When Life Gives You Flakes...

I still remember the first time I was completely flaked on. I was 18, just finishing up my freshman year of college and visiting my family in San Francisco (and weighing in around 200 pounds). I had known this guy “Davey” online for a while and finally decided to meet him in person.

We agreed to meet in front of his apartment on Market St. and I arrived promptly, all bright eyed and bushy… err… bellied. I called his cell phone and he picked up. “I just ran down the street to get groceries,” he told me. “I’m walking back to my apartment right now. Oh is that you in front of my building? I see you now!”

Click.

I looked around, but didn’t see any sign of my portly liaison. So I waited. And waited. “Maybe he stopped somewhere else? Or I just missed him?” I reasoned. So I called, and his phone rang. And rang.

After about 20 minutes, I got the picture. I had just experienced my first (and admittedly most callous) flake. I later found out I was only one of many guys to have the same experience with Davey the Sociopath.

In the seven years since then, I’ve encountered my share of flakes here and there. None quite as malicious as Davey. Sometimes it’s the guy who continually sets up plans only to cancel the day before (or hour before) every time. Other times it’s the guy who just refuses to pick up his phone after making plans. And then there’s the guy who’s always too busy to commit to a time and place for meeting.

It’s easy to get caught up in the negative. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve lamented to friends about how flaky the gainer community can be. And yet my good experiences have vastly outweighed the bad ones—which is why I’m still here and still meeting new people.

But it all begs the question: are gainers/encouragers really more flaky than the average person? And if so, why?


WHAT MAKES A FLAKE A FLAKE

It’s important to first define what it is we’re talking about. Certainly there are different types of flakes: Just like we have Murder 1, Murder 2 and Manslaughter, so there are also degrees of flaking.

Picture a spectrum, on which all flaky guys exist. At one end of the spectrum we have malice (the actual desire to hurt or annoy) and at the other end we have apathy (generally not caring about the impact of one’s actions on others).

The most extreme end is embodied by people like Davey—guys who seem to get a perverse satisfaction at wasting your time and energy. Their crimes are pre-meditated and altogether sociopathic. Fortunately for all of us, the extreme, malicious flake is incredibly rare.

Around the middle of the spectrum (the Flake 2’s if you will) we have guys who display a sort of malicious negligence. They typically fall into one of two types: The first type is horny, and sees setting up plans as a way to keep you engaged online until they can get off—then once they’ve reached climax, have no more need for pesky commitments. The second is those who are not yet ready to meet up in person, but haven’t found a way to articulate that. So they make plans in a spontaneous an act of bravery, but eventually come to realize that they aren’t ready to meet in the flesh and cancel.

At the apathetic end of the spectrum (those guilty of Flake-slaughter or perhaps Man-flake?), there’s a bit of a mixed bag: Guys who are just now evolving from lurker status or for whom flakiness is an embedded personality trait—who are just as likely to forget about their plans to meet you as they are with their “real world” friends.

But outside that spectrum there’s another group, one that often get’s lumped into flaking, but really doesn’t belong. The he’s-just-not-that-into-you category.

The truth about our community is that, like any gay sub-community, people are generally interested in meeting guys they are at least somewhat attracted to. There’s always exceptions, but on the whole, it’s pretty reliable fact.

I’m way past my “first thirty pounds” and so I don’t really expect guys who are attracted to the first-thirty crowd to want to meet me. Some still might, but they are certainly an exception.

Sometimes that guy you think of as a flake, just isn’t all that into you and doesn’t know how (or care) to tell you that directly. So he waffles, he makes excuses and sometimes he just ignores you. Is it polite? No. Is it honest? Not really. But it’s a fact we have to face.

All of these people have one thing in common—they shouldn’t matter to you. When you realize a guy is turning out to be a flake (or just isn’t interested in you and doesn’t know how to say it), shut it down. Move on. It’s not worth it to waste one more second engaging or even chastising him. If he’s going to change, he’ll do it on his own terms.

Sometimes, we just need to call a spade a spade, and get on with things.

You deserve better than to be treated like that. And you will find better. There are countless other guys who will be into you and will actually want to set up plans to meet. Focus your time and energy on them.

So back to that question posed at the beginning:


ARE GAINERS/ENCOURAGERS INHERENTLY FLAKY?

