So this is how it works...

Yes, back to the subject of women. I think I just destroyed my reputation the other night, in the process of what must have been one of the strangest sexual exchanges in the history of men.

I was all over the place, or should I say the sexes?

1. Weird Asian Dude

Weird Asian Dude (WAD) saw me come in, and looked kind of interested. We bumped into each other again at the bar, and hit it off. Never mind that somebody else was busy working him at the same time, and had been for a while. Suffice it to say, the way WAD lost interest in him was good for my ego. Gotta show them who's the boss! LOL. WAD obtained his moniker by maintaining he was not South Asian at all but from Hungary or some such place. This story was totally beyond belief and he had the most excruciatingly gay articulation, even in his accented Dutch. We kissed (mostly just to stick it to the other guy) but after a while he decided to head home. Pity, because WAD was kind of cute, as long as he didn't speak.

2. Overdressed Woman

Near closing time, I was begging for a drink at the bar. Didn't get it. Flirty, sexy, way over-the-top girl standing next to me offered me hers and we got to talk. Apparently she was only there to get cigarettes but his wasn't very credible either, unless it's normal to get out the furs and Chopard before a quick hop to the neighbourhood cigs dispenser.

This got real flirty, with talk of taking it somewhere else. I was up for it. I realized suddenly that being gay or similar raises my value among women by about a hundredfold. You're an accessory, a status symbol, a hook up with an interesting story. It could end up being very confusing for the girl but I'm up to exploiting this strategy further. It shows lots of promise. Or maybe everyone just has the fantasy of "turning" someone. Again, something to be exploited.

But then I lost sight of her when everyone was shooed out. Pity.

3. Random make-out in the streets with guy waiting for a cab

I guess this was just an amusing way of killing time.

Other interesting bit and pieces:

I had a Richard Hammond moment. I was asked if I had had my teeth whitened. Nice compliment, but I haven't.

Shouted loudly "maybe I am bisexual!" in the middle of the street. Response: "yuck, women!". Funny.

Got reproached for not being there over Christmas. Come on, I'm not that desperate, am I? I still pretend I have a life.

Bloke's wearing Gucci!

Well, Christmas is once again done, and the world's starting up again. Thank God, Christmas is not my favourite holiday. It has just been exploited too much, I guess.

Well, my shoes have finally arrived, and even though they're still quite stiff, they look awesome. I feel like a million bucks wearing them.

Night before Christmas turned into an impromptu drinking session with... my mom. I stopped counting after four bottles of great Spanish Rioja, but it looked like we had a glass farm going. Conversation was consequently good, even though topics were covered comfortably that I usually shirk... like her sex life, or to be precise, lack of desire for one. In all of this, MY sex life wasn't even mentioned, even though I was quite prepared to be honest and truthful - my guess is she doesn't want confirmation. Prefers the safety of not knowing. Oh well, Christmas is not the right moment for revelations.

Day after was rapidly rescheduled to accommodate resultant splitting headache - my mom only showed signs of life after about 4 pm. LOL.

Work. Well, being closeted at work is getting more challenging by the day. And the closeted freak in my team is the cause of that.

One day last week, the subject matter open to general discussion was - anal penetration. Freak went all red while the subject was covered. LOL. My boss had to make things worse by proclaiming loudly Freak needn't worry: "you just have to do the penetrating, no need to bend over". I remained strictly neutral and laughed the episode off. Freak's now discussing women with an alarming sudden increase in frequency.

Freak's decided he wants to be my friend. I'm not sure I want to know the reasoning behind that, but the guy's so weird it could really mean anything. Anyway, I found a new white-belted co-worker to crush and spy on, so who cares about Freak?

On the subject of "homosexuality on the work floor", another new guy at work almost makes my gaydar explode. There's an almost audible massive beeper going off in my head whenever I see his face. It's the effeminate way he holds his stationery that's most interesting, I think.

