Why do so many effeminate gay men prefer in their partners the very masculinity they’ve bleached out of themselves?

The obvious answer is that they’re attracted to their opposites. But that answer only goes so far. Effeminate men may lust for their masculine counterparts but most masculine men don’t return the favor.

Effeminate men get hoisted on their own chiffon petards. The more they take on effeminate characteristics the less able they are to attract the kinds of guys they want to sleep with. This is a mating absurdity.

Imagine birds trying to attract mates with red and white plumage when the objects of their affection are attracted to yellow and green.

The mis-matched mating call of the merry marys brings up a great question: If effeminacy is counter-productive to attracting the kind of sexual partners you want, then why not butch it up?

Is it because like being gay, being effeminate isn’t a choice?

Nobody knows what fuels the gay flame– nature or nurture. Some believe gay guys turn sissy because they’re naturally nelly and some think it’s because they’re conforming to a culture that expects it.

I’ve always maintained that effeminacy is like obesity. Sometimes it’s glandular, but mostly it’s cultural.

There’s an undeniable Pansy Vortex in gay life. You fall into it with baggy jeans and a t-shirt and climb out of it with spandex up the crack of your ass.

How else do you explain my ex-boyfriend “Larry?” Closeted when I met him, he was popular, gorgeous, smart and athletic. He was the be to everyone’s bop. Then he came out. Everybody he hung out with liked to do drag and camp it up. Suddenly, Larry started shaving his legs, wearing tight shorts, and calling everyone “girl.” He ripened into a fruit before my very eyes.

Larry slid into the Pansy Vortex and I couldn’t do anything about it. One day he made me close my eyes and sit at the foot of his bed for a surprise. He pulled out a long black wig and a slinky Bob Mackie knock-off. And that was the end of that.

Now was Larry born with the desire to dress like Cher or did he just adapt to a culture that demanded it? After all, gay culture encourages effeminacy–we venerate drag, often call each other “girl,” love bitchy humor and consider camp an art form.

Whether the ability to walk with a lisp is in-born or learned, there’s no denying that most nelly guys don’t find other nelly guys sexy. A study published in the American Psychological Association showed a substantial number of effeminate-identified men who prefer masculine men for their sexual partners.

Even the nelly don’t equate nelliness with sexiness. And that’s a shame. Because there’s something self-negating about taking on characteristics you don’t want your partners to have. There are lots of ironies in gay life but none perhaps greater than this: Sissies are often the biggest sissyphobes of all.

From a reader: I was pretty traumatized by the news that I have hemorrhoids. It was like my ass was telling me it had had enough. The ‘rhoids’ healed but they sometimes come back. I’ve bottomed with a few guys since but I’m so worried that my hemorrhoid is going to rear its ugly head that I’m too tense to enjoy it. What do you do when you’re a bottom with a hemorrhoid?

- Dying to get laid

You need to get yourself to a doctor post-haste-red-hot-QUICK. If you don’t you’re going to end up needing ass surgery. Like me.

I waited too long to see a doctor after I developed hemorrhoids. Listen to my story and I promise you’re going to skip the phone call to the doc and teleport yourself into his office: The doctor points to the “head down, buttocks up” table and asks me to assume the position. When I heard the urethane glove snap on his hands I thought to myself, “Why couldn’t I have Attention Deficit Disorder like everyone else?”

My ‘rrhoids’ were so bad I had to go to a specialist. I almost fainted in his examination room when I saw what looked to be a 2-foot dildo with a gun-like trigger and an open vial of KY jelly. It was a sigmoidoscope. It’s inserted into your anus all the way up to your colon. Air is introduced into the scope to aid in viewing. This is the only field of work where pumping air up your ass isn’t considered a public relations ploy.

Mercifully, the doctor didn’t use the contraption, saving it presumably, for the patients who complained too much about the long wait in the lobby. As I bent over the “bottoms up” table, the doctor spread my cheeks apart as far as he could, giving his lovely blonde assistant an unobstructed view of what I used to think of as a private part. I longed for a shot of dignity the way a diabetic longs for a shot of insulin.

The upshot: Surgery. I had waited too long to get it treated. Three days after the operation, I sneezed. I thought my sphincter had flown out of my ass. The good thing about a hemorrhoidectomy is that you don’t really need pain killers after the surgery—the mortification masks most of it.

