Best ways to meet people

I will tell you how I met guys when I was first coming out, but from what you have said it may not be a lot of help.

When I first came out I made a lot of friends in bars. Actually I remember my first gay outing. I went to the Pride Parade--alone--and it was great but I was alone and I didn't really meet any one there. So I went to a bar there on the parade route--I ordered Sprite because I didn't really know what to do. And then I told anyone who asked that I had never been to the parade before--eventually it came out that I had never been to a gay bar either. People thought it was great that I had just been to my first parade and they sort of introduced me around, then the people who I was introduced to introduced me around. I think I probably "met" a couple hundred people that afternoon (it's a really big bar) and really hit it off with quite a few of them--I'm still friends with many of them twenty years later. Numbers were exchanged, plans were made--principally that I would meet a bunch of them back at that same bar the following Sunday.

I remember riding the bus home that night just beaming at this whole new life I'd found. I also remember somewhere in the back of my mind thinking that surely it was all too good to be true. What if I went back the next Sunday and none of them were there? Maybe none of them would remember me? But almost as if they knew they had to allay my fears, that night two different guys from that afternoon called me to make sure I'd gotten home safe. That next Sunday I was introduced to the rest of the guys who would provide the core of my friends for the next ten years. There were about twenty-five of us (we even had a straight guy:lol and on any day of the week you could find maybe ten of us out and we always started at that same bar and then every Sunday we were all there. I kind of thought they would just be my bar friends--and that would have been good enough--but there were cocktail parties and dinners, trips to amusement parks and croquet matches in the park and two of the guys threw the most amazing holiday party every year and we were just there for each other--for years and years.

Eventually as I got more and more comfortable I met guys in other ways--probably the ways you are looking for--I led a gay book group, I met guys at work and the gym, I met guys at street fairs and on the street from time to time. But in all honesty it was the guys I met in bars--the great friends who always looked out for me--who gave me the confidence to meet guys in all those other places. And when it really worked out I would introduce them to that circle of friends and when it didn't work out they were there to console me. I met my husband of 16 years in that very same bar--years after coming out. And all these years later even though we've moved out of the neighborhood (we moved from the young gay neighborhood to the more established gay neighborhood when we bought our home) we still go back to that same bar every few months and you know we pretty much always still run into a few people we know.

So while I know the bars aren't for everyone, I guess I'd just say maybe try it once or twice. I'm living proof--you can always order Sprite.:icon_wink