We, Label Whores

Should I allow conceit to rule I’d be more comfortable admitting that occasionally I flatter myself into thinking that I am one of those open-minded people around.

For the record let me say I don’t judge people on first impressions. It's daunting, but I try. I have online profiles and happen to have one in guys4men.com and as many members on that site can attest it is the very incubator of fierce cruelty anyone can possibly endure in cyberspace.

People can be ruthlessly dismissive. And the most unbearable thing is the kind of crushing labels they slap upon each others’ foreheads. Top, bottom, effems, chubs, Bi, Versatile, Curious, Bicurious, shrimps, the list goes on in outrageous permutations and combinations that have nothing to do with the person’s true worth.

Labels to a certain degree serve a function no matter how unpleasant: it pigeonholes, stereotypes, it gives people a handle to grasp on. Nothing is fearful than the unfamiliar but ultimately it's more scary how labels are manipualted into a divisive convenience between the i/us and the unfamiliar.

You would witness how certain people endowed with lucky gorgeous chromosomes or an extra half inch in penis girth and length inflict unspeakable doses of insecurity (and not to mention inferiority) amongst the less-endowed ones. Even the most self-assured smart individual’s ego melt in the ferocious competitive arena ruled by hormones and that simple hopefulness that, maybe, just maybe, people would eventually go beyond sex and elevate the encounters beyond the realm of orgasm. More than anything else, this kind of optimism is the most heart-breaking.

Billions of years worth of evolution and we have come into this: a generation so shallow we might as well have fangs, walk forty five degrees and club each other to pulp with a blunt tree bark.

Everyone online is aware of this sad phenomenon. And everyone seems to be encouraging it, despite the impending vicious callousness it precipitates. When you look at it, all those laborious and difficult years of pioneering gay people demanding for equal rights mean squat in a generation where they show prejudice amongst their very own kind.

You are not top enough. You are too gay. Your pores are too big. I Only date guys who douche with evian.

Which brings us to my sentiment all along, a sort of rehashing of my warped thought on women mag rags and their preoccupation: They’re looking for Love. And they want Brad Pitt. Ditto for gays. No wonder, everyone’s unhappy as before. It’s not too remote from a weekend club scene where you hug in the dance floor while fixing one eye upon the door in the lookout for something better to rush in.

On the other hand, one cannot deny that as far as cyberhunting is concerned everyone has his own priorities. Everyone is entitled to dream for something or someone that would feel that certain void we are all desperately scrambling from.

We want identikit ideals: Gorgeous, tall, toned and bronzed body, cocks that can alternate as a fireman’s hose, virility, reads Neruda, cites Carl Jung and Nietzsche in an argument, drives a top-down Audi, knows his wine, and have the kind of glint in his eyes and a smile that can disarm resistance batallions in Kabul.

There is nothing wrong in aspiration. It just gets ugly if you stand at the other side of the fence.

That’s why it’s sobering whenever I remember Melvin Udall (played with brilliant mad relish by Jack Nicholson) in that poignant-funny movie. After the mind-blowing orgasm has subsided, it’s worth thinking about.

What if somebody who comes along is as good as it gets?