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Popsugar

The Sex Appeal of Dating a Plant Dad

Last summer, when my brother dropped off two giant plants for me to babysit while he moved to the middle of the jungle in Colombia for two months, I warned him it wouldn't be my fault if they died. I didn't care for children or animals: the closest I'd ever come to having a pet as an adult was my collection of leather bags. But as the days passed, I was caught off guard by the feelings I developed for those plants.
My god, how wrong I'd been to dismiss plants as an unnecessary responsibility tha...
Elite Daily (Pride month cover story)

Once I Came Out, Dating Suddenly Became So Hot... And Complicated

Now, it appeared to me that gay men would rather entertain sex without chemistry than the grueling burden of getting to know each other. This was new for me. Being closeted had made my pursuits of vaginal intercourse gradual, to say the least. Usually, a girl would have to throw herself on top of me. I never felt like I had the option to say no then, and to a certain extent, I didn't now.

I wasn’t opposed to casual sex, but I wanted romance, too. I craved everything: the white picket fence with a sex swing inside the house.
Metro.co.uk (print)

I was a luxury proposal planner. I felt more like the secret service than cupid

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*. He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified.

But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’.

Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them
Xtra Magazine

Love at first lust: A young writer explores a lasting love denied… or is that deferred?

Jared’s profile read 34 years old, six foot one, and muscular. As he opened the door, I saw an honest person. I didn’t fall in love with him immediately, but every visual detail indicated that I could. He looked beautiful in the most masculine ways: broad shoulders, full hair, a confident presence, immaculate posture and a seductive half-smile. At 19, I didn’t understand love—I usually hid from it—but I could still pick it out of a lineup. “He’s the one,” I thought immediately.
WIRED

In Praise of AI-Generated Pickup Lines

We're at the height of a global technological revolution, and yet this is the modern state of dating: You swipe left, swipe left again, and again, and again—in fact, you mind-numbingly swipe left so many times that when the app finally lands on a person you deem worthy of swiping right, you accidentally swipe left on them, too. You continue swiping.

My thumbs are bloody with disappointment that dating apps, once the face of innovation, have become relics of the status quo. But I've seen the lig
Metro

Everything about my date was perfect - except his age

As Evan* leaned in to kiss me again, my nerves made me state the obvious reason that we could never work.
‘Dude, you’re 20!’ I blurted out.
Granted, this wasn’t exactly a flaw he had control over – but it was one I couldn’t see past.
‘I turn 21 in a few weeks!’ he replied, as if that was a countdown to maturity and somehow made things better. ‘Besides, you don’t look much older than me,’ he added.
God bless him, I thought, knowing full well that my Botox, 7,000-step skincare routine, and countle...
Metro.co.uk

I was a luxury proposal planner. This complaint made me lose faith in love

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*.

He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified. But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’. Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them
Business Insider

I don't like dogs, and it's messing up my dating life

I used to pretend to like people's dogs. From a young age, I learned it was socially unacceptable not to want to rub their bellies and tell them they're "good boys." Unfortunately, I wasn't talented at feigning interest in humans — nonetheless, four-legged animals. But I didn't expect my ambivalence toward dogs to be a dealbreaker in my adult dating life.I remember dating a guy, who I had noticed on Grindr for a while and manifested into messaging me. I used to suck at hitting on people first. Lon...
Queerty

Here’s how to speak the ‘language of love’ with amazing holiday gifts

Out of all the love languages, gift-giving may be the most misunderstood. I’ve always craved the intimacy of receiving another person’s idea of me as a tangible possession or adorning myself with their memory, and vice versa.


But some lovers branded my heart a red flag when I was honest about my infatuation with presents. When I started planning engagement proposals, the irony of my love language was ocassionally dismissed as materialistic or frivolous, yet the most emotional moment of people
Business Insider

As a gay man, I partied with only queer women for the first time. It changed the way I act in gay spaces.

I watched Monica affix black tape "X's" to her nipples and don a translucent crop top that showcased her arm tattoos of a tiger and a snake. I realized that my appreciation for her body art — rather than her breasts — was yet another confirmation of my homosexuality.

"Will there be cute guys tonight?" I asked hopefully.

Monica, applying pink eyeshadow, responded matter-of-factly. "It is a lesbian party.'"
Business Insider

I've planned over 200 proposals for clients but wasn't prepared when my best friend got engaged. I worried our friendship would change.

I used to sell myself as a fairy godmother-like figure in the engagement industry, wielding my wand with as much power as clients could swipe their credit cards. As a proposal planner, my job was complete when the client dropped to one knee. What unfolded afterward was none of my business.I orchestrated extravagant spectacles meant to open the doors to "happily ever after," yet secretly, I had no real grasp on what that meant or looked like. Growing up, everyone in my family was divorced, and un...
Business Insider

Being a third wheel is actually so much fun that I followed my best friend and her boyfriend to Colombia for the summer.

I have always dreamed about traveling the world with the love of my life. Unfortunately, he hasn't yet appeared, so now I'm doing it with my best friend, Camila. OK, to be honest, she had been living her best Julia Roberts "Eat, Pray, Love," expat-style life in Medellín, Colombia, for four months already with her boyfriend, Tyler. But when she suggested I join them in July for the remainder of the summer, I pounced at the opportunity.
Queerty*

How the movie “Shelter” helped me come out and redefine love

The last thing gay men need in the queer film industry is another coming-of-age trope, but after rewatching 2007’s Shelter, I couldn’t help but think that maybe more would be OK.

Seeing five-year-old Cody (Jackson Wurth) insist his young uncle Zach (Trevor Wright) be his ‘Daddy’ (in place of his absent father), I remember the times I, too, forced this role on unsuspecting older men. But I digress.

Nothing new could be said about being closeted besides that it sucks. And that’s what makes Shelt
GayCities (Q.Digital)

5 NYC coffee shops worthy of remote working & cruising

In New York, square footage is not unlike an endangered species. Working remotely manifests as less glamorous than in other metropolitan cities. It should be called ‘working from bed’ or ‘my one-foot desk in front of a window facing concrete.’ We’re not going to get started on how demoralizing Zoom becomes when you’re unable to hide your income.

Since the inception of the iced latte (for a gay? Groundbreaking, we know.), the coffee shop has served as an escape from working at home for many – wh

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