ILikeFrailGuys NC meets AvgGuy4LTRNC

Chapter I

(Representing, rewriting a story I told about this time last year.)

I’ve been in love 3 ½ times.

The first was bad but improving. The second was surprising, eventually devastating. The half time was with a guy that I never exchanged Iloveyous with. But he was torturingly lovely and our times together were always happy. As I did about this time last year I want to write about the third time.

When I came out I became a romantic sap. Not that I was too foolish to appreciate the pleasures of promiscuity. I wasn’t one of those weird gay nutters who hold themselves chaste while waiting for Mr. Right. The first relationship drained the sap out of me. When the second arrived I’d long stopped looking.

When I came out I also discovered that I didn’t cotton to the black noisiness of gay bars. And I’ve never had the knack of chatting with boring strangers (and most strangers are very boring).

When I was working on a gay newspaper I met plenty of guys that way. After I left I started using personal ads.

Several years ago after a long absence genital and romantic longing returned. I used Yahoo, AOL, gay.com and places I’ll never remember to meet guys.

Amid the IMs asking "a/s/l" or "are you a top?" I, using my nom de AOL, IlikeFrailGuysNC, got my first message from AvgGuy4LTRNC. His profile revealed that he was 27. I made sure he’d noticed that I was nineteen years older. Thankfully unlike most AOL users he had looked at my profile.

This was how I met Charles.