Metro.co.uk (print)

I was a luxury proposal planner. I felt more like the secret service than cupid

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*. He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified.

But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’.

Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them

Vice (translated into 5 languages)

What It’s Like To Be a Quadruplet

Our lives began in the Colombian capital of Bogotá simultaneously, my heart beating to the same rhythm as three others. The media celebrated the birth of my brothers and me in 1994 as if it were a miracle. It's weird to receive praise for just being born, but newspapers and magazines printed the news as such: ​"The first quadruplets safely delivered in 30 years."

Observer

The Everlasting Appeal of The Real Housewives

I used to be cynical about watching The Real Housewives until I unexpectedly found myself inside New York’s Sonja Morgan’s hotel room for her Halloween party at the Kimpton in 2018. Her hairstylist invited me, as Morgan embraced a more-the-merrier mentality for gays.

I was shirtless, and Morgan quipped about my nipples, managing to partake in several conversations simultaneously. Production made every extraneous person sign a release waiver before a crew member yelled, “Action!” Countess Luan d

GayCities

Finding power in (small) numbers at St. Croix Pride

While snorkeling on Buck Island in St. Croix, I followed a school of blue fish, propelling my body toward their sphere, but I couldn’t infiltrate it.

Having never snorkeled before, I faced the wrath of the red-faced, blonde female captain of Caribbean Sea Adventures, who scolded me for not disclosing my inexperience before it was time to don the gear and plunge into the turquoise sea. I bit my sassy tongue, determined not to spoil my first encounter with a woman at the helm of a boat.

I was pl

Xtra Magazine

Love at first lust: A young writer explores a lasting love denied… or is that deferred?

Jared’s profile read 34 years old, six foot one, and muscular. As he opened the door, I saw an honest person. I didn’t fall in love with him immediately, but every visual detail indicated that I could. He looked beautiful in the most masculine ways: broad shoulders, full hair, a confident presence, immaculate posture and a seductive half-smile. At 19, I didn’t understand love—I usually hid from it—but I could still pick it out of a lineup. “He’s the one,” I thought immediately.

HuffPost

Why I Struggled To Say Goodbye To Gay Bars

Gay bars used to be the safest places I knew. They were also the most fun. Since I turned 21 (and got a blowjob from a bartender in the bathroom as a birthday gift), I learned to proudly embrace my sexuality and humanity in these liberated, rainbow-marked establishments that stood for so much more than just drinking. Every time I stepped into a gay bar, it was one more step away from all my heteronormative insecurities.

Gay bars used to be the safest places I knew. They were also the most fun....

Fast Company

The Met Gala celebrated flowers. It forgot about the environment

Considering that tickets cost more than a down payment on a house, it was understandable why people were disgruntled last year when climate protesters temporarily delayed the entrance of several celebrities. And yet, this year’s dress code—The Garden of Time, to accompany the museum’s exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”—seemed like an opportunity for sustainable fashion to permeate the red carpet. There was the usual sprinkle of celebrities who slipped on vintage gowns or vocaliz

Vice

Grieving Without God: How Atheists Deal with Death

Relying on a supernatural deity to have a plan, the promise of an afterlife, and perhaps even reuniting with deceased loved ones can be comforting for believers—but atheists need to find other ways to cope.

Reader's Digest UK (print)

SEEING DOUBLE: Disease in Multiple Twins

As children, my quadruplet brothers and I had a knack for getting collectively sick whenever one person would fall ill. Germs travelled at the speed of light because, whenever the words left someone’s mouth, the rest would immediately identify with the same symptoms. Who knew exhaustion or headaches were so contagious?

The Revealer

The Evolution of Pope Francis’s Stance on LGBTQ Rights

Pope Francis acknowledges my gay identity more than my own grandmother – a surprising contrast, considering they are both devout Catholics of the same generation. Somehow, a childless monarch of the Vatican City State has been more accepting than a woman who helped raise me.

My grandmother loves me unconditionally but never utters the word “gay.” I’ve always interpreted her silence on the matter as a casualty of faith. Catholicism’s condemnation of homosexuality feels deeply ingrained in histor

HuffPost UK

Nearing 30 And Single, I Decided To Date 4 Men From My Past. Here's How It Went.

I’ve lived in New York for nearly 10 years, meaning many random men have my phone number. But I prided myself on having met a lot of eligible bachelors; I started to wonder if I had met them at the wrong time, after four years of being off-market.

WIRED

In Praise of AI-Generated Pickup Lines

We're at the height of a global technological revolution, and yet this is the modern state of dating: You swipe left, swipe left again, and again, and again—in fact, you mind-numbingly swipe left so many times that when the app finally lands on a person you deem worthy of swiping right, you accidentally swipe left on them, too. You continue swiping.

My thumbs are bloody with disappointment that dating apps, once the face of innovation, have become relics of the status quo. But I've seen the lig

Elite Daily (Pride month cover story)

Once I Came Out, Dating Suddenly Became So Hot... And Complicated

Now, it appeared to me that gay men would rather entertain sex without chemistry than the grueling burden of getting to know each other. This was new for me. Being closeted had made my pursuits of vaginal intercourse gradual, to say the least. Usually, a girl would have to throw herself on top of me. I never felt like I had the option to say no then, and to a certain extent, I didn't now.

