of an Australian marriage is 8.8 years according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That means most Australian marriages don’t make their ninth anniversary. In an effort to prove that gay and lesbian people generally want exactly what straight people want, the right to love who they want, a mate of mine is running The Commitment Project.

The project is a series of photos, very casual and relatively candid, of GLBT couples who have been together for longer than that national average. The photos are as touching as the stories of the couples in them. Some of these couples have been together longer than homosexuality has been legal here.

If you would like to be part of The Commitment Project email my good mate Evan at evan.r.cooper@gmail.com including Commitment Project in the subject line and he will get back to you!

It’s been a common thread running through this blog over the years that I’ve been single and not impressed about it. Lots of readers, time after time have told me (along with friends) that as soon as I stop looking is when I’ll find someone. Apparently you are right.

About 4-5 months ago I got caught up shooting for my exhibition and just enjoying what I had instead of focusing on what I didn’t have and soon after realised that I hadn’t given the husband-hunt much thought of late. Then in November I chatted to a guy and a little while later he asked me out. It’s still early days in the scheme of things but I am now a boyfriend.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of sharing too much about relationships on the blog. Remember Mike anyone? That ended badly. I’m not going to pour my heart out on here about how things are going or how wonderful he is. I’ll save that for him. Suffice to say I’m walking around happy.

Last weekend I was at a function and over the course of the few hours I was there, so too were 3 guys that over the past few years I’ve had thoroughly awkward dates/catch ups with.
The first turned up with friends. A few years ago we chatted a lot at a friend’s birthday drinks and then as the afternoon drinks were winding down, decided to go for a meal. That’s when he seemingly lost all ability to make conversation which resulted in a delicious meal but less than stellar evening. At the function last week, despite him being there with friends, he stood alone with his back to the wall and arms crossed. Approachable.

The second turned up, rather awkwardly with one of the other guys I was meeting there. Turns out they are exes. I know why. The guy he turned up with is great fun and really outgoing, his ex, and the one I’d had a brunch/coffee with is pretty much the opposite. He’s a very professional guy and nice enough but works in a field that isn’t renowned for it’s awesome personality, a stereotype he lives up to. I know each couple has to compliment and balance each other out, but if one is lively and fun, does the other have to be in a social coma?

The third guy was a guy I had coffee with a month or two ago. I seem to be the only man that ends up on dates after logging on to grindr. Everyone else gets laid/blown/some kind of sexual relief from grindr. Not me. Once again this man was pleasant enough, but conversation just didn’t flow.

Granted, all these situations could have been my fault, who knows but to have the ghosts of bad dates past in one room on the same evening made me question whether I was being taught a lesson? Bugger that. I’m fun and can hold a conversation. I was there to teach them a lesson. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

A facebook friend and I were chatting about men the other day and how to meet the good ones. It’s been joked about before that I should use this blog to meet someone but to me it doesn’t feel right, advertising for a husband on my own blog. I jokingly said to my friend that he should write my own personals ad for me. This is what he came up with.

“handsome nudist acrobat photographer dude
looking for love in all the wrong places has decided to try something different
30 something professional artistic type
doesn’t go to the disco
doesn’t smoke or do drugs
drinks occasionally with good company
prefers to keep fit and create art and obsess about things unecessarily
loves kids and family and is a good and genuine true friend
Kylie is his religion
seeks handsome strong fit gentleman with a sense of humour and a good laugh to help him learn to not take him self so seriously, lighten up a bit and to love him back
all entries please attatch a photo as he’s not judgemental but he is a fickle homosexual who appreciates beauty”

I have to say, he’s not far wrong. I definitely love my family, Kylie and all things beautiful, but yes, I am also a fickle homo that needs to lighten up.

This morning I was reading in a magazine sitting in a cafe before work, that people in arranged marriages are often happier long term than people who find their own partner. Nearly half of all first marriages fail, two thirds of second marriages fail and three quarters of all third marriages fail.

That is of course talking about heterosexual marriages, discounting defacto relationships and definitely the merry go round of gay relationships. Those in arranged marriages often report falling in deep love around the 3-5 year mark, often when more conventional marriages are hitting the rocks.

The idea of a relationship arranged by my mother, on one hand is very disconcerting, on the other hand it takes the pressure off. Firstly, no effort on my part, secondly you go into it with a guarantee that your family will like the person. Mum surely can’t be disapproving of someone she chose for me now could she?

Next time I’m visiting my parents, I’ll throw the suggestion out there. Wonder how she’ll react.

