Homo On The Range

I'm a 22-year-old gay male living in a small town. I've met three of the four men I've dated online. Three looked nothing like their pictures, and one was a total jerk. How am I supposed to meet nice guys I'm attracted to? If I see a cute guy in a coffee shop, I have to figure out whether he's gay, and I risk embarrassing myself if he's not.

--Gay In Nowhereland

Sure, as a small-town gay guy, it's much harder to find dates than it would be in one of the gay capitals of the universe -- like San Francisco's The Castro -- where leaving for work means bumping into the guy next door taking out the trash in hot pants and a feather boa. Although straight people in Tinyville do have a bigger pool of potential partners, what you and many straight people everywhere have in common is the unwarranted indignation that the dating world was not immediately your oyster. Yes, meeting people is hard. Yes, people on dating sites misrepresent themselves. Sometimes, it's unclear whether they're even in the same species: "Truth be told, I'm three-quarters Italian and a quarter German shepherd." What you have that straight people don't is the gay community -- or the possibility of a gay community. Either find it or create it. Online dates who turn out to be duds romantically can become friends or at least connections to other gay men. Maybe set up a First Friday drinks night for gay men in small towns around you and get all the rainbow-colored fish in one bowl. You might not immediately find a boyfriend, but you'll create a fun social scene that should prove more productive than spending three hours pretending to check your phone next to the lone gay video in the town video store.