Fridae

I have ridden the carousel of gay relationships and have the trophies and scars to vouch for it. If anything good ever came out of that, it's the personal epiphany that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before one of them turns into your Prince Charming.

At the beginning of my homo-career, I believe, like many a wide-eyed gay virgin, that there's such a thing as the perfect lover waiting for me at some cruising hotspot or gay club.

My na�vete could no doubt be attributed to my countless childhood viewings of Disney's Cinderella which left me with the impaired mentality that all I have to do to attain lasting romantic fulfillment was to turn up at a ball looking flawless and some dashing man would be so struck by my lonely beauty that he'll immediately propose.

With the accumulation of wisdom over the years (and countless reality checks later), I have finally come to the realization that there are lessons to be learnt from every relationship both incandescent and lasting.

Most importantly, I realized that connubial bliss depends very much on being able to distinguish and differentiate between the man you want to spend the rest of your life with and the man you just want to spend a Saturday night with.

For a start, whether you're a top or a bottom, butch or effeminate, it doesn't make that much of a difference - you're a man and you need to get laid.

Unless one happens to be a self-proclaimed virgin like Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake, no sane gay person would wait for Mr Right to come along before he has an orgasm with another man. So in spite of our moral misgivings, Mr Right Away does indeed have a role to play in the gay scheme of things - even if it's just to provide short-term sexual relief.

With that out of the way, the first thing gay men should do is to admit to themselves just exactly what they're looking for in either their Mr Right or Mr Right Away. Lust-inducing good looks? An erection-stirring body? A T-Rex sized dick? Or simply a sparkling personality?

While the former three appear to be pre-requisites when selecting Mr Right Away for a fling or a one-night-stand, most gay men would (thankfully) still choose a combination of all factors (except perhaps for unrepentant size queens) with personality featuring as the most important criteria when assessing their Mr Right.

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Selection criteria aside, most gay men tend to go looking for love in all the wrong places.

As Diane Keaton discovered to her dismay in Looking For Mr Goodbar, expecting to find love when you go looking for sex can only lead to heartbreak.

Still most gay men visit gay hotspots in expectation of finding love and affection when the men in such places are looking only for sex and instant gratification.

While I'm not saying you can't find love with someone with whom you're only partly acquainted through a hole in the toilet cubicle, I'm saying that you probably won't. So if you would, for once, not be guided by your lusty loins, you'll probably admit to yourself that there's just something non-kosher about sexually charged environments when it comes to finding mates to form lasting relationships.

While a handful of gay men can and do find true and everlasting love in bars and discos, these gay playlands are hardly ideal because you're half drunk most of the time. Add the cosmetic effect of darkness to your drunken stupor and you'll soon discover that going home with a "handsome" guy doesn't necessarily mean you're going to wake up with one.

Likewise, sex clubs or saunas are also not the places to go looking for soul-mates because the atmosphere is so sexually charged that it's hard to concentrate on any one person (or in some cases, one organ) in a non-sexual way for long.

So be honest with yourself. When you're out looking for Mr Right Away, don't harbour any thoughts of netting Mr Right and you'll do fine. Treat your excursion to the gay disco/bar/club/sauna as you would when going away to a 5-star resort by telling yourself that you're going out to have fun, not to get hitched.

Thankfully, many gay men can and do really find their Mr Right - but whether they remain monogamous is another question altogether. When they finally net the Big One (and I'm not talking about penis size here), they realize that commitment is not a four-letter word and in no time at all, these newly domesticated guys would find themselves bickering over fabric swatches for the Corbusier in the den.

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Unfortunately, despite what relationship gurus and their authoritative tomes would say, there's really no right formula for finding and falling in love with Mr Right. The trick is to be honest with yourself and your expectations of Mr Right.

For instance, if you are an obese Jabba the Hutt look-a-like working as a video store clerk, you could refuse to date anybody but handsome doctors with high IQs and chiseled bodies - but you'll probably end up snuggling up to re-runs of Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman for the rest of your lonely life. The choice is yours: be realistic or be prepared to live your gay life in the cloister.

Similarly, accept the fact that in love, you do make mistakes. Everyone (yes everyone) is guilty of at least one serious judgment lapse when choosing a potential partner (remember Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett?). So if you met someone whom you thought was your Mr Right but who turned out to be a psychotic Alexis Carrington clone out on parole, don't kick yourself. Learn from your mistake, grow that little bit wiser, and move on.

To most people, knowing when your Mr Right comes along can best be attributed to a gut feeling. To others, realization and recognition can be triggered by any of the following: being able to anticipate and complete each other's thoughts and sentences; willingness to share and sacrifice precious wardrobe space; finding all sorts of outlandish excuses to call each other at all hours; having an uncontrollable urge to kiss each other in public (or fondle each other's genitals in elevators); and other idiosyncratic behaviour too numerous to list.

To this self-confessed sleepaholic writer, Mr Right is someone for whom I would gladly wake up in the middle of the night just to gaze at his sleeping face and trace the soft indents of his breath on his pillow. And my nearest and dearest is definitely someone who gives me joy just to know that "the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night � (a)nd his arm lay lightly around my breast - and that night I was happy" (Walt Whitman, When I Heard at the Close of Day).

This article is specially dedicated to Louis.