A few days ago I mentioned that when I left Harvard and got a typing job, I discovered that there existed a paradise for young male homosexuals that I had never dreamed might exist.  At least it seemed a paradise at the time, although as I matured I came to be able to put it into better balance, particularly seeing what a waste of time it was.

The biological nature of the male is to be promiscuous.  Of course such a broad statement has to be hedged in with a lot of qualifications and exceptions, both as to species and to individuals.  Still, the picture remains -- the male generally makes little contribution, at almost no cost, to the next generation -- although our cultures and even natural selection often "fixes" this.

Females will be somewhat different.  They may also have reason to be promiscuous up to a point, but have other objectives, mainly to somehow lasso the male into helping with the rearing of children, and this doesn't work very well in an unbounded society.  So, then, many if not most males would be promiscuous except the females won't allow it.  Hence we see female prostitution far more than male prostitution (and what of that is largely to other males) and in the gay world the gay male society is largely promiscuous, while the gay female society much less so.

This sets up, when religious and societal rules have been weakened and by large numbers dismissed or rationalized, a situation in most American cities, and, indeed, many cities around the world, a situation of paradise for the high-libido young male homosexual, in that there are available to them in any city several thousand similar young men, each with pretty much the same agenda and behavior.

And they find each other -- a system of cultural institutions (mainly in the twentieth century the gay bar) and ghetto-like neighborhoods (this is diminishing) and the fact that male homosexuals gravitate toward certain career paths and of course various signaling methods that evolve.

Now there are drawbacks -- one must have free time and some excess spending power, but without children and other family burdens this is not hard for most.  One must also, since finding partners for flings or once-only "tricks" is not too difficult, not let the "law of diminishing returns" take over or one ruins the whole thing.  This "law" is the tendency we all have to get bored with what is easy to get and set ourselves greater challenges.  It also comes from the fact that sexual fantasy over-promises and sexual reality is usually underwhelming and often disappointing -- what do you expect in an environment where both partners are treating the other as a sexual object -- taking turns, as it were, in using each other's bodies for sexual pleasure?

Taken at face value and not letting it blow one's ego out of proportion, and just enjoying oneself, this lifestyle is a hell of a lot of fun.  My experience with it was before AIDS and all those other monsters appeared (which, with what I know of biology, seems to have been predictable, but that is a good topic for another journal entry).