Mobile: support networking

I don't know where it was that I heard it now. It was the suggestion that having other friends who are gay and use sites to hook up online means that you can 'compare notes' on guys. Obviously this can include the normal gossip. But also other things, like if someone is trouble.

There is one guy on the gay scene here who is, or at least was, a social pariah. No one seems to like him and he is always getting into arguments and feuds with people.

I also found out later that he barebacks exclusively (at least that's how it was told to me). Which at that point in time, wouldn't have been a welcome discovery.

It made me sit and think about the first time I saw this man. It was the first time I had gone to a gay bar, which I wrote about here. I had been roped into a group of guys and shared in their evening, and then went home with two of them. One of those was having a falling out with this guy, who had been going around saying something that my new friend wasn't happy about. Later I heard that the pariah has a bit of a mouth on him and does this kind of thing often.

I looked over at him on that night and thought, is he really that bad? I don't want other people's quarrels to limit my relationships with people. You might not like him, but I haven't met him. Maybe I'll get along with him. Maybe I might sleep with him.

Looking at the situation now, it's good that I didn't speak to him. Not only for his apparent love of drama, but also that I wasn't in a good place at that time. I probably wouldn't have stuck up for myself if I ended up in bed with him and he suddenly starts barebacking me. And I never would have known this if it weren't for my friends.

Or at least, I'd like to call them my friends. But I can't, at least not in a way that feels honest to myself. I've not seen or heard from the couple I went home with that night in months. And the people I do see I don't consider that close. I don't even think of them as friends in the most superficial sense. Acquaintances is the highest I'll go. If I could just work out how to get over whatever it is that stops me from getting closer to people, even on a social level, then I could find a network of people who could help me out in times like this. Who I could talk to about these things and who could say "I've hooked up with him before and he ..."

I don't like gossip in general. But in some cases, it would beneficial. This is one of those. I just need to learn to make friends before all that, though.