By now, most of us are so jaded that when we hear the word “date,” the first things that come to mind are an empty apartment, Netflix and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
Just us? Oh.
Well think back to that first date experience. The butterflies, the adrenaline, the fumbling in the back seat of a car followed by worrying if you went too fast.
Just us? Oh.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
We asked Whisper to round up what guys are saying about their first (or first after a long dry spell) man-on-man dates.
Here’s what they found:
Joe Kharouf Condon
Shouldn’t it just be “date” and not “gay date”….
Peter McKinney
We’re talking actually dates like going to dinner or a movie, not a glory hole in a dirty bookstore, right?
Brian JC Kneeland
First date was horrible!
Jesse Erickson
I’ll let you know when I get to have one
Rob Laughlin
Horrible…1992, freshman year of college Christmas break. He was older, prob 23. We went to my first gay bar, Roscoe’s in Chicago. He was not romatically interested. Saw the brother of a high school classmate. That’s about all I remember. Saw the date 20 years later on the el riding home from work one day. I chuckled and thought, gee, THAT’S who made me sad??? Time was not good to him. LOL!!
Amaurys Arias
Date, what is that?
bottom250
So beautiful and romantic with one of my Daddy’s co-workers when I was in grade 10
Jonathan Joseph Appleby
It was really goooddd ð??ð??ð??
Ladbrook
In 1981 I had my first date-date (ie: not a bar trick, but that was where we had met). I was 18 and he was 32.
He took me to dinner and a movie then for a walk around downtown. Afterwards, I thought I’d be invited to spend the night at his place. Instead, he drove me back to my dorm and forced me to suck him off in the front seat of his car in the parking lot. It took me years to get over that. Years.
MacAdvisor
My first date was back in 1983. I was working at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. I had such a big crush on a guy who worked in the bookstore. He was quiet and shy, Hispanic with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. After “accidentally” meeting him at the various eating spots surrounding the campus, I finally worked up the courage to ask him out on a date. A real date, on Saturday night, not in a group. Dinner and a movie. Actually, it was a movie then dinner. We went and saw “Gospel,” a documentary about, guess what, gospel music. It was at the Castro and received rave reviews, man leaping out of chair if you know the Chronicle system. I was SO bored, I fell sound asleep. He woke me at the end of the movie. We went to this place around the corner called the Neon Chicken for dinner. The food was good and I tried to ask him questions and get him to talk, but he was so shy, I wound up talking most of the meal (I need little encouragement to talk anyhow). I walked him back to his place on Collingwood and he invited me in (!!!!!). He offered me a drink and we again sat, me talking, his listening (really, I would ask questions, but he didn’t share). Then he said, let me show you my special room. He took my hand, unlocked a door to what I assumed was he bedroom. The room was painted all black. It had a jail cell, an iron mask, wrought iron candle holders, wall-mounted manacles, and all sorts of things I was unfamiliar with. He took out a small wooden box, opened it, and showed it to me. It contained six, very long, very thin needles, sort of like hypodermic needles, but longer and without a plunger. He looked into my eyes and told me he got off by having someone stick these through his hard c*ck (damn censors). He’d climax when the sixth needle went in. He’d didn’t want to be sucked, touched, kissed, or anything but the needles.
Umm, OK. Not sure where I fit in and how I was more than an assistant, but I did it. Sure to his word, the sixth needle did it. He stood there for a few minutes, then reached down and pulled them out. He pulled up his pants and thanked me for a great evening. I walked out in a bit of a daze. I was very vanilla then (still am, really) and wasn’t sure what to make of things.
He avoided me at work and we never went out again. I never told anyone about our date, except to say I doubted we see each other again. I am rather sure things would not have worked out between us. We most certainly weren’t sexually compatible. He did teach me to be much, much more inquiring about desires and practices before dating someone. Still, he had just beautiful eyes. Such long lashes, such dark corneas, like black pearls. Given his desired activity, I assume he survived the AIDS crisis there in SF, but I wonder where he is now.
Lvng1Tor
My first date. July of 1989. I was 17, he was 19. We went to see a midnight showing of the first Batman film with Micheal Keaton. He held my hand in the theater. I don’t remember the film at all just his hand and the warmth of his leg touching mine. After we went to Mc Donalds and then I drove him home. We stopped at a park sat under a gazebo as fog rose around us. I was so nervous and kept talking nonsense….my last words were “Nancy Regan” before he’d waited enough and he leaned in and kissed me. We dated a few more weeks before my brother caught us making out ad threatened to kill him…so that kind of ended quick. While I never saw him again, I did go out on one date with his twin brother who at the end of the date and making out said he was straight!?! My brother still feels bad about how he reacted when he caught us though.