Just to set the record straight, hemorrhoids are NOT caused by anal sex. In fact, my hetero surgeon laughed at the thought. Seventy five percent of all men will get it at some point in their life. Call me skeptical but I doubt all those straight guys with hemorrhoids are getting ass-hammered at home.

Hemorrhoids are caused by pushing too hard when you’re on the toilet. My surgeon doesn’t blame anal sex for hemorrhoids; he blames magazines. “The bathroom isn’t a library,” he said. “Go in, if nothing comes out, get out.”

Words to live by.

If you want to avoid my fate—and believe me, you do—then master the secrets of the toilet arts. Never hold your breath when you’re on the bowl. It means you’re trying too hard. Breathe. Don’t effort. Don’t strain. Be at one with the bowl. There is no place for struggle in the art of the Zen dump.

Finally, take the magazine rack out of bathroom, drink a gallon of water a day and eat enough fiber to cement the government’s food pyramid to the floor.

AND NOBODY DIED.

It happened in Portugual on a show called What Is Your Talent. Audience reaction was actually positive–many giving the dancers a Standing O. The male host’s reaction can be summed up in one word: “Whoa!”

He also did some, er, self-service porn and refuses to label his sexuality. A gay dating phenom is born. Perhaps he should be known as The SituGaysian?

Here’s the story from Queerty.

You can’t meet Mr. Right (Or Mr. Right Now) if you’re riddled with a fear of rejection. Approach anxiety –the fear of starting a conversation with an attractive stranger–gets triggered by unreasonable goals. For example, telling yourself you need to go to the other side of the bar and pick up that hottie in the corner is about the most unreasonable goal you can come up with. You can’t expect to get to the top of Mt. Hottie without first setting up base camp.

That’s why you’ve got to set reasonable goals. “Meet a quality guy,” “Sleep with a hot man” or “get a husband” may be things you want, but they don’t qualify as reasonable goals. You can’t get there from where you are. You’d get better results–and faster ones–if you had goals that weren’t tied to outcomes. So here’s a stellar gay tip– From now on, your main objective is:

Be More Talkative

It’s the only way to convey the allure of your personality. No talking means no gay pickup. No personality means no chance of climbing Mt. Hottie. You have to practice being talkative with EVERYONE not just the guys you like. And you have to practice it EVERYWHERE, not just in bars or parties.

If your ultimate desire in climbing Mt. Hottie is, ahem, planting the flag, then you need to change your goal from getting something to being something. Namely, TALKATIVE. It’s the first commandment of picking up gay men.

Now, it’s true that you have to get good at specific kinds of conversations, but even that doesn’t matter unless you get into the habit of being naturally talkative. Gay tip Duh: If you can’t talk to strangers you’re not attracted to you’ll never be able to talk to strangers you are.

Try these exercises and see if at the end of just a couple of days you don’t already have way more confidence about climbing Mt. Hottie than you did before you started.

1. Say Hello to Strangers

To everyone, everywhere, all of the time. Whether they look at you or not. Whether you think they’ll say hello back or not.

2. Go out of your way to say hello to acquaintances

I’m talking about that acquaintance on the other side of the coffee shop. You’d say hello if there weren’t so many people in the place. STOP. Move your body. Get up and say hello.

3. Make small talk with acquaintances you typically only say hello to.

You know that person you’ve been saying hello to, for like, years, and you’ve never had a proper conversation? Start one.

Remember, If you can’t talk to strangers you’re not attracted to you’ll never be able to talk to strangers you are. Once you get used to being talkative everywhere with everyone, you can start using conversational techniques that are guaranteed to predispose guys to like you. And then you’ll get a breathtaking view from the top of that mountain.

Mike Alvear is the author the gay dating bible, Meet The Hottie In The Corner–The 21 Day Plan To Overcome Your Fear of Rejection, Master the Art of Icebreakers and Snag Guys You Never Thought You Could Get.

….Making the U.S. seem as advanced as a third-world country.

From NPR:

Argentina legalized same-sex marriage Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to give gays and lesbians all the legal rights that marriage brings to heterosexual couples.

After a marathon debate that lasted more than 16 hours, the vote was 33 in favor, 27 against and 3 abstentions in Argentina’s Senate. Since the lower house already approved the bill and President Cristina Fernandez is a strong supporter, it now becomes the law of the land.