So I’ve recently met a guy and we’ve been out and fooled around. It’s only been VERY early stages but I’ve received a text saying we need to have a talk, because his ex is coming to town for 5 days (from another country). Basically there is an expectation on both their parts that there will be sex. I know he wants ex-sex and the ex wants ex-sex.

He said we need to talk about it because he knows I’m a monogamous kinda guy etc. Yeah that’s right, so what does he expect I’ll say about it? Yeah sure, I’m thrilled with the idea of you and your ex that you clearly still have at least urges for making the beast with two backs while we are in a new dating scenario.

I can’t make demands of him at all, but it also shows that we have very different approaches to dating. I have no idea where I want things to go with him but because of my approach to dating, I wouldn’t be shagging anyone else while I give this a chance, let alone an ex. I know I’m uptight but this just pushes all my insecurity buttons and perhaps it’s brought to the fore some of the tiny little doubts I had that I was dismissing as over analysing, which I’m prone to doing.

I don’t know when we are having this big chat, but the fact that we even have to have one this early is frustrating and concerning.

These images popped up in my email today and they brought a smile to my face. Sure, they are staged and they are old and not very good quality but it’s just really nice to see two guys being very comfortable in their own skin and with being gay and in love. I have vague recollections of seeing these photos a few years ago and I believe the guys are (or were) actually a real life couple.

A friend of mine has dipped his toe into the blogging world, chronicling the ins and outs of making a relationship work and bringing it back from the edge of destruction. He’s changed the names of everyone concerned.

The blog is amazingly candid, discussing a lack of sex drive, extra-marital dalliances (allowed) and urges that may not be allowed. I’m sure a lot of people reading it will see elements of their own relationships in his.

Read the blog here.

Once upon a time in a land far far too close to home, there was a young prince waiting for his Prince Charming. He occupied his days and nights doing things that made him happy but couldn’t help but think it would be nice to have someone hold his hand on the way to Grandma’s house and keep him safe from the Big Bad Bear Wolf. Sure there was the odd encounter on the way, in the woods with the woodsman and his big chopper but that didn’t make the young prince as happy as maybe it should.

The young prince socialised a lot with the seven dwarves but even laid end to end they didn’t make a Prince Charming, even two at once. They were a nice distraction from going to the local castle and being subjected to villainy of the Wicked Queens.

Along the way the young prince had kissed a lot of frogs, but sadly the magic just wasn’t there and Prince Charming didn’t appear. Pinoccio had been a lot of fun, but with all the lies the only thing that grew was the distrust, his nose wasn’t as big as Pinoccio thought it was so the young prince banished him back to the other land far far away.

Goldilocks only turned out to be a typical Gen Y twink that thought he could just come on in and take whatever he thought but he ran off when he heard about the bears. Not that I could blame him. They scare me a touch, but they are a lot more friendly than Cinderfella’s wicked step-sistas out Neverland. Captain Hook, if you are going to hang out in Neverland, you may dress like Peter Pan but really you look like the ticking crocodile.

So the young prince contented himself to spinning on his silks waiting for a prick from someone a little more special than Rumplestilskin but was fast coming to the conclusion that Prince Charming was riding a lame horse. It was high time Prince Charming traded in his lame horse for some magic beans because the young prince was hoping to climb his beanstalk to live happily ever after.

Sitting in his Ivory Tower the young Prince came to a conclusion that perhaps HE should try to be more of a Prince Charming, get back on his horse and take his magic slipper out for a few fittings himself.

Kevin Richberg is a man on a mission and I’m thinking maybe it could be something worth trying. I’ll wait and see what he gets out of this venture before setting off though.

If you want a date with Kevin, leave your proposal at his site “30 dates 30 days 30 cities” but don’t be expecting sex, Kevin says a goodnight kiss is as far as it will go. Queerty has a story on Kevin’s odyssey here. For romantics out there, give it a shot. I don’t know what his selection criteria is but he’s got a lot of offers so he’s going to have to do some serious culling.

Negotiating the minefield of social networking sites and your relationship status is perilous and fraught with danger. Updating too soon can eliminate other options for those that like the greener looking grass just over your partner’s left shoulder. Updating too late can incur the wrath of said partner. Here’s a simple guide on the meaning of your options.

1. Single
Single by definition means you are not betrothed or committed to another and are free to play the field as one desires. As a result, depending on your rate of success with this venture you may have either your clinic or your therapist on speed dial.

2. In a relationship
This status is open to interpretation depending on your age bracket.
If you are under 25 you may choose to use this status 5 minutes after exchanging your first message on grindr. It will subsequently revert back to single after you see the first photo of his mal-formed genitalia.
If you are over 25, your status will generally be changed to “in a relationship” after the first few sexual encounters that do not go horrendously wrong.

