Mike Alvear's Urge & Merge

Writing the first body language guide for gay men has ruined my Saturday nights. I can no longer go out and have a good time without obsessively watching the body language in gay bars. This guy’s gestures are turning the other man off and that guy’s posture is giving off the wrong signals. Can’t I just enjoy my vodka?

No, I can’t. Because I want gay guys to connect. Sometimes I just want to march up to a guy and say, “Look, you’re doing it all wrong. Try this!” But I know he’ll never get it even if I show him, because first he has to understand what he’s doing wrong. And to do that, he has to be aware of what he’s doing at all.

As guys, we are simply not that aware of what our bodies are doing or communicating. In one famous experiment, 95% of people couldn’t pick out the back of their hand in a line-up of photographs!

Your body’s got a vocabulary of its own and its ‘words’ don’t always match the ones coming out of your mouth. For example, you might say something that telegraphs your interest but don’t look in his eyes. Your words say, “Come here” but your body hands him his hat. Since 65% of communication is non-verbal–especially in gay dating situations, he’ll probably take the hat—and the hint. That’s why you need to know what you’re body is doing–so it won’t sabotage what you’re saying.

Let’s do a quick test. Fold your arms over your chest. Did you Read the rest of this entry »

Women can do it because they can attach erotic desire to personality traits. Men? Ha!

That’s why most of us live within the narrow confines of our sexual bandwidth. The point was poignantly made by one gay guy who wrote to me:

“Guys nearly always want someone with their own body type, and I’ll never have it. I’m a beanpole by nature: thousands of hours of weight training haven’t turned me into a hunk, just made me less skinny. No reputable doctor will prescribe anabolic steroids to me, and I don’t want to risk doing illicit steroids. Given the Gay Rules of Attraction, I know my chance of getting a studly boyfriend is slight-to-vanishing.”

Can he change the body type he’s attracted to? Read the rest of this entry »

As the author of the first body language book for gay men, I’m often asked how male body language affects guy-on-guy dating. The answer is plenty. But to understand why certain postures, gestures and expressions make you more appealing to gay guys, you have to understand the 5 major principles of gay body language:

#1. Words lie, bodies don’t.

The truth leaks out of our bodies like a pockmarked water pail. As soon as we put a finger in one hole another one opens up. You may think you look calm, cool and collected, but look down– your foot’s tapping the floor like a woodpecker. Sexual signals bounce all over the place whenever gay men get together, and they’re being sent with heads, eyes, arms, hands, legs, and feet. Yes, feet. Long story, keep reading.

#2. Your body language changes when you see somebody hot. And you’re usually not aware of it.

Hidden camera studies show that a man’s posture changes when he sees somebody that turns him on. He, or more to the point, YOU, will:

1. Pull your stomach. (To look sleeker)
2. Throw your shoulders back (to occupy more space)
3. Puff up your chest (to look bigger)
4. Lift your head (To look taller)
5. Protrude your jaw (to look more dominant)

It’s a form of preening. Researchers call it “Auto-erotic signaling.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I cracked an HIV joke.

Half the crowd laughed.

The other half glared.

Was I wrong?

Dear Former:
I really wished you’d have come up to me after the screening—I was giving away free samples of ANAL-EZE, the desensitizing cream for overly sensitive assholes like you.

Now, before I rip you a new one, let’s set the scene for the folks who weren’t there: I helped moderate the Q&A portion of the screening with drag diva Bubba D. Licious. There were, I don’t know, what 200 people there?

Anyway, I started out by asking the panel of HIV experts onstage if there was any room for humor when we talked about HIV and safe sex. The “joke” that so deeply offended your ass, ANAL-EZE, was actually a quote an HIV+ guy had written to my column. He had recently been infected with HIV and was struggling with a way to disclose the information to potential partners without freaking them out.