The bill passed despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to a march on Congress earlier this week. But opinion polls in Argentina show support for legalizing same-sex marriage at 70 percent.

From a reader:

Is there such a thing as too much cruising? My boyfriend and I have an open relationship. When we made the arrangement I thought it would give us a chance to spice things up a bit. Recently though, my boyfriend wakes up and spends at least an hour each morning cruising for dick. And when he finally makes it to the office, he’s frequently working his Crackberry for a nooner or an after-work hookup. Is this sex binging an addiction?

– The Price of Spice

Dear Price:
Whores and sex addicts may share the same “drug” (dick) but they have completely different experiences with it. Addicts suffer negative consequences from their behavior. Whores don’t (well, except for the occasional penicillin shot). Take the garden-variety manwhore. He’ll stop the bed hopping when sex creates problems in his non-sexual life. Addicts can’t. Tramps don’t let their sex lives jeopardize their jobs. Sex addicts do.

Having too much sex is never a problem until it becomes a problem. The fact that you wrote tells me there is one. A big one, actually. You wanted to spice things up but he went all-spice, all the time. Which any cook will tell you, ruins a good meal.

There are two issues here, the first being… the state of your relationship. It doesn’t sound like you’re as bothered by the addiction to other guys as the loss of his attention. That’s easy enough to fix with some rules, the big one being MODERATION.

But his lack of moderation leads to the second issue: Has he gotten so hooked on that new dick smell that it’s become a problem in itself? There’s an old Chinese saying: “If you don’t change the direction you’re heading, you’re going to end up where you’re headed.”

Meaning, if he keeps going the way he’s going, he’ll end up in trouble with his job, his health, and with you. Is he a sex addict? Labels don’t matter; consequences do. Still, he’s showing every sign of an addict—mounting consequences coupled with an inability to stop.

Here’s how to tell if he’s gone too far and needs help. Tell him you want to close the relationship temporarily—that your intent was to crack the door open to the relationship, not blow it off its hinges. You’ll know you’ve got a problem if A) he gets ENRAGED and refuses to become even temporarily monogamous, or B) if he calmly agrees but keeps dick hunting behind your back. If he does either, it’s therapy time. He’s a car crash waiting for a telephone pole. Don’t stand there and let it be you.

One last thing about addiction: Most people think if they have “x” number of tricks they cross the threshold from having a high sex drive to being a helpless sex addict. Sex addiction Guru Patrick Carnes (read his classic, Out of the Shadows) addressed the idea of equating sex addiction to an arbitrary number in an interview with Esquire a while back. He said, “That’s like asking how many drinks make an alcoholic.” In other words, the difference isn’t in the number of guys your boyfriend is doing but in the severity of the consequences he’s creating.

Bilerico.com lists where the hot go to trot. I agree with the stores, but not the order. Starbucks at #8? Puh-leeze.

#10 – Pier 1
This home interior standard has been the spot to find up twinks and the butch-challenged for years. Not only can you find gay guys easily at Pier 1, but you can pick up a scented candle for ambiance.

#9 – Borders
Nothing is as sexy as a man who knows his letters – unless he’s picking out self-help books like, “How to Cut the Apron Strings: Letting Go of Mom.” Plus, you can ask him if he’d like to grab some coffee without ever leaving the store!

#8 – Starbucks
Speaking of grabbing coffee, you’ll find plenty of gay men at the local Starbucks. The mammoth chain always has at least one queer barista per store and a baker’s dozen online at the tables. If you see the apple of your eye cruising Manhunt, invite him to munch your muffin.

To see the rest of the top ten, click here.

From a reader: I’m a 21-year-old college student who gets raging hard-ons for my new crush–this sweet, gorgeous guy who’s exactly what I’m looking for. He wants me to top him but the second the condom goes on my cock it goes limp. Does this make me a bottom? I’m getting more and more upset about it, which I’m sure only makes matters worse. Am I alone in this? Does this happen to others? What can I do to keep an erection with a condom on?

– Frustrated as hell

Dear Frustrated:
You’re not alone. I can’t think of anything that’ll give my dick a flat tire more than condoms. Well, okay, vaginas, but let’s not quibble. Here are the reasons you’re losing it and how you can get it back:

The main thing is to become intimately familiar with condoms BEFORE you have sex. That way you’ll have power over them rather than the other way around.

Le Sexoflex – Twincest from Le Sexoflex on Vimeo.