I wasn’t opposed to casual sex, but I wanted romance, too. I craved everything: the white picket fence with a sex swing inside the house.

Men's Journal

This Malbec Is the Best Wine for Dinner Parties—and It's Just $10

Your friend invites you to a dinner party, which sounds fun until the burden of bringing something dawns on you. Bringing alcohol is part of the sacred ritual of social etiquette for going to someone's home, even if BYOB isn't specified on the invite.

But when you're faced with overwhelming aisles of wines, whiskeys, and tequilas, anxiety creeps in. You don't want to arrive e

Business Insider

My ex-lover turned to me for dating advice with his new boyfriend.

Most gay men would agree that the bedroom is not just where the magic happens; it's where lifelong friendships are made. While it may not be as common for straight people, it's normal for gay men to become friends after sleeping together; two bodies rubbing against each other is often a prelude to future interactions — whether that's dating, keeping it platonic, or something in between.

The i Paper

‘You could feel the energy like an earthquake’: Argentina’s World Cup win offers welcome optimism for visitors

During the World Cup, you could hear the screams of Argentines from every block in Buenos Aires on match days. You didn’t need to watch Argentina play to keep track of the score.

I am not a sports person – what felt to me like mob mentality, rooting for your colour, has never appealed. But my Porteño (Buenos Aires local) friends threatened to exile me if I didn’t participate in what I hadn’t grasped was history in the making.

The first time Argentina were declared World Champions was in 1978 o

Business Insider

I stayed at an Airbnb with a pet pig and realized I liked dogs better

Last summer, after a month of living alone in Medellin, Colombia, I decided I wanted to try to make local friends and booked my second month there with a roommate.
I had been third-wheeling my best friend and her boyfriend, also expats, and I realized I needed pals who weren't madly in love. I was beginning to feel like a golden retriever, always waiting for them to play.

Popsugar

I Thought Coming Out Would Fix My Life — Then Came My Alcoholism

There's a popular gay movie trope about the douchebag who relentlessly drinks himself into oblivion because he can't accept his sexuality. Oh, how badly I wanted that to be the case for me. In 2014, when I was 20 years old, I sat with my arms crossed and back slouched against a plastic chair in a dimly lit room in Perry Street Workshop in New York's Greenwich Village. Rows of people faced a podium where a frail, elderly Asian man with tiny, circular glasses recounted a life of self-destruction t

Fodor's Travel Guide

Bar Crawl Through Buenos Aires’ Dazzling Speakeasies

I wouldn’t notice Frank’s, tucked away on an ordinary block at Arévalo 1445, if I didn’t immediately recognize the bouncer, who is always dressed more dapper than anyone waiting to enter the club. He’s the handsome gatekeeper to a splendid evening, and you will find the passcode to enter via the bar’s Instagram or Facebook, which earns you a numeric code to get through the secret passageway inside. I walk through a hallway, opening a set of doors that leads to a phone booth in the distance. Maki

Business Insider

I met a female sex writer on a trip, and we decided to take a bath together.

The energy exuding from our bodies wasn't sexual but embodied the innocence of children running naked in a field holding hands. I connected with Kayla on a deeper level because we shared such an intimate setting together.

Fast Company

How these LGBT executives broke the ‘gay glass ceiling’—and how they’re helping future leaders

In 1995, WPP US Public Affairs Lead Brian Ellner was a summer associate at his first law firm, taking a bus to a company golf outing. When he’d come out as gay in law school, he’d resolved not to hide his sexuality for the sake of his career, but surrounded by his predominantly straight coworkers, he didn’t feel so brave.

Business Insider

As a gay man, I partied with only queer women for the first time. It changed the way I act in gay spaces.

I watched Monica affix black tape "X's" to her nipples and don a translucent crop top that showcased her arm tattoos of a tiger and a snake. I realized that my appreciation for her body art — rather than her breasts — was yet another confirmation of my homosexuality.

"Will there be cute guys tonight?" I asked hopefully.

Monica, applying pink eyeshadow, responded matter-of-factly. "It is a lesbian party.'"

Business Insider

I don't like dogs, and it's messing up my dating life

I used to pretend to like people's dogs. From a young age, I learned it was socially unacceptable not to want to rub their bellies and tell them they're "good boys." Unfortunately, I wasn't talented at feigning interest in humans — nonetheless, four-legged animals. But I didn't expect my ambivalence toward dogs to be a dealbreaker in my adult dating life.I remember dating a guy, who I had noticed on Grindr for a while and manifested into messaging me. I used to suck at hitting on people first. Lon...

Houston Chronicle

Can a U.S. metropolitan city adopt the siesta? Experts, expats and Houstonians weigh in

When I moved to Europe, I learned the Swiss charge for wine by the deciliter, making indulging in American-sized portions financially impractical. Becoming a beer drinker felt like the biggest challenge I’d face — that is, until I arrived in Spain and learned that doing errands in the afternoon is against the law (well, not quite, but it feels that way).