The Gay Republican #7 - If Only Ann Coulter Were A Man

My new-year-resolved two-month sabbatical from alcohol ended on Saturday evening.
Hoo, boy, did it ever!

All in all, I’m glad I stuck it out for a full two months; it was a great exercise in self-control. I lost a few pounds without trying, I got almost 9 hours of sleep a night, and I saved a ton of money (which I then blew on clothes and a new surround sound system). But at the same time, I’m quite glad it’s over.

Alcohol is a useful anxiety management tool. You can strike up a conversation with any stranger. And you will be convinced that you came off as a sparkling conversationalist. You can dance without shame in the middle of an empty floor. And your karaoke performance SURELY rivals any of the hacks on American Idol.

Alcohol is a social lubricant on par with WD-40; a couple shots, and everything functions better.
(Except the brakes.)

In addition, drinking is such a social activity that it’s hard to remember just what exactly it was that you did for fun before you had a little Captain in you. Partying with good friends in most situations is still fun, once you adjust to carrying around a bottle of Arrowhead instead of Miller Lite. They understand, and even encourage, your respite from boozing. Dating without drinking, on the other hand, is more challenging.

Dating sober means that “Let’s meet for drinks” is right out (unless it means coffee, which I also don’t drink). It means no glass of cabernet with your filet. But that’s fine, since it probably also means that you won’t be finding any dates in bars anyway.

When it comes to meeting people, alcohol can easily be the difference between a scenario of endless forced smalltalk, and a scenario where the introduction of, “Hi, my name is Peter,” evokes the response, “That’s too much information; come over here now.”

And in fact, that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night.

Peter recognized me somewhere in the mass of boys at the Abbey. It was past midnight when he approached me, by which point I was having difficulty recognizing my shoes, so I was already impressed. He was tall and slender, with an iPhone, and hair whose waxily styled perfection appeared to have taken a lot of effort.

Peter, as it turns out, works at the Target in Pasadena, across the street from my office.

“I see you in the store all the time!! Do you recognize me?”

“Um... You should kiss me again.”

This is not a good sign….

I can’t quite recall his face from the Abbey on Saturday (it was quite an evening), but if I’d made an impression on him but he didn’t make one on me, then he must not be that hot. I’m not saying he’s necessarily unattractive, but I’m phenomenally choosy. To quote Cher Horowitz from Clueless: “You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet.”

Add to that aesthetic revelation the fact that he works at Target, and the odds of this one going far are about as good as the odds of Judy Garland and Truman Capote both spontaneously rising from the grave… and procreating.

For New Year 2007 (see a pattern here?) I made a different life-altering resolution, this one about dating: No Retail. No more waiters, bartenders, personal trainers, or Abercrombie and Fitch employees. Basically, nobody with a public-facing occupation.

I base my elitist dating strategy on my snobby Republican belief that retail jobs are worked by the sorts of people who shun responsibility and commitment. And worse, their occupations expose them to a constant stream of potential usurpers. (In case you’re wondering, the result of my policy is that 2007 was spent dating a stream of men who I found to be unsuitable for reasons far more substantive than usual. An upgrade, I suppose.)

Peter, however, from what I recall, was a satisfactory kisser, and had plenty going on below the belt. So since 2007 is over, I’m willing to temporarily relax that rule for the sake of broadening the applicant pool again. Saturday night was, after all, a special occasion.
But I still plan to be picky.

After my most recent breakup, I spoke with my dear friend Ari about what it takes to find the right person. She suggested, in her classic nonchalance, making two lists:
1) Characteristics I require in a mate
2) Characteristics I won’t tolerate in a mate

“Once you make the list,” she said, “It’s much easier to identify what’s not working quickly and just move on.”

I’ve been thinking about this, with my mercifully clear head, over most of the last two months. It seems to have worked for her, so I might as well give it the good-old college try. I started listing specific things, like “he must have a job” and “he must not be a pot-smoker”. But what I’ve concluded, really, is that “he must not be a liberal!”

