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I Will Not Fall in Lust With Any More Beautiful Gay Men

My pride is far more important than any thrill a pretty boy might provide.

The moment Ken and I matched on Tinder I was smitten, and surprised. I remember swiping right and thinking, Yeah, right, like I’d ever get that. When he introduced himself on the site, my first thought was that it was a fake profile—his photos looked like they were pulled out of Athletic Stud Monthly, shirtless on a boat, tuxedoed at a party, Fashion Week-ready on a New York avenue. He gave me his number and we met within a week.

He was all real yet entirely fake. After our first great date, Ken’s messages were full of urgent pleas to meet and compliments galore—until they weren’t. Soon, he’d stop texting mid-sentence while we were making plans, then I’d get an adorable message from him a couple days later, and the pattern would repeat. After he didn’t RSVP to a long-scheduled date that he set up, I called him on it via text. He responded by blocking my phone and nixing me on Facebook.

There’s nothing unusual about dates going sour the ghosting way, but there is something unusual about my reaction: I regretted being upfront with Ken and wished I’d allowed him to be a flake until he (hopefully) rescheduled the date. If he'd been less-than-stellar-looking, I’d have laughed about all the time I was wasting pursuing him.

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But here's the thing: After I met Ken, I was ready to take on the world by showing him off. When a friend looked at his pictures, he said, “He takes my breath away,” and then sulked over his latest fling. I told friends at a party about him and hoped they were one of his zillion Instagram followers. That he was 16 years younger than I am was icing on the cake. My adoration of Ken wasn’t exactly deep.

Ever since my twenties, I’ve sought out male partners more conventionally attractive than I am, for the simple (and complex) reason that they confirm my own aesthetic worth. The origin of this trait is one for the therapist’s couch, but the end result is that I’ve also allowed men to take advantage of me, transforming my otherwise confident self into a pile of door-matted mush.

For the record, a lot of extremely sexy men I’ve had relationships with were great guys, and I’ve been in close relationships with men who didn’t initially ignite my hormones.

I grew up overweight and unpopular, and, like so many other gay kids, dreaming of a world where the high school jocks would fawn over me. The models in the GQ magazines I hoarded told me being “perfect” meant looking perfect, and after I got older and realized that, no matter how much weight I lost or muscle I gained, I didn’t have those exact features, I decided that getting a man who did was the next best thing.

I used to joke that I had a Barbra Streisand-Funny Girl complex, and I needed a gorgeous Nicky Arnstein-type to confirm my worth. It might have been less of a joke than I realized.

Jim, the man I spent a year with in my 30s, fit the Playbill. We met in a show where I played a geeky florist and he played a muscleman who stripped down to his jockstrap with the sole purpose of making audiences swoon and dole over ticket money.

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Man in shower putting water through his hair

He wasn’t much of an actor, and I was damn serious about the craft. Despite our “monogamous” relationship, he slept with other men because he needed to “experiment” with his newfound homosexuality, and he broke up with me one night on the phone (less than a month after asking to move in together), because he’d meditated and decided we were moving in different spiritual directions.

The breakup should have been a relief. Our differing philosophies never would have made for lifelong togetherness. Instead, I agonized over the split for about a year and then spent another several years coming to terms with the realization that it was the idea of Jim, not the man himself, that broke me.

During our time together I had a guy so physically attractive it could only mean that I was the same—and, therefore, worthy. If there were aesthetic disparities between the two of us that was even better because it proved my personality was so strong he couldn’t resist me. We showed up everywhere together, and were treated like the king and king of the prom. I loved showing him off and I loved that, after every show’s performance, men would line up outside the theater and ask Jim to sign their jockstraps, then see us holding hands and gasp.

When, a couple of years later, Jim moved in with a man who was my career doppelganger (we worked for the same magazine and were both writing books), but who was more conventionally attractive than I was, it confirmed my fears that he needed to replace me for someone who was, unlike me, beautiful.

There have been others. For two years in my early thirties, I had an ongoing relationship with a sex addict who also happened to be one of the most popular men in our Chelsea neighborhood.

Ben was an actor-model-shirtless bartender, and our close proximity as neighbors meant sex whenever he needed it. I’d wait for him, cancel plans for him, submit to his sexual desires—without ever requesting my own—all the while knowing, to a certain degree, that I was merely a body and he had an addiction. Ben ignored me in public and would only be seen with other models. But all my friends knew about us, and that meant I was hot.

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I patiently “dated” a coke addict, who would call me when his regulars wouldn’t pan out or he had a fight with the latest boyfriend—they clung to him like the drugs he put up his nose. It wasn’t exactly a healthy relationship, but God was he sexy, especially when he would hold my hand while walking through the Village or announce to a stranger that I belonged to him. Then I wouldn’t hear from him for a few months. But I would always pick up the phone when he finally called.

I lived in a fantasy romance with an intimacy-challenged, Clark Kent-handsome guy who’d honor me with the occasional text—usually on Valentine’s or another holiday—and date request, then cancel at least half the time without apologizing or bringing it up the next time he made contact. I spent nights with a hot AF porn performer-escort who would, similarly, beckon me over to his apartment when, I assume, things were slow and he needed an attention fix. Sexually, I did exactly as I was told.

I even flew halfway across the country to meet up with a Paul Newman look-alike who swore he loved me, then left me abandoned at a restaurant one night after telling me I was too immature for his needs.

Here I am, again, after sulking over losing Mr. Right-Not-Right. The sex with Ken was great—some of the others I mentioned were pretty amazing in bed, too—and finding a compatible, physical partner should never be underestimated. And all of the guys listed had some terrific personality traits. It wasn’t just the outer shell that drew me in, even if that’s what kept me around when I should have pressed eject. But, woe is me and my ego, the biggest regret of losing Ken was that I realized I may never find a guy that physically attractive again.

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If I’ve learned anything from this latest chapter in my conquest-oriented life, it’s that my pride is far more important than any thrill a pretty boy might provide. My weaknesses have leaped out in front of me, and I’m taking care to keep them in check every time a sexy guy smiles in my direction. He might be so beautiful he eclipses the sun. And he might not have my best interests at heart. In my case, looking directly at him without a blinder is the smartest way to protect myself from the flame.

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