Hi everyone,

It was the author Richard Bach who commented on the difficulty of romance and relationships in his book The Bridge Across Forever. "How difficult it is...where do we go to meet someone to love?"
I have thought about this many, many times as a single gay man still looking for love, often in the wrong places. Don't get me wrong. He was talking about where to go to actually find that one special person, your someone. He wrote this book long before the internet explosion, long before anonymous, online sex, before lying and coloring outside the lines of anything resmebling the truth became an industry.
And long before it became suicidal to meet somebody anywhere other than a brightly lit, very public place.
Lately, my own horror experiences and those of some of my friends have made me realize it is a literal problem too - where do we go to meet someone to love?
I recently - and my cheeks flame just remembering this - met a guy online. We talked for weeks on the phone and met for dinner in Long Beach and just as I was seriously falling in like (despite the crappy el cheapo restaurant he picked in his neck of the woods an hour's drive from mine. Talk about AJ missing signals...) he then asked if we could drive up to Signal Hill together and watch the stars over the city.
"We can come back and have coffee by the boardwalk," he said. How romantic, I thought, grinning like a loon. So I got in his car, we went to the Hill...little did I know it's the biggest public make-out place in southern California.
It was weird, as we edged further and further up the mountain, I had to admit the view was incredible, and I noticed cars parked off to the side...then all of a sudden, they were moving behind us, following us.
What the heck was going on?
We pulled into the wilderness equivalent of a cul-de-sac.
Cars wedged in very close to us as soon as they saw my date's car. It was unbelievable. And my date seemed to know everybody.
"They're a little close, aren't they?" I asked him. I was afraid, to be honest. I could not have opened my door and made a run for it if my life depended on it.
"Suck my cock." He opened his pants and out sprang the biggest wang I'd ever seen in my life. Well, I was sorta game...but why was everyone staring out their windows at us?
"Stop embarrassing me," he snarled. "They're just watchers."
A little man emerged from the bushes, his own hand fossicking in his pants, his face glued to the window on my side of the car.
This had to be a terrible dream. My date started moaning like he was in his own porn movie, stroking his cock and I was nowhere near ready to give him mouth-to-cock resuscitation. I was so embarrassed...
People started honking their horns, furious about the lack of action, despite the fact that the couple in the next car were balling like hyperactive rabbits and then my date got huffy.
In that same second I realized I was in public, yet I was in trouble.
And then the unthinkable happened. Lights, sirens, POLICE!!!
The strange little man at my window took off into the surrounding bushes but he was tackled by the fellas in blue. Other cops surrounded our vehicles.
Bright lights shone into our vehicle as my date fought to get his big plonker back in his pants and when he was unable to provide a license or vehicle registration, he got hauled off to the pokey.
He is apparently on a suspended license, AND he is on probation for lewd public acts.
As a blubbering first timer and I guess since I was fully dressed and in possession of a valid license, I was given a warning and a stern lecture...
The police drove me back to my car. Since I have never had anything except one parking ticket in twenty odd years of driving, they suggested that exhibitionism should not be in my immediate future.
I shudder every time I recall my phone conversations with my Disastrous Date. Not once did he reveal his kinky tendencies, his legal problems or his familiarity with a bunch of Hillside watchers.
So, where do you go to meet someone to love? Don't ask me. I haven't a clue. I'm stumbling around in the darkness here myself.

Aloha oe,

AJ