Not Interested

The "Friend zone" is said to be when you want more than just friendship from someone, but they're not interested in you in that way, and they just want to be friends.  I've been there before with guys.  On the other hand I've also been in the position where guys have wanted more with me, and I've not been interested in them in that way, making me the one to put them into the friend zone.  In that case where you are both friend zoned, and friend zoner, I would like to call it the "No Zone" while defining it as being in the position where every guy you are interested in isn't interested in you, and vice versa.

I've been in the No Zone once before when I first came out all those years ago.  I wanted a relationship and I had never had random sex, never had a hookup, or a fuck buddy, and had that great vision that there'd be a guy who would turn out to be "the" guy.  Needless to say that never happened.  Also needless to say being young and shall we say, "sprung" I got impatient and jumped on the bandwagon.  I had my fill, quite literally.  I found plenty of guys I would have sex with, so I did; but none of them were guys I would have wanted a relationship with, so I had my fun and when the inevitable question arose the answer was always the same - no.  The kind of guys I was interested in reacted the same way, they didn't want a relationship so I had my fun and eventually parted ways with every guy.

Inevitably I discovered something which admittedly took me longer to realise than it should have - that you can't deny who you are, you can never really change it either and when you try to, it eventually catches up on you.  Over time each meaningless encounter left me feeling empty, and unfulfilled.  In the end it felt somewhat degrading.  That's how it felt to me.  There are many people out there who are more than happy with that routine however, and if you are one of them then more power to you, I'd never dream of telling you to stop doing something that made you happy, the point is it wasn't something that made me happy.  In the end it was something that did the opposite and I grew to resent it which is something you should never do when it comes to sex. 

So I gave up on that path.  I gave up on random sex, no strings attached, fuck buddies et al.  Now the thing I should point out is that I did all this before apps like Grindr existed.  My "slut phase" as I call it was at its peak around about the time the first iPhone was even released.  Fast forward a few years and you find me still looking for a guy.  I won't say where I live exactly but there are 27 churches within a 1 mile radius of my house, this is essentially the UK's "bible belt" if you were ever going to call somewhere that.  There isn't a gay bar for about 40 miles.  With it being so hard to find gay guys here inevitably, the gay "dating" apps are a destination.  The problem with that is I don't belong on them really.  Grindr et al are not designed for meeting guys you want to have an actual relationship with; despite what their marketing campaigns and advertising will try and make out, the reputation these apps have is well deserved.  If you are one of the people I mentioned above who does like random sex even you will know how hard it is to find someone on there who you'd even want to do that with.

The alternatives to those apps are actual dating apps and dating sites, which brings us back to the point I was making at the start of this post.  I've found myself back at square one in many ways, looking for guys, and finding only disinterest from those I like, and interest from those I really don't.  For the gays that live in bigger cities a wider pool of potential guys prolongs an inevitability that those of us in smaller cities run into almost immediately - familiarity.  By that I mean you eventually see the same faces, and recognise people you've never met.  Even on Gay Twitter, where you can follow thousands of guys and have thousands follow you, eventually you start to recognise connections and the world seems to shrink.  The smaller the place you live the faster it happens, I don't use Grindr anymore, I got rid of it about a year ago for about the hundredth time.  Always in a moment of curiosity I will install it and always I see the same faces, the same guys, unsure what I actually expect to happen. 

One thing that does bug me about this whole experience, is not the fact that guys aren't interested in me, I mean I get it, if I'm not your type, then I'm not your type; it's the guys that have an interest in me who don't take no for an answer.  If someone isn't interested in you, persistence is not going to change that.  Calling them names and insulting them is not going to change that either.  I really do feel like rejection is under-represented in media, there's always this fairytale of boy meets girl or whatever, and they either fall in love instantly or one isn't interested, and the other persists and eventually wins them over.  There aren't many examples I can think of where one is rejected and they accept it and move on.  Like take Sex and the City, an old TV show now that centred entirely around the sex lives and dating of 4 single women.  Throughout that whole series they met guys they were interested in and they dated and had sex with, there wasn't really any moment where any character was rejected.  Those moments I can think of the rejection wasn't out of disinterest but out of the fact they were already seeing someone. 

I wish I had some great revelation to make of some great conclusion to add to give you closure but I don't.  The truth is my future love life is both non existent, and uncertain.  Truth be told I've made connections with people online on an intellectual level and there is some attraction but even with those, with each of them they are hundreds of miles away and in one case 7,500 miles away.  I'm slowly resigning myself to the idea that I'm going to stay single.  Add to that, just over a week ago I had my 28th birthday, which I know I'm told by many people I'm still young etc, but when you have this dream of spending your life with someone, sharing it with them, the older you get the more you start to count, and think, if I met him now, we could have X years maybe, and think if he was Y years older than me then maybe Z=X-Y years together.  I know that sounds incredibly depressing but I am actually quite level right now, which is unusual for me.  I'm a programmer at heart and I can't escape thinking about things from a mathematical point of view and iteration, and "the next step" and it's that mindset that's got me feeling a bit lost because I don't know where I am going from here.

Standing Still

Back and forth I glance through time
The events of my life begin to rhyme
History it seems does oft repeat
As my old friends I once again meet

We find ourselves back where we once were
And ask again how we ended up there
Our paths in life they twist and wind
And we wonder what it is we wish to find

Not knowing what you want can be hard to handle
Dreams of life, love, money, or some great mantle
The things we focus on can often consume
Until we stray from the path and can never resume

We find ourselves in places strange and new
Not knowing where to start nor what we can do
Lost in the moment we stand alone and we dream
Until our thoughts dwell on darkness and then we scream

We run away fast not caring which way
In search of a safe haven in which we can stay
We rest and we think of all we have done
And we hate ourselves for the fact that we run

A place in time that we can call our own
A place where we can say we are not alone
This is what we tell ourselves is that which we want
Yet when you focus on it everything else does taunt

There's something wrong with you if you don't run
They say life is about the chase and that moment of fun
Why is one moment of victory so cherished?
When so many who raced for it have perished

Why is it wrong to want to stop and stand still?
Why can this act not bring another great thrill?
There is beauty in the world for us to admire
A beauty that is obscured by the runner's fire