The truth is, the world is a flaky place. Unless there’s serious emotional (e.g. family, close friends) or financial incentives, people can be quite unreliable—especially when dealing with relative strangers.

And yet I can’t help but think that gainers are flakier than your average person.

I’d argue that has much to do with our own inner gainer shame. I started exploring that idea in “This is Not a Man” in regards to the objectification of guys online. The more shame a person feels over his interest in gaining/encouraging, the more likely he’ll be to make stupid mistakes and treat other guys online as less than human.

I don’t think I need to say very much about gainer shame, because it’s certainly something every single one of us has gone through, or is still going through.

Ours is an interest that defies the mainstream. Let’s face it: it’s weird, it’s different and it’s a little bit freaky (in the “get your freak on” sense, not the “Freaky Friday” sense). So it can be hard to accept and not feel some residual shame over.

Add to that the fact that many of us are straddling multiple identities—how many gainer encouragers out there are also active in the mainstream gay community, or have civilian boyfriends?—and you’ve got a recipe for denial, self-loathing and all-around flakery.

And yet despite all the gainer shame out there, and the presence of persistent flakes, somehow our community thrives and expands. It’s hard not to be optimistic when you look at the trend of so many groups of gainer/encourager friends sprouting up all over the country; so many guys who are meeting and engaging with their local brethren.

Sure there are plenty of lurkers out there and the occasional guy who seems to be going out of his way to make it as difficult as possible to meet for a beer. But today’s lurkers become tomorrow’s out-and-proud gainers/encouragers. And the majority of guys with profiles online are actually interested in meeting.

Maybe they don’t want to meet right now and maybe not with you. And that’s OK. As the saying goes, “You can’t have everything all the time.” If this one guy doesn’t want to meet you, you’ll find someone else who will. And he’ll be awesome.

There’s an abundance of quality guys out there—men worth getting to know, befriending and maybe even dating. Don’t let a few lousy flakes keep you from meeting them.


HOLIDAY BREAK

I’m going to be taking a three-week break from this blog. Partly because it’s the holidays and I’ll be spending time with family and friends, but also because writing a column every week for the last few months, in addition to a full time job and other mentally-intensive things (watching episodes of Arrested Development on Hulu counts, right?) is a little exhausting and my brain needs some rest.

So I’ll be back in the new year with new posts, starting the second week of January. Until then, happy holidays everyone. And a prosperous, fattening and flake-free new years. And don't forget: When life gives you flakes, make a snowman.

Gainers are from Mars, Encouragers are from Venus

A good deal of time and energy goes into figuring out who we are and where we fit in within the gainer/encourager world.

Am I a gainer? An encourager? Or some kind of bi-curious mix?

And yet it seems like that choice is false. It’s as if someone once said that there were two opposing and complementary identities—gainer and encourager—and that word became gospel.

At first glance it makes sense. In the mainstream gay world, most people fall under top or bottom, with a marginal grey area for those who are truly versatile. The vast majority of the chub-chaser community identifies as one or the other, while only a small margin proclaim the overlapping identity, chub4chub.

Every top wants to find his bottom. And every chaser yearns for his chub.

But does that dual-identity paradigm really hold up for our community? Or are these distinct and diametrically-opposed sides just an artificial way to divide the community?

Or to put it another way:


IS THERE REALLY A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GAINERS AND ENCOURAGERS?

Ever the fan of having data to back up my hypotheses, I did a (rather non-scientific) poll on the bellybuilders messageboard. The results were pretty clear: 2 out of 3 guys who responded said they liked the idea both of gaining weight on themselves and encouraging someone else. About 20 percent claimed to be strictly into encouraging and only 9 percent said they liked gaining themselves and not encouraging others.

So what does all that mean?

Well this data would hardly hold up against Gallup, but it’s a sliver of insight into a question that somewhat affects the very foundation of our community. It shows that the entire gainer/encourager paradigm—in which each role could be seen as a separate but complementary identity, with only marginal overlap—doesn’t hold up.

As someone on the messageboard put it: If our community were a venn diagram, the guys who are both gainers and encouragers would be like a big belly in the middle, with small love handles on the sides, representing those who only like one.

This differs a lot from the community to which we are most often compared: that of chubs and chasers.

