Aussielicious

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.

My weekend in Adelaide with the boys was a great one and unexpectedly longer than planned. One of the boys picked me up shortly before midday on Saturday, the other one was still working. We went and got some lunch and then went for a couple of beers where lovely guy #2 came to meet us.

Over the weekend there was much laughing, lots of good eating, many drinks and even more laughs. You know when you meet some people who are just meant to come into your life? These two are those people. They are clearly meant to be together as well. They bounce off each other, motivate each other, nurture each other and make each other laugh, constantly.

On Sunday night I was introduced to the Mars Bar. Not the confectionery, but the bar. It was there I had a reader of this blog introduce himself. Hi mate, can you send me an email please? I also apologise for my (drunken) friends hollering out the cab window at you.

I ended up missing my flight on Monday afternoon because I was approximately 7 minutes too late for the ridiculous cut off point for check-in. If I’d paid attention to anyone or the TV show Airline, I would have known Tiger Airlines are a PR campaign for bad customer service, but alas I hadn’t. So I was booked onto the following morning’s flight, which I was notified by a phone call at 3am, was cancelled, so I eventually made it home 24 hours later than scheduled.

The silver lining on that cloud? Sure, it’s made my working week a bit busier, but I got an extra day with my lovely mates, and a day less work this week!

Tomorrow morning I head to the airport and fly to Adelaide, South Australia. It’s an interesting position to be in, visiting a couple that I had amazing sex with on the Navigaytion Cruise in early February, but not actually guaranteed of a repeat performance.

Granted the main focus of the trip is to get to know the guys better, have a break and some really good laughs. The couple are one of those couples that just make a lot of sense to me. They work really well together, laugh a LOT together and I would hazard a guess, bring out the best in each other. So ultimately if we don’t have any of the amazing sex, it won’t be the end of the world, but damn, I haven’t had any sex like that since and for a long time before.

It’s a long weekend here in Australia, so I will be back on Monday evening.

It appears my love ebola virus has struck once more. No, I’m being premature, let’s call this one, the like hanging out ebola, but once again, two guys I facilitated the meeting of have hit it off. I’m not going to predict the outcome of these two as I have no desire to jinx things for them, but I do love seeing people I like getting on well. I posted a status on my facebook profile about introducing yet another couple and a friend said that maybe it was my role in life to introduce people. Another called me “Cupid wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a pair of Aussiebums” which made me giggle. There’s the silver lining of being single, it gives me time to help romance along.

Another friend has suggested having a gay speed dating night to find myself a husband and open it up to readers of the blog. While it’s an interesting idea it feels like it would be rather a arrogant thing to do, and even more arrogant to think anyone would turn up, but it’s a fun idea.

I was at my sister’s place the other night and after the kids were in bed I was telling my sister and her husband about the video I posted here the other day of the little boy talking about husbands and husbands. My sister told me they’d had to explain to my nephew about the meaning of gay. I have no idea how it came up but they explained that sometimes men fall in love and marry other men. Apparently after a while, he said “Maybe Brenton will marry a man”. He’s never been told, as far as I know, that I’m gay…

February 14th has rolled around once more and 2010 is no different to the years before it in the sense that there isn’t anyone “special” to celebrate it with. As commercially driven as it is, and as much as I don’t think I should be told when to be romantic, it would be nice to hold someone’s hand and give someone a kiss on this day.

How does today feel different from other years? I’m in a more positive frame of mind. I certainly am not claiming to have my life totally sorted at all. I don’t know quite what I want to be when I grow up yet and financially I don’t seem to be making the progress I’d like, but life is good. I’m starting to like myself a bit more and enjoy all the fantastic parts of my life like my good friends, making new friends, aerial silks classes, photography and my wonderful family.

To my new Adelaide friends, happy first anniversary. You are a very special couple and I look forward to getting to know you better. To every reader in a relationship, treasure it and enjoy it, there are many who envy you. To all the single readers, those that want to be and those like me wishing there were someone next to you on the path, enjoy your day, treat yourself and look at the love hearts everywhere with a smile. That’s my plan.

The topic of a threeway relationship has come up with people I’ve met recently a couple of times, especially over the weekend on the cruise. There was a couple on the cruise that I spent a lot of time hanging out with and one of the guys had been “kind of” in a threeway relationship in the past, as had another friend of mine, a few years back.

I’ve never been in a regular long term relationship so I’m no expert and I’m very keen to hear the experiences of readers who are in or have been in a three way relationship. To my inexperienced eye, most of them come from a third being invited into an established relationship and so far to my knowledge it’s that third that usually ends up hurt or dumped from the experience.

The couple I was hanging out with and I got on very well and hypothetically, instigated from the past experience of one of them, discussed the practicalities of the situation. I personally doubt could ever enter into a threeway relationship with an established couple. I’ve never heard of a long term threeway lasting, so it’s a self preservation exercise, stopping myself getting hurt. Secondly, as a hopeless romantic, no matter how much I desired the other two and felt a bond, I would feel absolutely horrendous if my entering the picture caused any kind of jealousy or tension within the original couple.

Having been single for a long time, I’ve had several threesomes with couples over the years and as the “guest” you are treated to an amazing level of attention and often are attracted to one more than the other. I can’t see the point in entering a situation so prone to jealousy. If any of you are in a three way relationship, please tell me your story.