Here’s his joke:
Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Fucked,
You’re not a rejection junkie; you’re a new meat junkie. Big difference. Oh, and that bullshit about not liking the game? Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. You love the game –as long as you’re the dealer and not the dealt with. Here’s why you’re chasing your tail and how you can stop:

1. The Hunt is More Exciting Than the Catch.

The pursuit is giving you something that being pursued does not: Anticipation, excitement, spontaneity, conquest and drama. OH GOD, THE DRAMA! And of course, that New Dick Smell. Read the rest of this entry »

I was invited by an HIV support group to moderate the Q&A portion of an AIDS fundraiser this weekend. With 200 people there to see the documentary Sex Positive (about an S&M hustler in the 80′s who practically invented the concept of safe sex), my co-host (drag queen extraordinaire, Bubba D. Liscious) and I took to the microphones.

I started out by asking the panel onstage if there was any room for humor when we talked about HIV and safe sex. My “joke” was actually something a reader to my sex advice column had written to me. He had recently been infected with HIV and was struggling with a way to disclose the information to potential partners without freaking them out.

Here’s the joke:

Half the room exploded with laughter. The other half glared at me. I went on by addressing the panel and saying, “My point, and I do have one, is that laughter is the Vaseline that makes ideas penetrate better, yet I never see the subject ever treated with humor. Again, is there room for the funny bone in the body of work that you do?”

At the after party some people said it was exactly what the room needed after such a heavy documentary. Other people registered their displeasure, telling me that I had insulted innocent victims of the infection who were sitting in the audience.

Who was right? Are there some things that just shouldn’t be joked about?

Clearly we don’t go around saluting like SS guards, but you’d be surprised at how every day palm gestures can have nearly the same negative effects. Quick example: I have a good friend who’s fairly disliked by a good many people. Although I think he’s kind and generous, some folks have taken me aside and said, “There’s something about him that rubs me the wrong way.”

That “something” is the way he uses his palms. In the Hitler example, you saw the raw emotional power of a simple palm position, but again, that’s not realistic. Here’s how your palms can make somebody dislike you (like my friend) in a real conversation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Raise your hand if you’ve ever survived a difficult relationship with a man and decided life surely must be better on the opposite side of the fence. I don’t know if gay men go through that thought  process, but everyone of my girlfriends has said it at least once jokingly after a horrendous breakup.

Being a literal sort of girl, I decided to go see if that pasture was any greener than the straight side of the field.

I decide to pole vault into girl-on-girl world in the summer of 1988. Having had at least a decade of dick behind me (sometimes literally), I noticed my lesbian friends seemed to be having a hell of a lot more fun than I was. I had already slept with women in college, so that so called taboo was out of the way.

Luckily I had my own personal guide to lesbian Atlanta to help ease the transition. She would show up at work on Mondays with blackened eyes and enormous hickeys from her weekend romps, sharing  her adventures with our co-workers during smoke breaks. Her pickups showered her with attention; sending flowers, taking her to lunch, giving her rent money. There was an endless line up of older gay women in expensive cars spoiling her rotten and that looked like exactly what I needed too. At that point in my life I had financially and emotionally supported an ever changing line up of would be rock stars, so a sugar mama sounded like a dream come true.

I started hitting up the gay bars with her on weekends. I chopped off my hair into a cute, shaggy little cut and found freedom in a cosmetic free face. I added some polo shirts and flat shoes to my wardrobe. I danced my Doc Martin shod feet off to “I Just Want To Be Your Lover Girl”  at the Sports Page  and Talluleh’s.

I discovered that picking up women is a lot more difficult than picking up men. Read the rest of this entry »

Who in turn looks like a cheap drag version of Paris Hilton. And let me add a very amateur version. No real drag queen would leave the house looking like this or she would face serious ridicule.

I grew up and lived with some pretty fabulous drag queens in Atlanta. If it weren’t for drag queens and gay men I would know nothing about life, love, and the pursuit of the perfect concealer.

Read the rest of this entry »