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¡Hola Papi!
I have a dear friend who sexualizes everything. Every time we pass a good-looking guy on the street, he makes a remark. “God, I want him to ram me!” Every horny Instagram meme he sees, he shares with me. You get it.
Make no mistake, I love him to death. We’re besties! He has the best partner ever and he does this horny stuff with a lot of his close friends. My thing is, I’m tired of constantly “looking” on the street, at the clubs, and in every new city I visit. I don’t like how easily horny I get with these hot gay memes. They remind me that I have no one to share my desires with.
I don't know how he does it. He’s so light and fun about sexual attraction. Meanwhile, it triggers self-doubt and insecurity for me. It makes me wonder if nobody will love me because I’m a short, femme, Asian fashion twink with resting bitch face. I’ll never be as much an object of desire as the guys on the street he points out or in the memes he sends. He seems puzzled that such things can make me spiral.
ChatGPT gave me some advice that I do agree with: focus on personal growth instead of basing my self-worth on sexual attraction (I am a very horny person and I want everyone I find attractive to have sex with me). Recently, after setting some personal goals and deleting Grindr, I’m starting to feel better.
So, the question after all this buildup: Will I ever get to a place where I'm free from sex-induced insecurity? Is it possible for me to find a sense of lightness and fun in a sexualized world like my friend?
What do you think, Papi?
Signed,
Insta Gayn’t
Hey there, IG!
You have a lot of nerve waltzing into my inbox telling me you came to ChatGPT first. What, is your new robot friend not good enough for you? Covering all your bases by asking flesh-and-blood Papi after consulting the Borg? Fine, but don’t come crying to me when the AI gets red-pilled and advises you to find a wife. You’ll be back. You’ll all come crawling back like dogs.
Anyway…
Not to sound like PapiGPT, but I’m about to say something I’ve said dozens of times before in this column. Are you ready for it? Here it comes: I can relate. I just put in an appearance on Fire Island (yes, they made the place from the movie real) and while I had a gay old time, it did stir up some long-standing anxieties I have about my appearances.
Before people were calling me “papi” on Grindr, I was a kid being regularly mocked for his looks. People really went out of their way, it seemed, to point out everything wrong with me. My weight, the shape of my head (?), my duck-footedness, my skin, I could go on. It’s stuck with me into adulthood. I struggle with “having a body.”