TetRefine

Jeremy, as a fellow East Coaster, I am revoking your membership card for saying something positive about Krispy Kreme. We all know Dunkin' is king and KK sucks. Ok? Thanks. As for Chipotle, its okay. The only reason I really go there is because a.) its right by my gym and its quick and relatively healthy after a workout, b.) my boyfriend is obsessed with it and constantly drags me there. Though theres this great little place in the city called Tres Jalapeños that makes far better burritos then Chipotle.

As always, I'm in.

To me, this is the second best film of the 1980s (behind only Oliver Stone's Wall Street). Not to mention Don't You (Forget About Me) is an enduring classic of a song and is among the most played on my iTunes library!

I agree with James. As someone who grew up in an area that was less than open arms toward gay people, this is some rosy-eyed San Francisco-esque fantasy.

Thank ever-loving god that brand is dying a quick and painful death. It represented all that was/is wrong with people.

Psfh, Pattagonia is for poor people. Canada Goose is where it's at. Seriously, the amount of rich, snobby Penn kids and "young professionals" I see walking around this city wearing this jacket is truly obnoxious. Also, the huge logo reminds me of Abercrombie brand whoring. I'll stick to my Uniqlo jacket. Looks just as good and is just as warm....at 1/5 the price.

But I think that reflects the reality of the gay world, especially among the under 30 crowd. Actually now that I think about it, I don't know any gay guys who are in monogamous relationships. The vast majority are single or casual, and those that are in relationships are not monogamous. Yes but you went to a fufu performing arts high school in the suburbs.

I'm curious to know for those of us (gay men) who go to the gym, what is your true motivation to go to the gym on a regular basis?

Yeah I saw that article the other day. It really is amazing how fast this city has changed since I came down around 2010. Everywhere you look there is new luxury apartment construction, office building construction, and restaurants opening everywhere, especially in University City. The Gallery is a total dump and it's almost depressing to walk through there. I've only been there once or twice and it just has a cheap and ghetto feel to it. All the stores are discount crap retail and the people who frequent that place are just trashy for the most part. It'll be interesting to see what they can do to it when it reopens in 9 months. And as for Kensington, your view is very outdated (but not uncommon). Kensington is to Philadelphia what Harlem was to New York circa 1970s-80s. Its true that back in the day Kensington was a drug-plagued and crime ridden neighborhood, but as the city has gentrified it has benefited from it's proximity to Fishtown and Northern Liberties, two of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the city. It also has good subway access since the El runs right up and down Kensington Ave. I was actually up in Kensington a couple months ago and had to walk back to the El late at night, and while it wasn't the prettiest neighborhood in the world I certainly didn't feel unsafe.

This song is just so calming and serene. Magic, by Coldplay.

Wait, is this a fantasy or real life?

If he doesn't know your interested by know, he's blinder than Stevie Wonder.

He was so cute and innocent. I had such a crush on him when he was on Idol.

They should aggressively push pre-exposure drugs like Truvada, etc. in the HIV high-risk populations. Its proven to be up to 90-99% effective in preventing the acquisition of the virus if taken correctly. The problem is that is can be very expensive unless you have high-end insurance. If taken without insurance, it can cost about $14k a year.

Was the steam coming out of your ass? If so, I think thats a sign you may be a bottom. *smartass grin*

When I watch gay TV shows, I want to be able to relate to them. I can't really relate to two Lesbians raising a big 'ole family together.

If it is one thing I am unflinchingly passionate about, it is the 2nd Amendment and my right to own a firearm as I see fit. I don't really have any "practical" reason to own a gun now, yet I keep two handguns in my apartment. Why? Because it is my constitutional right, and in the 1/1,000,000 chance sometimes decides to try and rob me I'll have something to protect myself with. I also like how just the fact that I own a gun pisses off anti-2nd Amendment jerkoffs. My dad is the same way, and owns a small arsenal of all different kinds of firearms. Most of them he hasn't touched in years, but he keeps them because he likes them and simply for the fact he can. Guns aren't dangerous, just stupid people. How come the news never publishes stories when a law-abiding citizen uses his firearm in the defense of himself or others? I can't stand people who try to push their ridiculous anti-gun views on people. It is the only amendment in the bill of rights that seems to be fair game in rolling back and restricting. Free speech (hate speech to be specific) has been the cause of untold violence in this country, yet we protect it like gold, as we should. The 2nd Amendment deserves the same vigilance.

Da Beast of the Middle East! (or possibly Mississippi).

It's gotta be crispy, without a doubt. This was always a fight in our house, where as my brother liked it soft and I liked it crispy. Most of the time my dad would just end up cooking it separately each the way we liked it just so we'd shut up and stop fighting about it.

A guy who I actually believed was truly straight? No, but one or two have tried to claim being straight. But when your on your knees sucking D, that kind of throws "straight" out the window. Same Q?