Music? I've been listening to Dannii Minogue's "Greatest Hits" album most of last week. No snickering, please! ;-)

Pilot guy? Didn't call him. I'm hoping his crush will gradually fade away.

"Perfection" gives a good impression of what I'm looking for.

Love the boat.

Bagging a sraight guy

Procrastinating aimlessly on the internet, I came across this lil gem. ;-)

Now, I'm not really interested in actually getting a straight guy, and once I get my hands on him he wouldn't really be straight, would he?

I guess I'm sort-of professionally interested, but let's call my interest "scientific". Sounds so much better, innit?

Anyway, this guy "Alex Deacon" is using this site to peddle a book, of course, of around $50. No way I'm getting that. But he's also pushing some nice and cheap spam, and with Mr Google's help I'm up for that.

And boy, is he active. The first email was a bit boring, talking about the percentage of married males living on the down low getting some man action anyway (ten, for those who care). More useless statistics accompanied that not so juicy bit of information.

The second email was more interesting. This is a lesson in body language, something that could always be useful. And Roisin keeps on telling me to learn it, so he could I refuse?

Well, the email lists six points that might be worth repeating.

1. Plant Yourself When Standing Still

Put your feet slightly wider apart than is natural,
don't shift your weight. Notice how your feet feel planted.
You can stay like this for long periods of time.
This is how martial artists stand, it is a solid base.
Falling

2. Don't Fidget, Fiddle, Or Touch Your Face

What do you normally do with your hands?
Twitching and fidgeting is very unattractive,
look around and see it in other people. It makes you look
nervous. Keep your hands by your sides. Place the thump
on the index and middle fingers,
this removes the natural need for the fingers to
constantly be doing something.

3. Don't Look Down

Keep your head up. If you need to look away, look up,
never look down, it's a sign of weakness and also looks
unattractive. You can observe this in others.
Looking down even has been proven to have a bad
effect on your mental state.

4. Make Slow Head Movements

High status males everywhere, on film, in business,
and in your social circle have certain things in common.
One of which is slow, smooth movements.
Look around slowly and smoothly, don't dart around and jolt
your head around like you have been drinking espressos
all day long.

Think smooth, think James Bond. James Bond has very attractive body language, and smoothness and lack of fidgety movements are the main elements.

5. Walk Slowly And Smoothly

This is more high-status behaviour.
By being smooth and comfortable you give off a sense of
quiet confidence. You stand out from the people rushing around.
In a bar or club, slow it down even more, you will stand out,
in a good way.

6. Hold Your Drink By Your Side

When you have a drink, hold it by your side.
It is a blocking action to hold a drink in front of your chest.

Do these things and you will make a better first impression
and stand out from the other men in a room. If you are ever
internally uncomfortable, you can still appear confident and composed by following the above rules.

And Your Hot To Trot

I think I'm kinda unconsciously aware of all of this anyway, apart from the point about the drink. Mostly I just try to look suave and a little arrogant on the dancefloor, with good results so far. But the message is the same, just translated to a different setting.

Email number three is evidently composed of seriously bad advice. This email consists of the sort of pick up lines that wouldn't be good enough to get David Beckham laid, let alone tempt someone to change teams.

A small sample of this cartload of verbal diarrhoea:

You, me, here...this couldn't be better
if I programmed the holodeck myself.

Remember me from group therapy? I'm the lonely guy.

Anyways, if such cheese does work for you, drop me a mail. Send a pic too, so I can repeat this experiment in a controlled environment using stand-ins of similar hotness.

I'll be watching my spam closely for the time to come, hoping for more nuggets of brilliant insight.

Don't buy the book just yet.

Winter

Global warming?

It has been freezing non-stop for about three days, I have been battling with iced up windscreens and little bits of snow for too long already and God, I wish it was summer already, but I just managed to stumble onto the perfect soundtrack for the moment. It was originally released about a year ago, but the album only just came out.

