LYD Classic. Original publish date: February 7, 2007 (31) as Running of the Bears.

Editor’s Note 2026: I was thirty-one and looking for a tribe, which is a generous way of saying I was willing to take whatever tribe would have me. I got a couple of real friends out of that stretch. I also made some calls in there I'd file under "awkward." But I also forget that this is, more or less, how 8Asians got started.

My not-so-secret secret is the following: I’ve always felt a little out of place with the gay community. My close friends in college were all straight, and when I had come out of the closet my last year of college I guess I expected this gay welcoming committee where I would instantly have a gay social network and have gay friends and go on gay dates. For a bunch of different reasons [read: low self-esteem] that didn’t happen, and ever since I’ve always been a little envious if I see a pack of gays in the Castro.

(You know what I mean when I say “a pack of gays,” right? Like, the group of 5-12 gay men that you see during Halloween or the Gay Pride parade and they have matching costumes or outfits? And half of them are drunk or high or breaking up with each other on their cellphones, and they’re all catty and shit so you turn to your friend to mention that the gay Power Rangers are coming, yet you have that slight pang of wanting just to fit in, if only for a little bit? No? Not at all? Never mind, then.)

As a result of trying to find this gay place to belong, I ended up being involved in the bear sub-culture. I wasn’t necessarily searching for it - I had one friend into the scene, and as a result, I would hang out with his friends, go to the same parties if they were going out, and so on. I’ve become pretty close to a couple of them, but to most people, I’m sure I was just “the token Asian boy, hanging out with the bears.” Fuck it, they don’t know any better. And so what if I’m at a party everyone is drunk or high or making out in the backyard and I feel like the only one not partnered off? Oh well, good times or good stories, I suppose.

So when people told me that I should get a profile on the local classified website bear411.com, saying I would be able to find someone relatively quickly to at least hang out with, I thought, “eh, whatever.” When my application wasn’t accepted the first time, I really thought nothing of it - maybe they’re just behind with their e-mail response times. Then it happened a second time. When it happened a third time, I got pretty irate, but it’s not really my thing to make a big deal about shit like that and maybe he’s just busy or something, and what can I do anyway, since it’s a private site?

It was only after reading the recent backlash against bear411 and reading this post by another gay Asian man who’s had difficulties getting on the same site that, oh shit, there really might BE some discrimination and the guy that runs this site seems to be a general assclown who dream of a perfect gay community are only the ones that he finds sexually attractive. Which is especially ironic since the bear subculture is a result of mainstream gay subculture being unwelcome to them. Ironically, the webmaster of bear411.com has a response for all the flack he’s received so far, but he doesn’t discuss his tendencies to discriminate.

Incidentally, I still feel out of place in the gay community - I’m finding that as far as gay friends are concerned, I’d rather have a fewer amount of very close gay friends than a larger amount of people I know super casually. And if I don’t have another boyfriend until I’m 37, well then, fuck it. Chalk that up to being older and wiser, I guess.

Little. Yellow. Different.

A Gay Dating Site Rejected Me Three Times…