1. Ryan Secrest

2. Ed Westwick

3. David Beckham

4. Mario Lopez

5. Matthew Fox

6. Michael Phelps

7. Russell Crowe

8. Matt Dillon

9. Jim Carrey

10. Phillipe Ryan

1. Oprah Winfrey

2. Iman

3. Paris Hilton

4. Nicole Richie

5. Ashley Lilley

6. Emmy Rossum

7. Tara Reid

8. Britney Spears

9. Sharon Stone

10. Jennifer Love Hewitt

Straight women aren’t the only people who can’t seem to meet the right guy. Gay men can’t seem to either. The difference is that women aren’t “allowed” to approach men while gay men are expected to. And this sets up what psychologists call “Approach Anxiety” — the fear of initiating contact with a good looking stranger.

It goes something like this: You see a beautiful guy at a gay bar or a party and you want to meet him in the worst way. But fear matches your desire. Doubt sets in. Alarms go off. The fantasy of being with him draws you in but the thought of actually saying something to him scares you to death.

Approach anxiety and conversational skill deficiencies feed on each other. If you knew exactly what to say and how to say it, your approach anxiety would melt like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

But there’s an even bigger reason that approach anxiety rears its ugly head and keeps gay men from connecting with the kind of guys they want to date (especially in gay bars): Believing that good looking strangers are something they’re not.

Most of us see an attractive guy as a goal–something we want to, ahem, achieve. But if he’s a goal, taking the chance of approaching him has only two possible outcomes: Leave with him in your arms or your tail between your legs.

The thing about goals is that you either achieve them or you don’t. You win or lose, it’s black and white, sink or swim. Actually, it’s worse. When your goal is love, sex or both, it feels more like Live or Die. You either get validated by a beautiful guy or die of embarrassment from trying to talk to him. That’s a pretty high price for what amounts to saying hello. And it’s what makes gay nightlife turn into gay frightlife.

So what’s the secret to overcoming your fear of rejection? It’s coming to a profound realization about every good looking guy:

He’s not a goal. He’s a portal.

The guy you want to meet is not an objective; he’s an entryway. He’s somebody who’s going to lead you to the next moment in your life. He may be the next guy you date but what if he ends introducing you to the next guy you date? What if he becomes your next acquaintance, friend, or business contact? Or the guy who points you to the sports league you didn’t know existed, the concert you didn’t know was scheduled or that restaurant that just opened. Maybe you’ll just get a great story out of the experience of meeting him. Or a funny joke. But if you’re open to all of it, any of it, then suddenly Mr. Hot, by the definition of a portal, CAN’T induce fear of rejection, ridicule or loss. He can only instill a sense of curiosity about what’s next.

Once you’ve redefined and realigned your perception of attractive guys, the fear of rejection goes away. But you’re still left with a major dilemma: What do you say to attractive strangers that won’t make you sound like an idiot?

The Art of the Gay Pickup is a new series of postings that will show readers how to pick up gay men.

Dear Sexorcist:

I’ve been having a hard time getting it hard lately. I’m 33 and I do smoke and drink. I have always had a good hard dude but lately with my girlfriend it’s been a chore. Don’t tell me to give up the cigs or the Jack—it ain’t gonna happen. Weird that suddenly I’m having problems getting it up. How do I straighten this out?

– Too Soft in Sylvan Hills

Dear Too Soft:

Saying you want a solution without cutting back is like asking how you can avoid a flat tire on a road full of nails. So, straight from the Department of Duh: Stop smoking and drinking. If you give a urine sample and an olive comes out, it’s time to quit. Or at the very, least cut back.

Erections are about blood flow. The more the flow the harder you’ll go. Guess what smoking does? Constricts blood vessels leading to the penis. Alcohol? Numbs the senses. The only thing that cigarettes and alcohol give a lift to is Viagra’s sales chart.

Click here to read more…

As equality rises homophobia will fall and so will the need for using marriage as a bush we can use to shimmy over to the rights trough.

The Washington Post did a great video of couples standing in line:

Over 50 couples lined up at the city clerk’s office this morning as Washington DC’s new gay marriage law takes effect. The Supreme Court turned down opponents who had asked it to stop the proceedings. Good thing, because straight people have almost as much to gain from gay marriage as the people in this morning’s line.

