by Christoper Summers

"Sissing just to be sissing" is a phrase coined by one of my older gay male friends to describe today's gay community. In a conversation we were having about the gay community, he said that most gay males were "sissing just to be sissing"---meaning most gay men have no purpose in their lives. They are living for the present without any concern for the future. To them it's just "carpe diem."

Gay males seem to be more concerned with which clubs will be the hottest that weekend, what the latest fashions are, which pride has the best guys and parties, and finding a thug or somebody not detectable to go home with after the club. They spend more time getting their bodies together than they do their careers. Most of their money is spent on preparing to go out on the weekend, not on their bills. They would rather focus on gossip and knowing everybody in the clubs instead of focusing on getting their own lives together. Men in their forties and fifties hang in the clubs every weekend as if they were still in their twenties, looking for that younger guy, without any consideration for the future.

But what happens when you're no longer the hottest guy in the club, when you're middle aged and have not prepared for your future? You don't have any investments, no money saved, no 401(k) plan set in place, no one to come home to or, worse, no home to come home to. Your credit is okay at best because all of your money went to the club. When you look back on your life, you see that your accomplishments and fun memories are all about the club. You were once able to pick up the hottest guy or to drink so much you could not remember how you got home. Or you were the hottest guy or best dressed in the club. When there is nothing else positive to say about your life, then what will you do? Your whole life you have been "sissing just to be sissing."

Don't get me wrong---I am not against going to clubs, I just don't make a career out of it. Everybody needs a place to go where they can have fun and be themselves. The problem is when you make the club your life.