In the chub-chaser community there are two distinct identities that directly reflect a person’s physical state and preference. They are in many ways opposing and complementary.

I used biggercity profiles as a reasonable barometer and found that more than 90 percent of all guys on that site chose to identify as either chub or chaser. Less than 10 percent identify as the overlapping identity, chub4chub.

Unlike chubs and chasers, the vast majority of guys into gaining/encouraging actually like both sides of the coin. We may not act on both at any given time for various reasons, but the idea, the urge, the fantasy is there. And that’s pretty unique.

This isn’t to say that liking either gaining or encouraging exclusively is wrong, it’s just to say that defaulting to this single-identity system as we’ve done in the past may be a mistake. If two thirds of the guys in this scene are both gainers AND encouragers at heart, then those people are not marginal—they are, in fact, the status quo.

So if we’re not a community with diametrically opposed “sides,” then what are we?


WE ARE A COMMUNITY OF IDEAS

It probably won’t come as any surprise to readers of this blog what I propose. It’s an idea I explored in my earlier post “When is a Gainer not a Gainer,” but it’s a topic so ripe that it demands further exploration.

At its core, gaining and encouraging is really an idea.

Those of us with this interest like an attitude that’s into growth and a mentality that revels in gluttony and the manliness of unabashed consumption. This idea can take many forms, embody many shapes and physical features and occur in myriad fantasies. But it doesn’t need to prescribe to any one “role.”

And I think that gets to the root of the “pick a side” conundrum detailed above. That is to say, we shouldn’t feel the need to pick a side.

For me, it’s enough to know that I’m into the idea of gaining/encouraging and leave it at that. In a lot of ways, that reflects the prevailing attitude toward being gay.

Being gay doesn’t imply any action. You can sit on your couch and be gay. You can work on your car and be gay. You can do anything you damn well please, and still safely consider yourself gay. You don’t stop being gay whenever you aren’t having sex with a man.

You can be a top or a bottom or into bellies and be gay. There is no right role in being gay, there is just being.

At the end of the day, shouldn’t being a gainer/encourager be more like that? Shouldn’t we have an identity that simply says “I’m into this,” full stop?

Gaining and encouraging are temporal experiences. We are not only gainers when we gain weight and we’re not just encouragers when we are encouraging someone else. Many of us wear both hats at different points and time, so why should we have to choose?

Maybe it’s time to create new labels that more effectively convey that nuance. If it is, I for one have no idea where we’d start. Perhaps it’s enough to keep the labels we have and simply be more aware of their evolving meanings and clear overlaps.

Regardless of whether we change the terms, it’s important to remember that there’s no dire need to pick a side. Some guys are simply more comfortable identifying as encouragers. A select few only want to hold the gainer moniker. But for the vast majority of us, that grey area in the middle is home. It’s ambiguous and can be fluid throughout our lives, but that’s not a bad thing.

It’s good to know that gainers and encouragers are not from different planets. In the end, we are more alike than we are different. And that’s pretty cool.

Coming Out of the Pantry

I’ve often joked with friends that coming out as a gainer is like a second coming out. In a way, it really is.

And yet, it’s fundamentally different from coming out as gay. Whereas telling your friends and family you’re into guys is really about the traits of the people you love and will partner with, telling someone you’re into gaining is an intimate peek into what gets you off. In that way it’s more like disclosing that you’re a top or a bottom, or into rough play.

Not exactly subject matter for dear mom and dad.

And yet it feels like this kink is something we should be letting more people in on. If it’s a big enough part of our lives (and our potential partners' lives), it’s something we should share. But with who? And to what degree?

Most of us have come to terms with coming out of the closet as gay or bi, but is there a right way—and I use this phrase half-jokingly—to come out of the pantry?


TWO KINDS OF COMING OUT

There are really two ways to come out as a gainer/encourager. The first is a “hard” coming out—telling the whole kinky story—and the second is a sort of “soft” coming out—explaining it more in terms of the traits of your ideal partner (or ideal self).

When you’re ready to do the deed, there’s a pretty simple way to figure out who gets a soft explanation and who gets a hard one.

