GENRE: Gay Erotic Romance
LENGTH: 2,893 words
RATING:

A personal ad leads to a date, but not with the man Jerry is expecting. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of what Jerry is expecting. Luckily, opposites really do attract in this funny, romantic encounter.

NOTE: This story appears in Rob Rosen's best-selling collection, Short Spurts.

EXCERPT:
Note: may contain sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.

35 y.o., GWM, 6’1, 170 lbs, professional, well educated, fun, funny, and versatile, seeks similar for LTR. Friends say I’m handsome; judge for yourself.

Jerry sat in front of his laptop and reread his very first personal ad. “Honest, if a bit trite,” he said to himself. Then he changed the 170 to 175 and the 35 to 37. “Okay, now it’s honest, give or take a few pounds.” Before he could think twice about it, he saved it online, along with a relatively recent photo, the one he took just after he got back from Mexico. Granted, he was rarely if ever that tan in real life, or that thin, considering the five pounds he shed during his bout with Montezuma’s revenge, but he figured that, after all, to catch the biggest fish you need the best bait.

Since he’d been fishing all his life at the nearby bars and coming up with nothing but guppies and minnows all that time, he thought a change in venue was appropriate -- hence the ad; that and the fact that, at thirty-seven, he was still very much single, with no prospects in the pipeline, and slim pickings at the local watering holes.

A minute later, he received his first response. By the next day, there were nearly fifty. All the respondents were men around his age and all were looking for the same thing -- namely, a mate. But all men, as the saying goes, are not created equal, and it was relatively easy to separate the good from the not so good from the downright awful.

The men without pictures were the first to get dumped into his trash folder. The men with pictures that were clearly outdated, like the ones with the eighty’s hairdos or, worse, seventy’s wide lapels, quickly followed suit. Those with vague descriptions also didn’t make the cut, and neither did those looking for one-night stands or fuck buddies, of which he’d already had his fair share. When all was said and done, and after he jacked off to the photos of the guy with the ten-inch cock -- some fish were simply too big to reel in, even by Jerry’s standards -- he was left with just a few viable options, but only one truly stood out from the rest.

Jack was six-feet tall, a lean, mean hundred and seventy pounds, ruggedly handsome, dark featured, scruffy, and best of all, a blue-eyed stud of a man with jet-black hair. It looked, from his picture, like he’d just stepped off the pages of a Levi’s ad. Actually, the guy looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Still, visually speaking, he was Jerry’s dream man.

“Where have you been hiding?” he asked himself as he emailed Jack to say that he’d love to meet him for a drink at a nearby bar.