When Attitude first asked me to be their dating columnist three years ago, it was not their way with words that convinced me to take the job. ‘We want someone who is crap at dating, whose life is full of romantic disaster, and who most likely won’t get a boyfriend for at least a year,’ they said, in as many words, to my face. I hesitated for a moment, reluctantly admitted they were speaking the truth, and gamely accepted. Well, I reasoned, if I was going to spend every evening for the foreseeable future asking dates who clearly weren’t into me how many brothers and sisters they had, I might as well get paid for it. Plus maybe, if I put myself across as a really nice guy who was simply looking for a husband, the man of my dreams might read it and get in touch. A fairy tale for the media age.
But being a dating columnist turned out to be hard work. Not the exhaustion of grafting down a mine, not the sort where you have to put your feet up afterwards and gasp over just how much you needed this cuppa, not sweat dripping off your forehead due to massive over-exertions (except on the really good dates, of course) – but hard work nonetheless. Some months, after yet another boy had turned out to be so far from my Mr Right he wasn’t even my Mr Right-Go-On-Then-I’ve-Got-Nothing-Better-To-Do, all I wanted was to curl up on my sofa and watch an entire cycle of America’s Next Top Model, just so I could pretend it was me getting one of those comforting group hugs off Tyra that apparently heal all your pain. Yet I had to go out and try again in the name of journalistic research.
Don’t feel too sorry for me, however. If it weren’t for the column I wouldn’t have tried gay yoga – where the class were far more interested in my friend than in me – or the gay walking group, where they were at pains to tell me they weren’t ‘that sort of organisation’ when I asked if the overnight trips turned into an orgy of sweaty cagoules. I might never have had the guts to date three men at the same time, on the pretence of ensuring they all gave me months’ worth of material, but really in the hope I’d triple my chances of finding a new boyfriend.
And I did meet some boys who I liked, and who liked me – at least as first. I’ve recently compiled all the columns into a book, and included double the amount of extra material there wasn’t space for in Attitude. Going over my dating past again, it struck me that if you give most gays half a chance, you’ll probably find something you like in them. And they’ll at least let you get to second base.
So why have I never found a man who sticks around long enough to start poring through the Heal’s lookbook with? One of the best things about writing the column is that it became like therapy – having to look at my behaviour each month and distil it for Attitude forced me to confront where I was going wrong. At first I thought I was too needy, and then I decided I was too distant. I thought I got too drunk on dates, then felt like I wasn’t fun enough. Finally, I’ve realised that it’s nothing to do with me, or even the men I’ve been dating, but that I merely haven’t met the right man yet, that he does exist and all I have to do is keep putting myself out there to check. And that one day, he’ll buy me a puppy and we’ll live happily ever after.
So So Gay has serialised two parts of the book – read part one and part two.
Pip McCormac’s first book, Mistakes and Ladders: The Story Behind Attitude’s WLTM is available for the Kindle
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