via Huffpost Gay Voices, by The Guyliner
The year is 2001. I am in a bar, talking to a gay man. He might be trying to pick me up; I can't tell. He takes another sip of his almost-drained drink and looks me up and down.
"How old are you?" he asks, with a mouthful of beery spittle.
"I'm 25," I reply. He surveys me again as if looking at a child's finger painting.
Finally, he speaks. "If you want a body, you're going to have to get on with it pretty quickly."
"What are you talking about?"
"Your body," he sighs. "You don't have one. You've no shape. By the time you get to 30, it'll be too late.
Start going to the gym as soon as you can." He walks away.
If there's one thing you're going to need as a gay man, it's a body. You can try telling me different, but nine times out of 10 you're not going to get much interest from another gay man just because you look as if you read a lot of books.
Looks count, even if they are only a beautiful lid on a simmering pot of ugliness, despair, bitterness and venom. Don't believe me?
Fire up Grindr, the social networking app launched in 2009 to help gay men to chat, and, if the stars are aligned, to meet each other and 'date'.
When I write 'date' in Grindr terms, it usually means the kind of date where two perfect strangers meet up and fuck. Just so you know.
You select your potential partner by browsing a gallery of tiny thumbnail pictures, lined up together like the world's worst mosaic.
Users have less than a square centimetre to make an impression, and while most of us need a pretty face to experience the first stirrings of arousal - or at least a half decent face, depending on the time of day, how long it has been since 'the last time' and how many vodka and tonics you've had - many users decide to cut straight to business and get out their best weapon.
No, not that, you're not allowed to show that. No, it's the bod, the rack, the torso - buffed, shiny, preened and, nine times out of 10, headless.
Yes, these gods are so confident in the appeal of their sculpted trunks that they don't even bother including their face. "I have a body like this," they drawl. "Why on earth would you care what I look like?"
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This "How are you healthy" story was filmed as part of a series featuring various youth from the Broadway Youth Center (BYC) who agreed to take part in our campaign.
How are you healthy?