Glücklich
Eh..my first date with a guy was totally unmemorable. Someone I met at school. Dinner. We dated for a hot minute, like a month.
My first date with my now-husband was a hike around Mt. Davidson where we talked, made out and admired the view over the city. He’s only the second guy I didn’t go to bed with on the first date.
But, my favorite first date was really perfect. Free SF Symphony performance in the park and a little picnic. Sounds totally cliche but it was juuuust right. Dated that guy for a hot minute but I was too young for him and he kept adjusting his age upward. It wasn’t the age – the number – it was the adjustment.
n900mixalot
On my first date, we went to see Chain Reaction, because he was attending a very highly-regarded tech school in Southern California and was into that kind of thing. I feel lucky to have been able to go out with a guy like him because my time with him left me with the inkling to go for people who are into things other than fashion and the entertainment industry, which we gays are typically drawn to … not everyone, but many. He was a hard-core NERD and I’ll always love him, even though we parted ways.
He’s a great guy who changed my life for the better. And now I’m married a guy who is just as neat!
Glücklich
@n900mixalot:
I am totally with you on this. I did not marry a nerd but my first real, grown-up relationship was a year spent with a writer/book nerd many years my senior. About six months in I realized I’d fallen in love. We’re still very close and I still love him but in a different way now. Like you, he is the guy who showed me a totally different modus vivendi and my time with him and what I *learned* then still influences most of the decisions I make outside of work. Ever since, I’ve been most drawn to creative types – I married an artist who actually makes a living at it – and the balance they bring to my life, which runs at a swift clip to keep pace with a demanding corporate job.
Billy Budd
My first date was with a SCORT. It was awesome and I lost my cherry.
jimjimtk
First date? I received flowers and candy at the door. Great dinner out. Lost my cherry on the couch. I was the aggressive one. I guess I had waited long enough!
BigG
dating is so bizarre. whenever I have a bad date with zero chemistry, they actually want to see me again. Whenever the date is amazing, great Chemistry, they don’t want to see me again I don’t get it.
Bob Craig
SICKOS
McShane
Some friends set me up on a blind date when I was 19. It was with this super hot, buff ginger guy that I was crushing on. He was in these seriously awful sci-fi movies on public access at like three in the morning. I went to his house, but I could not find his front door. He lived in a humongous Victorian with apartments on all sides. I gave up and walked to a coffee shop and got lunch. I thought he had seen me through a window and for whatever reason had decided to stand me up. I walked back to his house and he was standing at the end of the alleyway that ran down the back of the house. We had a good laugh that we both though we had stood each other up. We chatted about all the people we knew and how funny it was that we had never met each other.
We were going to grab dinner and possibly see a movie when I told him that I make a great homemade spaghetti. So we walked to the store and got all the stuff. I showed him how to boil the tomatoes until the skin cracked, shock them in ice water and the skin just peels off, brown the burger with onion, garlic and fresh oregano. Yada, yada yada. The secret ingredient is two or three tablespoons of Welches grape juice concentrate, which blew his mind. We ate dinner and listened to Ani DiFranco records. We spent a few hours playing Myst and then he kissed me. It’s corny but I definitely saw fireworks. We spent the next two days having crazy degenerate monkey sex. That was the first time that I got chapped d!ck, and could barely walk.
That was 17 years ago and we’ve been together ever since. It’ll be 18 years together in November. I just need to find a super cool porcelain anniversary gift.
Oh, we found out that we were born in the same hospital and delivered by the same doctor. He’s one year older than I am and our birthdays are five days apart. Plus when I met his mom, she recognized me and told us that my dad, before he died, was her coke dealer. His mom would meet my dad at a park and we would play together on the swings when we were six and seven. So romantic, lol.
Glücklich
@Bob Craig:
And yet here you are, looking around. Shouldn’t you be out crusin’ in a park?
http://www.queerty.com/12-angry-men-when-public-cruising-goes-very-wrong-20150807
Glücklich
@McShane:
That is lovely. Up until the Ani DiFranco.
Lvng1Tor
@Bob Craig: Don’t worry…we know you are spanking it to all these stories…when you can admit it to yourself it will all make sense!
Samuel Pearman
It was good, until the end when I gave him a hug instead of a kiss! It must’ve been a good hug, because ten years later we’re still together!
Craig Shapiro
I had over a decade of gay encounters before my first date. We were both sixteen, head over heels . . . Oh yea, first date, in love. In my 65VW BUG, we were invincible, inseparable and passionate. Every traffic light required a kiss, and the horns blew . . . too.
