Lovetastic: dating for gay men who believe in love

I probably became destined to create Lovetastic over a decade ago when I was 14 years old, growing up in rural West Virginia. I happened to fall in love with my best friend, who happened also to share my gender. We shared everything in life,a habit of writing bad poetry--a love of spending hours off exploring the forests of Appalachia, a fondness for old movies and books--so it seemed entirely natural to me when we began also to share an intimate love. He reached over to kiss me one day, and I kissed back. And that was that.

The innocence, simplicity, and depth of that relationship showed me what love between men could be like when it grows first out of the union of two whole persons rather than first out of the union of two bodies. We didn't realize until much later that falling in love with your male best friend made you "gay," and that this was supposed to imply a host of other cultural traits and affinities. We wouldn't have known what. We just knew we enjoyed each other's company, and each other's warmth.

Now, I'm 25. As I grew up I was exposed to the outside world's view of what being gay is supposed to be all about, and I didn't like being expected to conform to it. I didn't like the emphasis on hook-ups, physical appearance, drinking, drugs, and fashion. I didn't like that being gay had become a television cliche and a "target market" for advertisers to sell beer and expensive clothes to.

Now I'm the proud parent of and partner in Lovetastic with my dear friend and colleague David Kooy. We're trying to change forever, and for the better, the landscape of social options among gay men. We welcome you to join us.

Hundreds of computer manuals (for better or worse), several piles of books for separate and unrelated research projects (including a book I've been working on for years,) and what is, I am only a little embarassed to admit, my extensive collection of Martha Stewart Living magazines stretching back to the publication's founding.

I think the Alfred Dunhill shop on Jermyn Street in London is such a tremendously cool place, but lately my favorite place to peruse the proverbial wares is the Apple Store near Central Park in New York. I just love that I could go play with Mac Pros at 4am on Christmas Eve if I wanted to.

*Hamlet* by Wm. Shakespeare

*How to be Idle* by Tom Hodgkinson

*The Science of Human Behavior* by BF Skinner.

*Hamlet: Poem Unlimited* by Harold Bloom

Louis Armstrong, the American Bach. When I first heard "Stardust," I thought it was so beautiful that I got a little teary-eyed.

I rather like the Bach from Leipzig too.

The Magnetic Fields.

Arvo Part

The Postal Service, Zero 7, Sigur Ros, the Avalanches, Aqueduct.

Jordi Savall & Marin Marais

Nina, Ella, Billie.

John Lee Hooker, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Fats Waller, Vince Guaraldi, Pat Metheney, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington.

Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, Nickel Creek.

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Rufus Wainwright.

The Zombies.

Yann Tiersen.

The Tallis Scholars, King's College Choir of Cambridge, Anonymous 4, Alfred Deller & the Deller Consort, Andreas Scholl, The Sixteen.

Edith Piaf, Jacques Dutronc, Francoise Hardy.

Everything by Woody Allen, esp. Stardust Memories, Shadows and Fog, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Interiors, and Husbands and Wives. (Id est, all the dark and depressing ones.)

The Charlie Brown Christmas Special

The Blues Brothers

North by Northwest

The Life Aquatic

To Catch a Thief

Amelie

The Gathering Storm, a surprisingly compelling HBO film about Churchill in the days before his ascent (for the second time) to First Lord of the Admiralty. Reminds me of my days in Westminister and a lovely summertime visit I once made to Chartwell.

Lord of the Rings. (Yeah; you wanna make something of it?)

Thomas Jefferson and Jazz by Ken Burns

Dr. Strangelove

The Thomas Crown Affair (the new one.)

I think Edward Hopper is the most profound American artist, and one of the most under-appreciated in the world.

I'm very fond of architecture by the likes of I.M. Pei and FLW (I don't really care for Frank Gehry.)

I rather like Neo-Classical ornamentation styles, along with American Federalist.

Oh, and of course one can't omit Greek statuary, and its Roman and Renaissance revivals.

The European Enlightenment.

The (admittedly spurious) notion of Transubstantiation.

Paradigm shifts and tentative truth in science.

Functional and scientific contextualism.

Barthesian Hermeneutics.

Cigars and brandy.

Radical behaviorism ( la Skinner.)

The Free Software movement (the Stallmanite stance on open-source.)

Tipping Points (however silly).

Free enterprise (regulated against excesses,) liberalism,
libertarianism, Smithean economics.

The computer command line.

Jeffersonian idealism.