Homophobia creates a great deal of marriages that end in divorce. Homophobia drives the fearful into fraudulent marriages. It compels people into deceit. Like my friend Paul. He wanted kids, he wanted job promotions, he wanted acceptance. What he didn’t want was the stigma of being gay. He was convinced that he could not have what he wanted out of life without living a life he didn’t want. So he lived a life he didn’t want to get the things that he did. He married. And years later, when he couldn’t bear living the lie anymore, he divorced. Leaving hurt children, an angry wife and confused relatives.

For every gay man or woman who married as a means of hiding–and then came out–there are at least three or four heterosexual victims: The spouse, the parents of the spouse, the parents of the gay person, the relatives of both and most importantly, the couple’s children.

If we will not be punished for loving someone of the same sex, if we will not be denied the protections and benefits of marriage, if we will not be denied a promotion, what incentive do we have to pretend to be straight? If we can get everything we want out of life without pretending to be someone we’re not, why go through the trouble of lying?

With the ability to marry, fewer and fewer of us will enter into sham marriages to get the privileges that come from being, or at least acting, heterosexual. As equality rises homophobia will fall and so will the need for using marriage as a bush we can use to shimmy over to the rights trough. By removing the need for marrying under false pretenses, same sex marriage will end needless heterosexual suffering.

Same sex marriage will also help heterosexual marriages in other ways. Like expanding gender role expectations. Because our relationships aren’t based on defined roles or social conventions we negotiate everything–from who pays for the groceries to who cooks the meals. For example, who cooks and cleans when the couple is all-male? Who takes out the garbage and mows the lawn when the couple is all-female? As straight people see that conventional gender assumptions can be challenged and resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, they too will experience the kind of freedom that helps marriages stay together.

Same sex marriage will also reinforce bonds between straight fathers and their children. If two married gay men adopt a child there will always be a father attending the child’s school activities. Witnessing this, wives will put more pressure on their husbands to attend their children’s activities (’Johnny’s father is gay and he comes to the PTA meetings; why can’t you?’). As straight fathers are pressured to change their priorities they’ll forge deeper connections with their children.

Same sex marriage will also create stronger heterosexual marriages by changing the way straight married men relate to each other. Homophobia prevents straight men from bonding with each other in emotionally meaningful ways. They don’t show their vulnerabilities and find it hard to talk to each other about their feelings. Gay marriage would decrease homophobia and allow straight men to be emotionally closer to each other without the fear of being perceived as gay. This emotional closeness would help men keep their marriages strong because they’d be able to lean on each other as problems in their marriage arise.

Contrary to everything that’s said in mainstream papers, gays and lesbians aren’t going to ruin marriage; we’re going to improve it. This is going to be the mother of all make-overs. If it were a TV show it’d be called Queer Eye for the Straight Altar.

Mike Alvear is the author of the instantly downloadable ebook, 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.

I was watching an MSNBC reporter grill a White House aide, asking if she’d ever seen Obama with a cig hanging off his lower lip. The aide said, “I personally haven’t. You’ll have to ask Michelle.”

Indeed.

Many of us have done The Recycling thing. You’re in the midst of a dating drought, or need to get laid, and you start sifting through your address book or searching for people on Facebook. The plan is to send them a “Hey! How’ve you been?” email. Of course, you have an agenda. You’re not REALLY all that interested in catching up. Dropping him or her a line out of the blue and then ending the note with “Want to get together?” is just too obvious. You might as well just come out and say, “Listen, I have nothing else to do and could use a blow job…or a date to focus on and be excited about because Valentine’s Day is coming up and I’m all weepy and sad.”

Foolishly, we’ll even contact the people with whom things didn’t end well. Maybe the sex was great and you kept their address “just in case.” Or they were always up for a good time. Or you knew they liked you more than you liked them. Whatever the reason, they served a dual purpose in addition to their original.

When you’re in these states – the ones that have you longing, yearning or just plain blue balled – you tend to remember things differently. They weren’t THAT bad. Okay, so you weren’t all that attracted to them. And yeah, they kind of were bad kissers. Oh yeah, they did sort of complain a bit more than you’d like.

