I need to vent. This is going to take a while. Sorry guys.
I have lost and abandoned all hope. Here’s my story.
I was born in 1977, so I’m 49 years old now. I was born in Germany where I spent most of my life. I realized I might be gay when I was about 15, and came out to myself at 17. Remained in the closet (except for parties when I would get so drunk I’d admit to being “bi”) until I moved out at 22 and started college. I made great friends and came out really early. They didn’t mind, they accepted me for who I was.
However, in all these years, there was just one person who hated who I was – and that was me. Whenever I looked in the mirror (and believe me, I literally tried not to), I saw nothing about me that I liked. I have always been overweight (sometimes more than normal, sometimes A LOT more than normal) and tried dieting, but to no avail. Think of me as Santa, but without the jolly nature.
Apart from my appearance, which I’m sure put off a lot of guys, I was a smart guy. Hey, I can talk to you about a variety of topics in two different foreign languages (three, when I’m drunk). I gave my straight friends dating advice. GOOD dating advice. One of my friends' love interests later said to me: “M. (my friend) told me what you said about him and me… I’ve never felt so understood by a man.”
So yeah, I guess my advice was great.
But for me and myself? Nothing. I was always the bystander. The watcher. The onlooker. Whenever I tried to talk to a hot guy (and yeah, to make things even more complicated, I am solely into twinks), I turned into a mumbling idiot, because in the instant that I addressed them I realized they would never be interested in me.
True story: I actually got a guy’s phone number, and we texted (early 2000s). At some point I gave him my address, and we watched a movie at my place (nothing else happened). A few days later, he laid upon me the truth: He had a crush on a different guy who happened to live in the same house as me (I swear on my mother’s grave, I’m not making this shit up) and asked me if I could tell him whether his car was parked in his parking spot or not because he was hoping to meet up with him. I declined to be pulled into those games. That was the last time I heard of him.
Here’s another true story. For my studies I had a chance to live in Paris, France, for seven months. Keep in mind that this was in 2006/7, long before smartphones and Grindr were invented. So one night, I’m going out in the gay scene in the Marais with some friends I had made there. We enter a bar, order a beer and, as usual, I scan the room for hot guys. On the other side of the room, I spot two guys, one of them really cute, totally my type, in a gray striped hoodie. My friends and I talk and drink our beers. A few minutes later, the gray hoodie and his friend suddenly stand next to us. Turns out the gray hoodie really liked my one friend who was in a relationship at the time. So when he realized my friend was committed, he became really, really sad. His friend explained to us that gray hoodie was sad because all the guys he liked were taken. His friend then began to make out with my other friend, the third guy in our group. So picture this: these two guys making out; one sitting in front of us devastated, my other friend feeling uncomfortable for making him feel that way and then … me, ironically both in the middle of all of this and yet on the outside at the same time. Invisible. Insignificant. Irrelevant.
I remember this scene so very clearly because I have replayed it in my mind over and over again in the last 20 years. And I remember standing in the middle and thinking: “… and what about me? Hello? Anyone?”
So why am I posting all this crap in this group? Because in the last years I realized that I really am a daddy – a shoulder to cry on, a mentor, a supporter. Not financially, though. I could never pay anyone to spend time with me. After all, it would only have felt like paying damages or compensation.
So I took to my dating apps (Grindr, Romeo, Daddyhunt,…) and presented myself as a daddy. The results were soul crushing.
Aside from being ignored, ghosted, and blocked, I was ridiculed and even insulted for who I was (old, fat) and for who I was looking for (young, skinny). I was fooled by minors pretending to be of age, and tricked by scammers and fakers pretending to be real. I once flew from Germany out to Edinburgh, only to discover upon arrival that the number and email I had been corresponding with were no longer active. Talk about standing in the shower of a cheap hotel room and washing away the tears with the water and feeling absolutely worthless and stupid for falling for this.
So after some twenty years on Romeo, ten years on Grindr and six months on Daddyhunt (with a combined body count of 3), I have now deleted all of them. I felt like I was suffocating. I needed to get out of this vicious circle of … of keeping up the hope that maybe this time there might be “the one”. Or anyone.
It felt like I was losing a dear old friend, a constant in my life – the opportunity to look at cute guys’ profiles and knowing they’d never be interested in a guy like me.
In short, I’ve given up. I need to talk to my therapist to get me a lifetime supply of Ritalin, Fukitol and what not. I don’t want to feel anymore, I just want to function, preferably for the rest of my… “life”.
In the meantime, I enjoy reading all your testimonies, stories, questions and posts. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your lives for one fleeting moment.
Llama out.