Here are the DT8 Project and Andrea Britton, with "Winter". For when it's cold outside.

Yikes! He wants a relationship!

I had a little affair with a pilot last weekend. Nothing I took very seriously, casual, nothing special, sex of the disposable type. The French would call it "three minutes, with shower", except it lasted a bit longer than that. It wasn't bad but it wasn't super either.

We exchanged numbers, and I went on my way for a party up north, feeling all haggered and a little dirty. Usually, that would be it and in this case, that was fine with me.

But now he calls, sort of out of the blue. He's back in town. And not only does he want to hang out, he wants to be my boyfriend.

He's nervous, and I think I took it well, but I recoil at the thought. He ticks most of the right boxes: age, employment, looks, but I still don't think there's anything there. Or is just my nature, chickening out when things get serious? I never had that before, so I don't think so.

Looking back, he said a couple of things that should have been a little alarming. He had only been with four boys before, something I laughed off, but now think could well be true. And he had mentioned the word "relationship" before. To which I remained silent.

How do I get him off my back without being rude? I don't want to hurt his feelings, but don't feel like seeing him again.

Emotional Technology?

I'm done with internet contacts. Even though I never got into it in the first place.

I don't want to judge, but sometimes it just appears so tacky, so contrived, so... fake. I understand there is a constituency for this, and it the anonymity and perceived security of it all allows guys to make moves they would never be able to make in real life. I also understand that this is the way to meet people if you live in a small town or somewhere out in the remote countryside.

And I must admit I've made use of this feature as well. In my mom's tiny village, I couldn't help but wonder where the nearest gay lived. I just had to find out, and did: 4.5 km away. I was just curious, the out life in the country is by no means impossible but very hard to imagine, even though the countryside's increasing tolerance make it ever more fashionable a place to settle down in, especially with the increasing aggression in places like Amsterdam.

But once you have had a taste of the real thing, of actually going out there, and meeting people without electronic help, I feel there's no more need for internet dating, even though I'm always willing to meet interesting new people, in any possible way.

I've started to remove people from my contacts list. However, this little convo I had on Friday night really cemented my decision.

Him: Hi there.
Me: Hi.
Him: Man, are you as horny as I am?
Me: [Considering I was about to go out] Only a little.
Him: I'm sitting here with a huge boner. [This I did not want to contemplate]
Him: Do you have a web cam?
Me: No, I'm not really into internet jerk-offs and such. :-)
[No response to that one]

This from a highly-qualified postgraduate with a well-paid job, but also a guy too scared to join me for a beer in town. I've had it with this tacky crap: I'm willing to talk to almost anyone, but I'm not going to jerk off in front of a camera. I never have and never will.

Homoflexibility vs heterorigidity

So another couple of fashionable terms from that beacon in a sea of darkness (copyright Theo van Gogh), the shining city on the hill, have reached these shores. And even though they seem to have originated at crazy loony-left campus colleges where they have nothing better to do all day than think up new politically correct vocabulary or go far-out on the dope with the faculty, I think they're quite brilliant.

Not only do they decriminalize homosexuality, they praise flexibility and experimentation. Also, the word "rigid" is generally negative and sounds remarkably similar to "frigid".

In short, when using "heterorigidity", we're sticking it to the buggers. It makes them sound dull, bourgeois, prejudiced even. No eye for deviance, no will to experiment, just two minutes in missionary position followed by a shower.

"Heteroflexibility" and "homoflexibility" will make all sorts of pressure groups foam at the mouth. Good. Here we have a group of people with a certain sexual preference, but willing to take a chance with the other sex, willing to step out of the limits set by bourgeois society, and capable of judging each individual at his or her own sexual merit. It's not the same as bisexuality, because the basic choice has been made, but left open to exceptions.

I'll embrace these terms, because they reflect my desire to step out of the box quite accurately. From now on, please call me "homoflexible".

