Woof woof woof.

               

            Sometimes when I go out for a tasty libation, I like to be a part of the crowd.  I like to mingle, make friends, make bad decisions and drink a little too much.  And by a little too much, I mean my body weight in beer and tequila.  But sometimes I like to sit back in a corner somewhere and watch.  Most of my life, I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in.  Which isn’t a complaint, I don’t mind it.  In fact, I thoroughly enjoy watching.  I learn a lot.  It’s amazing what you can learn simply from taking yourself out of the equation. 
            But I digress.  I’ve spent the last couple days going to bars, people watching.  I’m not looking for anything in particular; I just want to see how gay men behave.  And the more I watched, the more I noticed something very familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  You know, that feeling when you smoke way too much pot, and have a brilliant idea, and then forget about it 30 seconds later.  But you know you had a brilliant idea, you just can’t remember what it was?  Yea, that feeling.  Minus the munchies. 

            And then, this morning, my neighbor’s dog decided to say hello to me as I was walking back in from my early morning coffee and bagel run (I’m a Jew).  And by say hello, I mean the dog decided to come into my apartment behind me, because my idiotic (yet gorgeous) neighbor lets him run around the apartment complex without a leash.  The dog is nice, so I don’t really care.  I put down my coffee and bagel, and said hello to my furry fellow.  He proceeded to stick his face in my crotch as a greeting.  And that’s when it hit me. 

            A lot of men act like dogs. 

            And I don’t mean in the proverbial sense that women always talk about.  I mean, quite literally, we behave like dogs.  The similarities are astounding. 

            I’ve found an awful lot of gay men who are slightly obsessed with the way other men smell.  Especially the “bear” culture (where I am usually laughed at because apparently my lack of body fat is clearly a sign that I am beneath them socially or intellectually).  They are constantly running around, sniffing each other’s armpits, smelling each other’s nether regions, and doing it with complete disregard for anything else around them.  I mean, call me old fashion, but I like my man to ravage my body in the privacy of my own home, not at the local Starbucks. 

            This single-minded, animalistic focus on the need to hump, lick and smell everything that moves is quite fascinating.  Now, you don’t usually see your average run of the mill queen running around and behaving like that Chihuahua that I owned for a week but got rid of because I didn’t like to pick up the poo.  It’ usually the hyper masculine men with awkwardly large muscles and perfectly groomed chest hair.  The ones who have odd tribal tattoos that don’t mean anything and have a penchant for wearing leather arm bands.  They are the ones you have to look out for.  Every time I go to the Eagle (gay leather bar), or Faultline (like the eagle, except slightly less classy, which is hard to accomplish), if I’m not getting my armpits licked or my ass sniffed, I can look around and see it happening to any number of people.  If I wanted to be submitted to this behavior, I would go to the god damn dog park. 

            But perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about.  I’m not usually one to go out with sex as my ultimate goal.  And if I go out and find someone attractive, I usually use my words and say something like, oh, I don’t know, “wanna screw?”  Perhaps it’s just me, but I enjoy having sex with my fellow man, and part of being a human is the ability to stimulate more than just my penis.  Use your words, they are surprisingly useful. 

            Now, a lot more could really be said on this subject, and I probably will talk more on this at some point. But for now, I will leave it with this:

             If you come up to me, sniff my armpit and go “woof,” please don’t expect dramatic porn music to start playing and for me to wag my proverbial tail at you, giving you the "thumbs up."  If you act like a dog around me, I will treat you like a dog.  And I don’t have sex with dogs; I usually give them away to a better home, because I really don’t like picking up poo.

Lord, I need a drink.

Jesse.