The door you let people through

I used to flirt with every single gay guy I met, whether I fancied him or not. I didn't notice how much I was doing it until I stopped.

It was about me wanting to be fancied. Validation, or wanting them to like me. As I said to Better Gay Dating, "I used to be an actor, come on, it's textbook." And it probably made people not like me, because flirting, if it's not welcome, is actually really annoying.

I once met a guy who, it turned out, had a boyfriend. At one point he said he would really like to kiss me. So I asked him: "Do you actually want to kiss me, or do you just want me to say that I would kiss you?" He said it was the latter. It wasn't about fancying me at all. It was about the idea that I would do something with him. I recognised that, because I'd been doing the same thing for years.

What changed

Since starting the project, I just don't flirt with every gay guy I see anymore. Now I only flirt with people I fancy. It's not about me anymore. It's about connecting with other people.

And when I go to things now, I don't just talk to the person I fancy. I open up to talk to anyone, really, and then we find something in common, something of interest. There's a whole world out there.

For me, that's really about practice. I've made the space, and the space allows it. That's why No Sex Gay Weekend is different from a lot of other gay things, like gay tennis or gay squash. In those you've still got that sense of who fancies who. In No Sex Gay Weekend we just get rid of it, and it becomes a mode of being. It's actually quite refreshing.

The door

On Friend of Dorothy I quoted a line from The Velvet Rage that I keep coming back to:

Don't let your sexual taste be the door by which you let people into your life.

When I look at my gay friends in London, a good proportion of them were people I hooked up with and then became friends with. Which is fine. But it means that the people I was looking at as people I might have something in common with, I always had to start by fancying them first.

Plenty of gay guys, including me, have friends they started off hooking up with. That seems to be the normal mode. But for other people that doesn't happen. They just meet people, they become friends, and afterwards maybe they like each other. We close ourselves off so much to people who we might spend time with, have things in common with and want to get to know, if they have to look a certain way first.

Something to try

When you go over to someone because you're attracted to them, that's not wrong. But then they might have to reject you, because that is actually what's happening if you go over with that intention. And people can tell. As I said on the Community Builders podcast, "it is smellable. Everyone knows, because we're animals."

So my suggestion, if you go to an event and want to meet new people, is that you should actually want to meet new people, not meet someone you fancy and try to hook up with them. There's just a difference in intention. Try going to talk to the friendliest person in the room, whoever they are, and ask them questions about themselves. If there's something interesting, carry on the conversation. If there's not a connection, go and talk to someone else. I've met some really interesting people that I'm not attracted to at all.

About 15 people came to our weekend in Bath. What was so great is that by mid Saturday they just started having a great time amongst themselves, and making friends. Nobody had come through the usual door. They'd come through a different one.

You can read about Bath and the other weekends on past weekends.