How not to go to a Gay Bar

1. When you set off, have in your mind a specific and definite idea of the man you're looking for. (E.g.: "I want a bear, at least as tall as I am, with facial hair, preferably a full beard, who smokes cigars."
2. Go to a bar on a night when the one redeeming feature of the bar (a roof deck where you can smoke cigars, say...) is not in operation.
3. As soon as you arrive and pay your cover, do a quick tour of the bar. Decide that there's nobody there you're interested in hooking up with. Stay anyway.
4. Stand in the corner of the postage stamp sized backyard smoking area smoking your cigar and glowering.
5. When approached, say things guaranteed to put your interlocutor at ease, like, "When you put on your flip flops and headed out to a leather bar, you were thinking what exactly?"
6. Plant yourself on a bar stool facing the room and glower some more.
7. Reconsider the 'there's nobody here I'm interested in hooking up with' decision, and decide that you would definitely hook up with the bar back, the DJ, or a bartender, all of whom are completely unavailable to do that because... like... they're working.
8. Glower some more.
9. Mutter things under your breath like, "Buncha chumps," or "Pathetic," or "Looks like they're spiking the drinks with idiot serum again."
10. Think about how you don't have a guy that you're seeing, but you'd like one, because that would mean you wouldn't have to be here. Let that make you sad.
11. Glower. As fiercely as you can.
12. When some sweet faced boy emerges from the shadow appropriately attired for a leatherbar and pleasing to the eye in every way and greets you with a respectful, "Good evening, Sir," decide at that moment that you're really tired and can hardly keep your eyes open and tell him, "Dang, boy, wish I'd run into you earlier. I was just on my way out," and head for the door. Regret this all the way home.

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