RIGay
My first date when I came out was a DISASTER; it was before the Internet, and I had used a dating bar rag to meet someone. He was a total troll who, gosh, go figure, was NOTHING like his profile and he wanted to be in a committed relationship RIGHT THEN AND THERE.
I had a lot of “Dates” with guys like this; I called them “Barney” dates. They would look at me and go “I love you, you love me?”, while I am staring back at a cross between “Jabba the Hut” and a Jack-o-lantern.
Anyhow.
Will Glitzern
They were all horrible until I met my partner 18 years ago.
Bauhaus
@Bob Craig:
Unleashing your guilt on Q isn’t going to fix you – you will continue to watch gay porn behind your wife’s back, fantasize about men, and secretly hook-up with guys in cruising parks, public bathrooms, adult book stores, glory holes, and truck stops.
Bauhaus
My first real date was with a married college professor. I was 18, he was 51. He would watch me practicing on the field, I’d notice him paying attention to me, and I’d show off a little for him. We went to see an art film, which was completely over my head. I was a bumpkin, he was sophisticated. He introduced me to culture, I introduced him to sex. He was smitten with me. Maybe it was my youth, maybe the sex, maybe my rambunctiousness. I owe my love of literature, language, music, cuisine, art, theater, and everything beautiful in the world to him.
Glücklich
@Bauhaus:
That is a lovely memory. You’re obviously grateful to the professor for making a difference in the trajectory of your interests and he had to have been grateful to you for reintroducing some degree of passion and romance to his life.
Isn’t it funny how if we’re fortunate we develop deep friendships and have intense relationships throughout our lives, but we’re *really* lucky to meet that one person at just the right time in both your lives that changes how you live, even if you know each other for only short time?
Bauhaus
@Glücklich:
Yes. He was sophisticated-bohemian, which is the best way I can describe myself (thanks to him), plus I’m athletic. I probably would have been an ordinary jock were it not for him.
DutchGay
First date with a gay guy for me was over 18 years ago. He’s been my boyfriend ever since and we got married 7 years ago. Never wanted to be with someone else ever since.
Billy Budd
@DutchGay: Do you still have the very stiff erections that you had on your first dates? How can you keep the fires burning for such a long time?
stranded
My first gay date was pretty awesome, but we met online and chatted online for a LONG time before meeting (1.5 years). It was mostly me stalling, because i didn’t really want what was happening to be real. I fell for him and i knew he fell for me, but i wasn’t ready to make him a real person. But he waited and I grew a backbone. We met at a book store, talked, bought books, then we went to best buy for no real reason, just to walk around and talk about mutual interests, we got coffee, that led to dinner, which led to a movie, which led to going back to my dorm and talking until about midnight, then making out and snuggling and talking through most of the night. We fell asleep sometime close to dawn. We woke up, went to eat breakfast, then finally said goodbye, even though we met up like 5 hours later for our second date. So yeah, first date was like 18 hours long.
GayEGO
My first gay date was interesting as it was achieved by an unusual situation. I was in the Navy at the School of Music in Washington, D.C. and a fellow Army student asked if I wanted to go to a gay bar. I asked him what a gay bar was and he told me so I went. We had to sit down at tables and my friend met someone he knew and asked if it was OK for him to join him. I said it was OK and he left me. Another couple sat at my table that made me feel uncomfortable by asking if I wanted to go to their place. I hesitated and got up to look for someone attractive, found a guy, and asked him if he was having a party, something I had just learned to say. He said yes and invited me. I told the other couple at my table that I already had plans. When I joined the guy who said he had a party, he said the party was just the two of us. We had a sexual event that was enjoyable at his apartment in the Foggy Bottoms part of Washington, D.C. The next morning I walked back to the Navy School of Music and I remember feeling like a whore! :>)
JJ24
My first date was mixed but ended up being really great. It was actually to a school dance my freshmen year of high school. I didn’t plan on going because I didn’t have a date and this guy who I was friendly with, the first other gay guy I met(well out gay guy) asked if he could be my date. I asked if he meant as friend or an actually date(he was a senior and super cute so I figured he just wanted to be friends). He clarified that he meant as a date, I said yes of course. I was nervous and not out to my family so I wouldn’t let him pick me up, I met him there. We awkwardly tried to navigate a first date with countless questions from friends asking if we were dating. Finally we gave up and ditched the dance to go grab food, which was great we talked and really connected. We ended the night with him dropping me off at a friends house asking if he could kiss me good night. I said yes and I saw fireworks, guessing he did too cause we dated for 6 months after that.