With thanks to Laurie Essig of Slate.

Back with another one of those block-rocking beats

Well, not quite. Exam time is over, for the moment. I'm sipping the first wine of the evening, planning to hit the town, and that means anything can happen. Well, I'm prepared, and up for it.

Over the last week or so, I basically isolated myself to get all the studying done. In need of discipline, I discovered locking myself up like a monk works quite well. It does mean there's an excess of energy that needs to be released when the job's done.

Which is now.

Locking yourself up leaves one vulnerable to one particular area of modern procrastination: the internet. And internet shopping in particular. This combines the asset of not having to go out into the cold, being able to get what you want and the particularly Dutch penchant of getting the best deal. So I got myself some shoes, saved €200 in the process, and already feel stylish, even though they have to come from the UK and will take some time to arrive.

Yeah, I'm a fashion queen. Sue me. ;-)

So that's basically all I've been up to the last week or so. It sure ain't much, so head over to my mate K, who's been having a wild time of late!

Mr Haider got caught

Joerg Haider is an infamous name in European politics. The son of a Hitler Youth member, he gained notoriety in Austria by kind-of, sort-of, but indirectly, well, not quite sticking up for former Nazis, who form a significant part of the electorate.

Well, his Freedom Party kept growing, his notoriety increased and when the conservative Austrian People's Party decided to govern with them in 1999, an international boycott of the Austrian government started. This government collapsed after a year, there was a falling out between Haider and his ministers, and he scuttled off back to his native Carinthia, where he remains governor to this day, even though he split off to form a new party, BZOe.

Haider's quite a good-looking guy, in a slimy, skiing instructor sort of way, and there have always been rumours about his sexuality. Apparently there is a Mrs Haider, but she's kept carefully out of the spotlights.

Well, here's Joerg in action.

Mind you, the first shot looks quite innocent, but the others leave little to the imagination. There's no official denial or anything, but there never was one. There's no open record of anti-gay legislation, but then the People's Party used to take care of that.

The official BZOe excuse? "Haider proves once again he is much better at connecting with today's youths than any of the other parties". Well, they have a point there.

This is no Larry Craig affair, and not half as amusing, but I'm sure his former Hitler Youth supporters are not too happy with this behaviour.

Heterosexual Male Bonding

The anarcho-libertarian tendency in the movie Demolition Man is something I enjoy so much I watch the movie every time it's on TV. That, and the brilliant Nigel Hawthorne's appearance. Every time I see it, I discover a new, brilliant yet amusing insight.

Here's a little quote that struck me today:

Cop 1: They seem to be friends, yet...
he speaks to him
in the most profane manner.

Lenina Huxley: If you'd read my study, you'd know
this is how insecure heterosexual men bonded.

Cop 1: I knew that.

So true!

I have gay hands...

Wikipedia is a great source of not-quite procrastination. You're not doing what you should be doing, but you're still discovering interesting stuff. I've become addicted to Wiki's LGBT Portal.

And I'm reading up on the (empirical) science of it all. Interesting, but mostly just statistical evidence, with limited value in real life. If you dig long enough, and run enough regressions, you'll always find some correlation. This "hit or miss" approach is the basis of fields like empirical finance, which is then subsequently used by investment banks to fiddle around with you hard-earned.

But reading this article from NYMag, I was struck by the following picture:



And the accompanying text:

The relative lengths of our fingers offer another hint: The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers, while for most women they are closer in length, or even reversed in ratio. But some researchers have noted that gay men are likely to have finger-length ratios more in line with those of straight women, and a study of self-described “butch” lesbians showed significantly masculinized ratios.

The masculine hand is the one on the left, the feminine/gay hand the one on the right. Of course, I had to check this theory out on my own hands. And, I happen to have gay hands.

This is interesting, I think I will try to do my own, secret, empirical research on this now. Check hands, and record sexual preferences. Can't be hard. I wonder if I reach the same conclusion: a study of this in Europe might give completely different results...

