|Re-entry in 17, 16...|

I return to NYC in 16 days. I decided to get a jump on things: I've started writing emails to be sent to schools by Tuesday about financial aid. I've contacted the registrar about when transcripts will be available. And last night I wrote up a new gay.com profile for myself.

My screen name is sexprimer. It's a bilingual pun, but I'm sure most people will just assume I'm talking about sex and move on.

I was in there for 2hrs from 7pm to 9pm EST. I said "Hi" to, if I had to guess, 12-15 guys? None responded and no one said hi to me on his own. This is not new. It was expected. But I do not know that I expected to take it so hard. I want to return to NYC, but, dammit, I want to take all of the French men who would stop to give me the heure of day with me. I've always felt that, despite what the gays in NYC believe, that I am attractive. That was proved to me in Rome and in Paris. Why does NYC have to be different? Moreover, why can't people just say "Hi" back to me? If they are looking for sex, "Hi. Thanks for the message, but I'm just looking right now and I don't think I'm into you." That'll suffice. Are they so lacking in character or so full of themselves that they either can't say it or think saying it would crush me? It's free to respond, takes only a second and it allows me to think that they think of me as a worthwhile fellow human being.

It may not be the race thing, but I'm pretty sure it is. Of course, the only friends I have who are gay are white and tend to not believe me. Either because they are into non-white guys themselves, or because they'd just rather believe that the world can't be such a place (even though they seem to rarely, if ever, find themselves dating or doing anything with non-white guys). It really could just be that I'm wholly unattractive, in my words as well as my pictures. But it's not as if the French or Italian sense of attraction is so different. Continent to continent, lean, toned and muscular seemed to be the preferred type on average. It's not as if when entering Paris you enter some weird dimension where it's just really hot guy/really average/unattractive guy combos walking up and down the streets of Le Marais.

And it's not as if France if devoid of racism. And the whole world now knows it.

So what is it? What makes NYC so different? Yeah, it's online, but, if anything, shouldn't that make people more likely to talk to you? I can see people putting up some sort of shoulder-popping hip-swaggering facade on the street or in the club. But online, when no one is watching, is society still so omnipresent as to continue to prevent these guys from saying, "Hi" even in private? People say it's because "It's New York. It's harder." That tells me nothing and that kind of answer is just a cop-out. Simply accepting that only goes to support the kind of oppressive social structure you're complaining about when you give such an answer. Paris isn't exactly Minneapolis. Don't expect to make friends when wandering the streets or eye contact when sitting on the Metro.

So I'm forced to ask again: what is it? Why can't I make a gay friend or go on a gay date or have gay sex or even get a gay hi in New York City? In this city, in this chat room, where people are looking for each other, why do they refuse to find one another? What are they finding instead?

Or, like I said, maybe I'm just ugly and for some reason that's just too embedded in the cultural psyche to be easily discovered, the "unconventionally attractive" (as my friends call it) features of my physical being seem to hit at just the right spot with Western European people. And that's why I can go on to Gaydar in NYC and for weeks not get a response (save for from a European coming to NYC for vacation) and yet in Paris I turn it on and come back to it 8 hours later and I have 17 messages, 15 of which are from guys who are both my age and hot.

So what is it? Maybe it's nothing. Fucking welcome back to America. That's what it is.