I left the Planet of Romeo

I have been in the online dating scene for quite a long time, and I am very happy to admit that I have met very few good men. Because of my "non-commercial" taste in men and my aloofness in meeting strangers online, meet-ups were all worth my time. I can also say that in many years that I have been online, I only met quite a handful, they were carefully filtered, and I can still count them in one hand.

I have two profiles in Planetromeo.com, 1 have a normal one, that has my face pics and states how normal I am, and another one that says I have HIV and has a body pic with 6 pack abs, of course that was my real photo. The HIV profile was created a week ago and have received an overwhelmingly high number of views, the sad part is, almost nobody sent me a message. If there was any it was of pity, or questions like... "Why are you here?" "Why do you have HIV?" "Are you really sick?" "Why are you still in this site and spreading the virus?"

Some questions are really just annoying. Of course, because of my willingness to educate, I answered some, with detailed explanations. I have experienced stigmas. I have a great body pic and showed significant signs of intelligence in my profile statements, I got a lot of views, but as I said, only questions were mostly sent. I feel that they were afraid of me, I felt like an outcast of society, online at least. I felt nobody wanted me because I have HIV.

There were two guys, hot guys, who offered sex despite of me being HIV positive. They were hot, horny and not afraid of the virus. They know all about it and the needed precautions, which I admired. I refused the offer, I did not hesitate to tell them that sex is the least of my priorities. I always have great respect for my body, now that I have a new lease on life; that respect is greater than ever.

To the normal profile, same shit goes, the usual "hellos", the usual conversations, the usual cycle. It is just so tiring to find myself in great conversation with someone whose words are just like gravity to me. After a while, we text, then we talk on the phone; which is the last thing in my "pre-meet-up" process. I may sound shallow, but sometimes it all ends there. One phone call is all it takes for me to judge if the person I have been exchanging messages with online is someone I might like as a whole. Come on, I may say that I am looking for new friends, but my primary goal on why I am there in that website is to somehow get hooked up with someone that can be a possible boyfriend. So, if I don't like the way he sounds over the phone or if we don't have anything to talk about at all, that's it! Then the cycle begins once more. I send someone a message or someone sends me message and there it goes again... Blah, blah, blah, blah...

It's tiring.

I realized that if I want to meet new people, it will be in the more "socially-present" way. Where I can see them, they can see me, and there are actual eye contacts as well as actual verbal exchanges. Sure, I closed a big door of opportunities of meeting someone significant with tens of thousands of gay men online, but if the cycle of "his" and "hellos" continues, I might be a zombie someday. I don't want to be a slave to the monotony of the online dating scene, I don't want to be a part of the cycle anymore. I value eye to eye contact, that way, there are instances of proper observation, communication, attraction, gravitation. Unlike online, there are these abrupt feelings and thoughts that I often undergo and let go... "I like you"-> "I am thinking of you"->"I really like you"->"I think it's time for us to meet"->"I got turned off because you were wearing pointed leather shoes and has Lady Gaga shades and we have nothing in common to talk about anymore, because you love to listen to pop music and I like rock, because you love chick flicks and I don't, because you love shopping and I don't, because you adore Lady Gaga so much you are as Gaga as her and I just want to shoot you down with a Bullet with Butterfly Wings". Although I haven't met anyone like that, yet, through online dating. I can tell, through the conversations and seemingly endless discussions and phone calls and of course... Facebook! It feels like an emotional car crash. Undergoing that cycle several times in a year is fucking sick! So sick it makes me puke and go all berserk! I'm just so tired of it.

So without any second thoughts, I deleted the two profiles, with them are my angst in this crazy game of meet-ups, hang-ups, and break-ups!