Ruling With a Sequined Fist

  Hedonists are amongst the most fun gay people that exist. They’re also the most dangerous company to keep if you don’t know your limits. If you’re, say, 19 and your body can still take a lot of abuse—by all means find these people. Hedonists, like all other fags, come in many forms. Let’s first chat about what a hedonist is not. A hedonist is not someone who wears flashy clothes and crazy sunglasses even when it’s night who you see smoking tina in the corner. That is a drug addict. A hedonist is not someone who goes to a hotel orgy every weekend where he gets gangbanged by thirty strangers. That’s a well-oiled hole with a life-support system. A hedonist is a guy who lives life for pleasure—someone who indulges himself until every outlet for delight has been tried.

  They might have a martini every day. They have probably slept with all manner of people and are too, ahem, broad to have a ‘type.’ They might date three or four guys at a time and seem equally comfortable with all of none of them at one time. They drink the best drinks, eat the best food, go on the best vacations, throw the most outrageous parties, have the best sex, and are all around pleasure-seekers. If you find that dinner with your favorite company preceded and followed by cocktails which ends in some glorious event that makes you happy is your idea of everyday life—you are probably a hedonist. If you ever quit a perfectly respectable job claiming that it didn’t make you happy enough and you’re too busy following your caprice to care—you’re a hedonist. If settling down and getting two-kids-a-dog-and-a-white-picket-fence is not your idea of a good life plan, you are probably a hedonist. If you read and enacted The Four Hour Workweek or are Timothy Ferris…you are a hedonist.

  To take it a step further, this subset of gays pursues pleasure almost as a quest. It’s not about bigger and bigger (except when it is)…it’s about following your inner desires to their ends and keeping everything that remains pleasurable. Hedonists are, however, sometimes mistaken as depressed, evil, dangerous, and a variety of other unsightly terms. If any of these things can be applied to someone you know who refers to himself as a hedonist, then they are not hedonists. They’re hungry ghosts.

  Hungry ghosts are Buddhist sprits with distended bellies and pin-hole sized mouths that are said to crave so strongly that their bellies can never be filled. It is the inability to be satiated that separates the hedonists from those sad bastards nursing their fourth martini prior to sneaking off to the adult book store for some unprotected glory hole action. That’s low self-esteem, not hedonism. Eating, drinking, or sexing your feelings is maladaptive. However, waking up and following your joy each day without a care in the world about how you’re perceived—that’s a true hedonist. Remember: some of the first cases of AIDS reported were from men with more than 50,000 sexual partners. Don’t be a canary in the dark, wet, coal mines of danger. Instead, follow a true hedonist edict: “Everything in moderation. Including moderation.”