I want to date a fellow Republican.

This definitely shrinks the gay male dating pool, but just might be worth it. 2007 actually brought 2 of them; one of whom failed the pot-smoker test (eep! Fake Republican!) and the other of whom I nixed over a general lack of chemistry.

Having now dated what I estimate to be 25% of the gay male Republican population of Los Angeles, I’m anxious to move on to the rest before they find each other.

Liberals annoy me in ways that I can overlook in the context of friendship, but not in the context of romance. My litmus test follows:

* Anthropogenic global warming is a farce. If you believe that humanity is the sole driver of carbon dioxide production, and that an increase in the carbon dioxide component of the atmosphere from 0.032% to 0.038% has more bearing on global temperature than THE SUN, then you ought to have your head checked.

* Guns are an insurance policy on liberty. The second amendment exists as the ultimate balance of power between the government and the governed. It’s not an accident that whenever dictators come to power, the first thing they do is round up the guns.

* Socialism is the death of all the macroeconomic prosperity rooted in the microeconomic nexus between an individual’s work and an individual’s wealth. It baffles me that the group of people who can imagine a causal relationship between organic food and better health cannot wrap their minds around economic necessity as a driver of human behavior.

If you disagree with me on any of those points, we won’t date long.

Beyond mere annoyance with the trendy, blue-state opinion cartel, I have a deep discomfort at one nasty psychological defect that carries a strong anecdotal link to the leftist brain: Liberals have a fundamental aversion to the concept of personal responsibility. They don’t like being told that this is the case (and, if challenged, they’ll usually pay some kind of lip service to “ethics” or “karma”), but it’s still true.

Deep in the liberal mind is a hedonistic belief that bad feelings are the ultimate enemy and ought to be avoided at all costs. Humanity should be protected from having to experience pain, hunger, depression, etc. even when those scourges follow naturally from their own misbehavior. And who better to guarantee the comforts of life to all than the nanny state? Poverty hurts, so we should buoy the poor with transfer payments. Disease hurts, so we should provide free health care. And so on, with every other social safety net.

Liberals are blind, though, to the fact that external assurances of comfort and care make self-reliance much less appealing by comparison. It’s a soft-hearted ideology, but also small-minded. Do I even have to point out that insulating people from the consequences of their bad behavior encourages more bad behavior?

It’s not much of a jump to see how that psychology translates to personal relationships. If you think that you are owed a buffer between your behavior and the consequences of it, you’ll probably do something selfish and irresponsible, and piss me off as a result. You’ll fool around, you’ll spend our savings, you’ll gain weight; something.

Liberalism is on my “cannot tolerate” list because personal responsibility is on my “must have” list.

But how to go about it? It’ll take a ton of patience, but I need to get to the point where I feel comfortable going on a date, experiencing him as a person, ordering dessert, and then saying:

“Listen. I’ve evaluated our potential and I’ve come to a conclusion. If you were Mario Lopez or one of the Ginch Gonch boys, I could entertain the possibility of entering into a fuck-buddy arrangement. But you’re not, which means that I have to weigh your appeal as a potential partner in a long-term relationship. Your sense of humor is keen and your commitment to your fitness regimen is impressive. However, your preoccupation with celebrity gossip, your admiration for Barack Obama, and your apparent lack of professional ambition belief, a discomforting likelihood that you’re actually a shallow flake; which means that whatever relationship we might have would likely be short-lived, end in
disappointment at best or heartache at worst, and drain between one and six
valuable months from my life. And since I have a Fleshlight, I don’t really even
want to have sex with you tonight; yes, even though your apartment is only two
blocks from here and your roommate is gone for the week. (I heard you say it the
first eight times. You can stop repeating it.)

Now, to show you that there are no hard feelings, I’ll pick up the check for dinner. I hope you’ll see that I’ve done us both a favor, and you can feel free to exit gracefully whenever you’re done with that Ghirardelli lava cake.”

We’ll see whether I have to use that speech on Peter tonight.