Dear U.S. Citizen,

A little over three years ago you left Australia after your second visit here and our third time together and we left on good terms. I apologise. I should have thrown your arse out of this country as soon as you packed my baggage. Yes, MY baggage. Since that visit, and the way you treated me, I have been riddled with insecurities that weren’t there before you came and hurt me and left me with a smile on your face.

Not being able to tell me in words that you weren’t ready for a serious relationship was ok. Telling me by treating me like dirt found on your shoe was not. Telling me I had bad breath so you didn’t have to kiss me was not good. Being openly critical of things I was doing in the middle of sex was not good. Putting an advertisement on Craigslist for guys to meet us at the nude beach and fuck was not good. Finding you sitting in the steam room at the gym masturbating with someone decades older than you while I was out dressing and waiting for you was not good. Organising more threesomes or group sex, than sex with just you and I was not good.

Did I handle it correctly by letting it all happen instead of telling you to your bags? No, I didn’t. You made me feel like I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t turn you on and someone else had to be there to do that for you. You have left a lasting impression on me that I’m not good enough and frankly, I’m sick of carrying the emotional baggage around that you packed for me. You can have it back.

When you went back home, we tried to be friends and stay in touch. It was good that we were behaving like adults, right up until you called me, standing outside the house of some guy you were practically stalking asking me to talk some sense into you within two months of you saying you weren’t ready for anything serious. At what point in your self absorbed brain did you think that was ok?

Did you think I’d be impressed a couple of months later again, when you were bragging that the guy you were dating (ie fucking regularly with other people) and spending a lot of time with, was a porn star? Only in your mind is that some kind of glamorous aspirational trophy husband. The porn stars I’ve met and chatted to are great guys, but it’s not the fact that they have sex on film that is a selling point for me.

I’m genuinely glad that you are happy in your newest relationship. Seriously. Do you give a damn that I’m not happy with myself and therefore can’t find happiness with someone else, because of how you treated me? I don’t think so. If you’d learnt anything from the two boyfriends that cheated on you and put your health at risk, I thought it would have been how to treat people with respect. Good luck, best wishes.

Sometimes I seriously think my own headspace needs some redecorating or a bloody good feng-shui alignment. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling on the verge of another meltdown like the one I had a couple of months ago about being single etc. A couple of days ago someone said something to me that has brought more attention in my own mind to something that is best ignored.

There is someone I’ve been getting to know for a little while now and we get on really well but there is no way anything will ever cross the line from friends into romance. For starters we just aren’t a good match. I’m not going to go into why, but apart from wanting a similar kind of relationship it would not work at all. With my overly developed desire for a relationship in overdrive I was twisting the good vibes of the new friendship and looking at them from a perspective of potential romance which is not a good idea. Through a good conversation with a mutual friend of ours, she’s put me back on the right track and got me thinking the right way again and the view is much better.

Neurotic and over analysing things much?

At this time of year it’s natural to reassess your life and decisions made over the past year. I feel like I’m at a bit of a crossroads with work and the usual conundrum of my pathetic lovelife.

Work hasn’t been enjoyable for me for some time and like a lot of people I don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up. There is a passion for photography but do I really want to turn it into a career and perhaps kill the passion in the process of trying to make a living? Am I even good enough to consider that? Lots more thinking to be done and there really is no deadline to do it.

As for the relationship thing, who the hell knows if that will ever sort itself out. I had a really nice coffee date yesterday afternoon. I’ll see him again, but only time will tell if it’s going to go anywhere.

Hi everyone, I’m so sorry about the delays but as yet our internet provider at home still hasn’t come up with any answers for us which is pissing me off no end. So this post comes to you from my office where I am stuck in a very busy week trying to get urgent stuff done before we close for a couple of weeks over the Christmas period.

To update you all on stuff. Hot Nudie and I are no longer dating. A couple of factors were at play, for me anyway and I decided I think we’d be better as friends. It’s a shame but I’m learning that my gut instinct is quite often right these days and when I ignore it I end up burnt badly, like with the American a few years ago.

Our house doesn’t feel like a home at the moment. Flatmate has a couple of friends staying with us from the U.K. who are out here for about 6 months and all they do is sit around the house ALL day. If you arrived from a cold and wet country, for 6 months in a sunny and warm country, don’t you think you’d get off your arse and explore it? Even if it were out of courtesy to not be underfoot where you are staying? Apparently not. My flatmate is a very neat and clean person and this (straight) couple have spread their stuff over the entire living area. Laptops, sunglasses, phones, phone chargers, change, clothes, bags. You name it, we’re tripping over it. It’s going to be a close call whether the friendship between my flatmate and these two survives the two more days (total of 11) they are here.

I went to the nude beach with a mate who is living here from Canada yesterday. We were there for 3 hours and the poor sod didn’t drink any water and missed several spots on his (quite pale) skin with sunscreen despite my offers to put it on his back. He texted me this morning saying he’d had sun stroke last night, and was very ill and now has blisters on his back. Please, if you are going in the sun in Australia, be very very careful. We have a hole in the Ozone layer and very harsh sun.