3. In a relationship and it’s complicated
This status is applicable when you are dating someone and it’s going well but you can’t seem to stop hooking up with other guys but you haven’t discussed the rules of this with your new paramour.

4. In an open relationship
Following on from the previous status, an open relationship is when you’ve discussed the hooking up with others and it’s approved of. Hence you now have more sex outside the relationship than you do with your partner.

5. In a relationship and it’s complicated
Yes, this one is also used after “open relationship” when arguments have begun because one of you is considerably more popular with outside encounters than the other resulting in hysterics and tantrums. Hence the more successful partner begins understating his conquests but still having them more discreetly.

6. Engaged
This is used amongst gay men purely to confuse the heterosexual community

7. Married
Apparently we aren’t allowed so this one is a mystery I’m afraid.

There has been outrage on gay blogs and facebook profiles of gay men all over Australia today after our new Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that the Government’s stance on Gay Marriage won’t be changing with her in power.

Gay papers and lobbyists are tut-tutting as if she’d condemned us all to hell. She hasn’t. Julia Gillard has said she is all for reforms to eliminate any discrimination against the LGBT community but that the definition of a marriage being between a man and a woman will stay. I would have been much more surprised if she had said that gay marriage was on her agenda. The woman is in her first week in power, through a political coup and has a very precarious election looming overhead. Why would she piss off a huge part of her voting public to appease a minority that thinks it has more clout than it does?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m disappointed and I long for the day when a Prime Minister does stand up, without risking his or her leadership and announce that gay marriage will be introduced without a ruffle of protest. But there is absolutely no chance of it happening in Australia’s current conservative climate on a shaky political platform. Julia is clinging to a leadership that she was thrust into with people waiting for her to slip up.

I think the gay community needs to be more realistic and put the angry sequinned megaphone down for a bit. We need to be patient and keep our expectations in check. I want gay marriage as much as anyone and really wish Ms Gillard had said yep, I’m all for it, but I’m not surprised she didn’t.

Between dates, catch-ups steadfastly refusing to be called dates and not thinking about dating, I think I might have lost my mind in the cracks.

Any gay man with an iPhone has done either of two things. They’ve either posted a photo of themselves on guyswithiphones.com or they’ve used Grindr. So far I’ve limited myself to option number 2. Tonight I had a spontaneous pub meal with someone I’d chatted to on grindr and while I had a nice enough hour and a bit chat and meal but nothing more, he clearly thought it was leaning towards the something more end of the scale. I wasn’t ten minutes from the pub when I got the hard-to-reply-to text message about how nice it was.

Last week I finally caught up with a guy I have met sporadically over the last few years and whose company I’ve always enjoyed when we have caught up. We’ve been discussing catching up for a beer for ages now and last week it happened on the proviso, his, that it wasn’t a date. OK. He doesn’t like dates. So after a really nice couple of hours of conversation and a couple of beers and a meal with tentative plans to catch up again I’m left wondering was it just a catch up of two acquaintances? Was it a date in all but name? Or am I now seeing that meal from the same side as tonight’s “date”?

Christ it’s a minefield out there. If I were straight, would I have got this shit sorted by now?

This weekend marks the 3 week point of my new living arrangement and I can’t believe it’s happened again but I think I’ve infected my new flatmate with a relationship already. Long-term readers of Aussielicious will now that I have a habit of infecting friends with the love ebola. I seem to be immune to a relationship sadly but I am a carrier. The weekend after I moved in he went out to a mutual friend’s birthday and met a guy. Last night was date number three and it appears to have gone very well.

Man, when all this relationship good karma comes back to me Prince Charming is gonna be fucking fantastic. He’d better be.

Something that struck me yesterday in particular at the sauna, as it has in the past, is that you can never assume what people are going to go for. Back in my time in London I went to the sauna a few times and one day had an amazing time with some incredibly hot people there. The next time I went I could have been doing cartwheels down the corridor with firecrackers coming out of my arse and not one person showed the slightest bit of interest.

Last night there was a hot blonde guy there and I sat in the spa trying to judge his interest, which seemed to be zero. I figured he was about 23-25 so I was probably a decade too old for him. A little while later I saw him in the spa, being fondled by someone who he seemed to be appreciative of the attention, who was about 55+. So while I thought I was a good decade too old for him, apparently I was two decades or so too young. It just goes to show, you never know what someone’s type is.

I’ve just had a conversation with the guy I’m moving in with after telling him this story. He told me about some friends of his, one a total gym junkie, amazing body and fit as hell, the other severely overweight, man-boobs and big belly, and they were together for 12 years.