Who are the people you normally discuss your sex life with? Are they your straight friends? Just your gay friends? Only your best friend? Any friend with whom you’d normally disclose intimate sexual information is someone you should feel comfortable telling about your interest in all this. Of course it goes without saying that if you have a civilian partner, he should get the full story too.

For those you decide to tell, tell everything. Be open and honest. At best they’ll think it’s funny. At worst they’ll think it’s weird. Either way, you’ll find relief in not having to censor yourself around the friends (or boyfriend) with whom you normally discuss sex.

For anyone with whom you wouldn’t share intimate details about your sexuality, there’s the soft coming out.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I’m a big advocate for honesty—being true to oneself is probably the underscoring theme of this blog. But certain subjects in life demand modesty as well. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s just life.

You’re not going to tell mom that you’re a bottom, or that you like giving head or that there’s a certain spot on your ear that when licked can make your leg twitch uncontrollably. At least I hope you wouldn’t tell your mom that.

But mom should probably know the basics—the issues of taste, as opposed to raw sex, that similarly define coming out as gay.


LETTING PEOPLE KNOW (WITHOUT LETTING THEM KNOW)

There are plenty of ways to let people in your life understand your general tastes in both men and your own body without disclosing your more prurient interests.

If you’re into big guys, let people know. There’s nothing weird about saying “I like bigger guys,” “I think guys with bellies are kinda cute,” or (in reference to a larger, sexy bloke) “he’s like an adorable teddy bear.” Be creative and have fun.

No one—except those who share this kink—will extrapolate those kinds of harmless comments about taste to reach the conclusion that, deep down, you want to watch men grow fatter or bury your face in a big belly. It may be a concern inside your own head, but I promise you, Nanna isn’t even reading the same book, let alone at risk of being on the same page as you.

They’re gonna meet your boyfriend(s) sooner or later and eventually they’ll put the pieces together that you are, in fact, attracted to bigger men. Get ahead of the story and liberate yourself in the process.

Now if you’re into growing yourself (or already are a big-bellied guy), then the soft coming out is all about signaling that you are very happy as a bigger man.

It’s important to acknowledge that for the vast majority of the planet, fatness is associated with being sad and lonely. When your friends or family see you getting fatter, they likely assume you’re having problems and when you stay fat, they assume you’re unhappy. This is not to be mean, it’s simply their mindset. If they were you, they’d be unhappy too.

So the onus is on you to completely and totally own your body. If you complain about diets not working or clothes not fitting to your non-gainer friends, stop it. If people comment about your weight, say things like, “I actually really like the way I look,” “I find I’m more confident as a bigger guy,” or even that classic standby: “I feel sexy.”

Again, nobody will automatically assume you must have some freaky gainer kink. They’ll simply begin to understand that you are happy and confident, and that’s all any friend wants for you (and if they don’t, you need new friends).

But it’s not just about your words. Owning your body is also about having a confident physical presence.

Stop wearing blousy shirts. Muumuu-esque outfits are for self-hating chubs, not confident gainers. Dressing in a tent sends a signal to the world that you’re ashamed of your body. Wear shirts that accentuate your curves. Find pants that do too.

Many guys have parts of them that they don’t like—you wish you had that rock-hard beergut but are stuck with pudgy love handles, or wish you were soft, flabby fat but stuck with a firm preggo belly. Do your best to ignore those. You need to own your entire body—even parts of it that you may not be 100 percent ecstatic about.

Perhaps the strongest signal you send to the world is through your posture.

Avoid the fatboy slouch. That’s when a bigger guy hunches forward so as to bring his head into alignment with the front of his belly/tits, creating the effect of slimness from his perspective (because when he looks down, he sees a straight line instead of a paunch). It fools no one. Instead, it just sends a message that you’re unconfident and uncomfortable with your body.

Straightening your spine while sitting and walking can completely change people’s perceptions of you. It says, “Don’t fuck with me, I’m confident and happy just as I am.” That’s a message that only good posture can convey.

At the end of the day, there is no “right” way to come out as a gainer/encourager/belly-lover. We each need to do it on our own terms.

But it’s helpful to remember that coming out of the pantry isn’t the same as coming out of the closet. You don’t need to tell everyone everything—and you shouldn’t have to. Even lifting just some of this off your shoulders can be immensely liberating.

The truth shall set us free. Or make us fat. Preferably both.