“But people change!” you say. You tell yourself all kinds of things to justify dipping back in to that garbage can, sifting for items that could be used to better your mood or self-esteem.

You even start to romanticize the situation. “Maybe it just wasn’t our time! Maybe things will work now!”

The unfortunate thing about being a places like this is that you tend to see what you want and not necessarily is in front of you.

Whenever I’ve received one of these Go Green attempts, I’ve always felt two things. First, suspicious. Why is he contacting me now? What does he want? The next emotion I experience is..annoyed. I’m annoyed that this guy, because he’s feeling a little desperate, would even consider me a welcoming participant in his scheme. Because, see, that could mean he thinks I’M desperate.

The worst is logging on to a dating site and looking through profiles and seeing an ex or someone you went out with. You check the profile because you’re not quite sure it’s them, or you’re curious too see what lies…I mean..ways they are now selling themselves. By the time you click you forget one very important thing. Most sites let you see who has viewed you. Shit. Shitshitshit! Now you feel like you’re in a bookstore and someone you know just found you in the relationship self-help section. You duck behind tables or feign ignorance and pretend you were looking for the Travel section because you have this FABULOUS trip to London planned! There’s no place to hide online.

Then the inevitable email comes. “Hey! What’s up?” Wow. The effort it must have taken to write that. Didn’t you have your penis in my mouth on several occasions? And that’s the best you could do?

That’s when all your insecurities come flooding in to your brain. “Oh God…I’m still single and know HE knows. Ugh. ” Messages from those guys almost feel manipulative. Like, and I’m totally projecting here, they think you’re vulnerable and therefore more amenable to their charm. Or rancid personality. Or that you’ve forgotten the fact that they said they’d call you and didn’t, or magically found a girlfriend mere weeks after your first date. This is one I’ll never understand. How does one ask you out for a second or third date, then  a few days later derail that train by telling you they’ve met someone else? To me that screams “You’re the understudy. When the star is out sick or unavailable or not putting out, you’ll do. But you will never take the role permanently.” Any guy who tries to follow up with me after that? Buh bye.

The main reason why I think we try to recycles old dates is this – we’re lazy. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. There’s no anxiety over whether they’ll look like they’re photo or if they’ll be as witty and interesting as that first time you spoke at that party. AND…you’re already one or two dates in. So technically, if you do go out again, it’s the third date and sex is TOTALLY okay!

There were many times last year I felt paralyzed by both fear and exhaustion when considering an upcoming date. I didn’t feel like being rejected again, or judged, or waste my time and money on an arduous conversation. But what I really didn’t want to do was get my hopes up only to have them come crashing down when I get that inevitable “My dog ran away and I just can’t handle a relationship right now.” Which is code for “You didn’t put out last night, and that was why I was there, soo…um..bye!”

I really had to fight through those feelings of anxiety. I had to force myself to go out on these dates and go meet these guys. It was like when I was a kid and my Dad was teaching me how to play softball. Forgetting that I was a girl, not a boy, he threw a particularly hard fast ball my way. He knew I had the ability to catch it, so it wasn’t like he was Great Santini-ing me (that’s a movie, check it out). But, it hopped off my glove and nailed me square in the mouth and knocked me down. I cried and whined and did the wah wah wahs for a bit. My Dad came over and lifted my face by the chin, did a once over and told me to get back up. I refused. He insisted. He stood over me until I got back on my feet. He went back about 40 feet or so. He threw the ball again, this time faster than the one before. Once I was over my little pity party, I grew determined to catch that ball. And I did. Yeah, I ducked once or twice and missed it. But on the third try I caught it. It took me years to figure out why he did that.

He did it because he didn’t want me to feed in to the fear. He wanted me to confront it and accept the possibility that, yeah, I might get hurt. But he also wanted me to experience the exhilaration of succeeding at something that terrified me and know the sense of satisfaction of facing something head on and coming out the other side.

Recycling has its upsides. The attention is great and it feels nice to think someone is thinking of you. But you threw that particular item away for a reason. Either it wasn’t what you wanted or it had served its purpose. Or it made you sick.

Somethings should stay in the trash.

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