Everything you can get, you can fix

Well, opening the student newspaper can be a pleasant surprise.

This week's topic: sex in fraternities.

Now, my uni is not known for it's fraternities - it's not a traditional university, being founded only in the twenties to meet demands for a catholic university in a country known for repression of the catholic South. Then, during the sixties, leftism hit badly: it was the first university to be occupied by sit-ins and was briefly renamed "Karl Marx University" by the student body. The days of catholic higher education were definitely over. This was followed by the loss of the predicate "catholic" in the nineties and the recent move of the Vatican-sanctioned theological faculty to bigger Utrecht.

But the guys in the fraternities apparently have a pretty raucous sex life.

The rules are simple: obviously, you are a member of a class. But not of the traditional type. To make class of 2007, you would have to be pretty busy... Seriously, your class number equals the number of girls you screwed.

If you don't get laid for a year, you have to walk around town wearing a chicken suit... and make sure you score wearing it. No opting out of that one.

The boys readily admit that high quantities mean loss of quality. Drink and drugs obviously play a big role here: 56% of students admit frequent cannabis use, and 10% use stronger stuff. Waking up, and seeing the girl often turns out to be a nasty shock. But they also admit that picking up pretty girls is too much hard work. These plain girls like it and are readily available. And they are promiscuous: some girls are known to keep Excel sheets with names, dates and final grades. This is something I recognise from the gay world.

Now comes the nasty shock: condoms are out of fashion. No-one uses them.

Apparently, the fraternities form a pretty much closed loop of sexual activity and not many STDs get in. Doctors apparently only test for chlamydia and common stuff like that. Not for HIV. "Everything you can get, you can fix", says one boy. But that's not quite true, is it?

This is highly dangerous, and it's beyond comprehension. Only one HIV+ person has to somehow get involved and the whole lot might readily be infected.

The conclusion is inescapable: this particular fraternity is a whole lot more immature and irresponsible about safe sex than the shallow, supposedly generally uneducated gay scene in my town.

Busy, busy, busy

Well, the semester's drawing to a close and things start to get seriously hectic.

Today I finished off a project with a presentation, and passed with flying colours. That means I have a grand total of five subjects down, and two more to go before I can start work on my thesis. It also means that this week is theoretically my last week of lectures ever. And let me tell you, that feels bloody good. I should be popping champagne over the next weekend.

Scheduling is tight: I have an exam coming up quite soon, but I don't need to prepare too much for that, half of the subject has been completed by writing a paper. After that, I have a little more time as the second and hopefully final exam ever takes place in January.

This means my weekends are organised well into the new new year and I'm not used to that, I usually go with the flow and see where I can get the necessary credits. For this degree though, I'm trying to be more mature, by setting goals and actually trying to complete everything on time, so I can hopefully start on my thesis in February.

So the only time I've had to go out lately was last Saturday night, and what a night it was. I had ended up in town, fairly late and fairly drunk, in a nice sort of buzz. I danced, talked and drank, had a great time overall. A former trick was all over me, but I decided not to pursue that route.

In the end I hooked up and we had sex at his place. Good sex, we had great compatibility going and we were still going at it at noon. At about three PM, I decided I had to go home and get some work done. I was exhausted but satisfied; this is what sex should be like.

The weather was nasty outside, wet and windy but the town was crawling with shoppers as it was the last Sunday before St Nicholas. A perfect day to spend in bed.

I love the House of Commons/Mr Bean

The rowdiness, the Speaker trying to gain control over his noisy pupils, the gags, one-liners, nodding on the front benches, the catcalls from the opposition benches... This is a real parliament, this is real politics. Hard, rough and tumble, Punch and Judy. But what a form of entertainment.

Watch David Cameron wipe the floor with Gordon Brown, and then enjoy Vince Cable sticking it to the PM.



Fast forward through Brown's lame responses.