I love the gym. Its the place I go at the end of my day where I expend the last bit of energy I have and it never fails to leave me on a high when I'm finished. It has given me a focus and discipline like few things have ever given me before at times when I sorely needed it. It has done wonders to my own self-confidence and body image and given me more social confidence, and not to mention helped get me laid more than I thought I would ever get. So what the fuck is there to dislike about something that has given me so many positive things? Trust me, a lot. A little backstory will probably help you understand. I first stepped foot in a gym the summer before my freshman year of high school to start lifting for football. We had our own gym at our school for football, and the whole mentality was to simply get bigger and stronger. There was very little attention paid to dieting or body composition. As long as you were getting bigger and stronger, it didn't matter if all that muscle was covered under pads of fat. I went from a pretty normal 5' 11", 175 pounds at the beginning of my freshman year to 5' 11", 195 by the end of that football season in November. I got a lot stronger and put on muscle, but some of what I gained was also fat. That freshman season I was one of only 4 freshman to be a varsity backup, and practicing with the big boys showed me that I needed to get even bigger and even stronger if I wanted a permanent spot. So my sophomore year I gained another 15 pounds or so, and became a regular sub on the varsity team as well as a starter on JV. All during the off-season I was determined to finally get a starting spot my junior year, and by the beginning of 2-a-days I was at my lifetime heaviest of 245 pounds. I got a starting spot on varsity, and I was actually one of the lightest guys on our defensive line. Coincidentally right around that time I was at my heaviest was the same time I had come to finally admit to myself I was gay. This was the beginning of a long bout of depression that would sink me pretty damn low. I started looking at gay porn on the internet and all the stars were attractive and in really good shape. I secretly got my hands on a DNA Magazine copy and that magazine is probably the worst offender for pushing the idea of "if you don't look like our perfectly sculpted white models you aren't shit in the gay world". As a closeted, angry, confused, gay 17 year old, I fell for this message of perfection as a measure of worth, and fell for it hard. I still to this day have the picture of the guy who finally made me feel so bad about the way my body looked that I decided to make a change. I decided that I didn't care about anything else, just that I wanted to get that body and hopefully that would gain me acceptance somewhere, anywhere. I started that very night, and for the next nine months of my life I became obsessed with exercising and lifting and getting that toned muscular body that that dude in the magazine had. Like I mentioned before, the fact that I was depressed during that time helped me immensely in reaching my goal. The discipline required with all the exercise and dieting and lifting gave me a sense of purpose where I had none. I craved the dopamine high that you get at the end of a workout because it was the only thing that made me feel happy and alive anymore. I would often go for miles-long runs in July and August in the middle of the afternoon when the heat and humidity were brutal as a way of self-punishment for letting myself get like I was. Looking back in self-reflection, it was a terribly unhealthy relationship. Yet it all paid off (or so I thought) in the end when I had slimmed back down to 175 and had gained a respectably toned and defined body. I got so many compliments and it was a way to make myself stand out for something positive when I thought that was impossible because I was a closeted fag. For reasons that are too long to go into here, my life took a pretty dramatic turn for the better the second half of my senior year of high school, and I had much more to live for than simply trying to attain a physical standard. Throughout college, I was still very much into working out but I had gained a relatively more balanced approach (though admittedly I still did it for sex as my primary motivator). My college gym was pretty much all straight guys, so there was no sexual competition for each other. They were competing to try to get the girls, not each other (this is key to remember for the next part). The environment there was very much non-sexualized, and it had more of a feeling of a frat house where everyone was chill, so to speak. Fast forward to when I moved into the city this past summer, and started working out at a gym in the heart of The Gayborhood. This gym has a long history of being "the gay gym", which isn't a surprise considering its right in the gay hood. I joined because it was relatively close to my apartment and I was curious as to what this whole gay gym thing meant. I stepped foot inside for the first time on a hot July evening, and dear lord it was the closest thing to both heaven and hell. It was filled with so many sexy, young gay guys wearing cut-up shirts and tanks barely covering their perfectly sculpted bodies. Lots of guys had abs and every muscle popped under their 8% body fat. I was in good shape too, but I always had a beefy muscular build. I've never had overly defined abs (nor do I care about getting them) and my body fat % has certainly never been single digit. All those old feelings of insecurity came rushing back. This gym is one of the few places where gay men rule and overshadow the straight people in it. Women (even very attractive ones) hardly get any attention, and the muscular, attractive gay men are held up as the ideal, even to the straight guys. The insecurity and sexual tension in that place is so palpable you can smell it in the air. Never have I been to a gym where 95% of the people are in such good shape, yet they can't seem to realize what they have. It all just seems like one giant competition to fuck each other, and the gym is an avenue to do that. When you really think about it, that's all gay culture really is: a giant competition for sex. Most of the guys I see during the week at the gym are the same ones who I see at Woody's and Voyuer and Boxers, etc. on Friday and Saturday nights. What happens in the locker room there is a blog entry unto itself. Yet through all the negatives that I just wrote about it, I still love it. It's a place where, as a gay man, I feel like I'm the one with the power and, in a weird way, influence, that is just impossible in a world dominated by straight people. I love looking at sexy guys on a constant basis and striving to better my own body to better compete in the giant fuck-fest of urban gay culture. The fact that this place sets the bar so high has pushed me to levels I never thought I'd get to. There is also a certain sense of camaraderie and feeling of belonging that you get when you finally have a space where your "own kind" dominate. I guess the key is to not get completely lost in it all. TBD.....

I Bet My Life, by Imagine Dragons. This song exemplifies why this band is one of the best around.

I did it once, and it wasn't fun having to teach someone the birds and bees when all you want to do is stick it in and get off. So no, never again. Can you name the first names of most of the people you've slept with?

Wait, you mean your life doesn't revolve totally around catering to us demanding bitches??? What kind of horse-shit is this?