At the start of March, I received the following email from a guy who'd emailed me about other issues in the past:
Dear GB,
Sorry to bother you again, maybe you do not remember me. Anyway, I wonder whether you can give me some advice.
I am a Chinese gay male. I consider myself a nice bloke, fit, healthy, well educated and not bad looking. Actually ppl always say "why are you single?" However, I am always single.
One main reason is, I am not out, I struggle quite a bit to accept my sexuality. Now I prefer do not talk my personal life in my working colleagues.
Furthermore, I am very shy, I do not like pubs, clubs etc. if I have to go, I normally sit in the corner, try to escape when someone come to talk to me.
Do not get me wrong, I am quite chat box with friends. But I just can not face many strangers. I just do not feel comfortable.
Before I move to London, I always tell myself, I am kinda isolated, just because I live in a small town. Everything will be changed once I moved.
Now I am in London two months, I have not met anyone yet, no matter for drink, dinner, sex or friend meet. Actually the main reason I take current jobs, is because London. But if things continue like this, I do not think there will be much difference.
As a gay veteran, maybe you can give me some suggestion where I can meet like minded friends, join some groups? I do not dream to find a bf or something, a regular fuck buddy must be enough at current stage, LOL.
Anyway, thanks a lot. Take care
I sent him an immediate reply, warning him that I probably wouldn't get round to posting his email with my response for a while. In the reply, I suggested that one way of making friends with other gay guys would be by joining OUTeverywhere. I also told him that a previous 'Dear GB' post titled How does a closeted 25 year old gay virgin build a social life might be relevant to him. With a couple of days I'd received his response:
Hi GB,
Thanks a lot for getting back to me :-).
Actually I decide to take a job in London and stay in the UK, mostly because my sexuality. I do not want to end up alone all my life. I am not saying China or other British cities do not have gay life, I just think staying in London might help someone like me.
I read your post about the Indian guy, haha, he is much better than me to some extent. At least he can manage when someone checking him out in the gym shower. When same thing happen to me, I only stare at the floor and escape ASAP, LOL.
I do know outeverywhere, used to be a member, and even brave enough to upload my face pic, which is a very big step for me! However I was kinda disappointed later. If I may say, guys there gave me impression, they might not be attractive enough to pull. Thus they claim looking for friendship. If they got the chance for sex, they will be much more terrible than gaydar boys. However, I did meet some nice friends from this site, unfortunately, we lost contact as most of them also left the site.
I know I have to meet ppl, make friends, be confident about my sexuality, to live my life. If I can not do this in London, I do not know where I can :-).
Take care
Indeed, from the last couple of sentences it sounds as though this guy knows exactly what he's got to do. So I'm not sure how much that I can add. I think his problem is not so much that he can't find a boyfriend or fuck buddy, it's more that he's not comfortable being gay. Before you can expect anyone else to love you need to love yourself!
Making friends with guys who're also gay and then hanging out with them should help his confidence. In spite of his amusing comments about the guys on OUTeverywhere, he should re-join just to make friends, to help him with his confidence issues. He admits that he made friends there before so there's no reason why he can't do so again, even if none of his original friends are there.
Beyond that, an excellent source of information on gay events is Time Out, London's weekly listings magazine. The gay section of the magazine (rather than the web site) always contains details of lots of events for gay people. Although a lot of the events relate to bars and clubs, there are also details about e.g. groups of gay guys who're all keen on particular sports such as swimming, or squash etc.
One current idea which might also help build confidence at the moment is to go and see a few films at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which runs until 8th April. Apart from watching the films, there'll be a lot of other gay guys at these events, and seeing lots of other gay men who're happy and confident should provide some support.
However the best confidence booster would be to have a good experience coming out to a close friend or co-worker. As he implies, London is indeed a great place to be gay, so if he's got any friends here then it's quite likely that they'll have some sensible ideas about gay people. I often tell people that in a coming out situation, what I call the confidence mirror is important. If one can portray being gay as 100% natural, which of course it is for a gay guy, then people find it hard not to accept the situation.
I'm sure his decision to move to work in London was a good one. Now he just needs to follow up, make some gay friends, and start being himself :-).
Do any other readers have any thoughts on this guy's situation?
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