An old friend of mine came to town for a visit recently, and I wound up spending my Saturday night at six different bars. We drank, we danced, we pointed out cute guys from across the room, and I didn’t make it home until 4:00 a.m. I had a good time, but painting the town with one of my single friends always leaves me with a mixed bag of emotions.

Initially, it’s all great fun—getting dressed up, getting out of the house, and patting myself on the back for still being younger than the majority of the guys around me. Eventually though, the joy of people watching and being seen wears off. I discretely begin checking my watch, and I wonder how much longer I have to wait before I can suggest going home without the usual chorus of sighs and accusations of party pooping. But before I can leave, one of my single friends has to make out with a hot stranger, leaving me to fend for myself while a shirtless man old enough to be my father attempts to seduce me by gyrating and pointing in my direction. The shirtless man usually resembles George Lopez, but with dead eyes and a chest covered in stubble that burns as it grazes my upper arm.

None of this is really a problem. The problem comes the next day when I reflect on my wild night out. I begin to feel sorry for my single friends, then I immediately feel guilty for being so judgmental. Part of me knows they don’t need my pity, and it’s certainly not unusual for gay guys in their late 20s and early 30s to stay out late every weekend. Yet, I have to wonder, when does all of this go from being funny and entertaining to being pathetic and disturbing? When are we officially too old to be taking guys back our places and then dropping them off at their dorms the next morning? When is it no longer cute to giggle and call yourself a lush as you sign off on a bar tab that represents 5% of your net weekly income? And most importantly, when do we go from being hot, slightly older men to creepy grandpas on the prowl?

Maybe I’m just a holier-than-though prude—the one who settled down early because he was too concerned about straight standards of propriety and age-appropriate behavior that don’t apply in the gay world. Maybe I’m jealous or compensating or projecting or (insert appropriate self-help book term here). Maybe this is what the gay rights movement is all about—the freedom to adopt a Chinese baby girl and move to the suburbs or to keep the condo in the gayborhood, wear your Prada shoes, and show off your trophy teenage boyfriend and moderate alcoholism with pride. I support my friends’ rights to have their Manhunt and their cosmos and their anonymous bathhouse threesomes. But I also support my right to be completely grossed out by it as soon as they start losing their hair or getting Uncle-Fester-sized bags under their eyes.

We might moisturize every day, but we can’t all be Demi Moore. And even if I we could, I think we’d still have to accept what Demi already knows to be true: at a certain point, an age-appropriate Saturday night includes a DVD from Netflix, a bucket of popcorn, and a bag of delicious Viactiv calcium-enriched chocolate chews for strong, healthy bones.

I certainly can’t compete with the folks over at CuteOverload.com, but I thought I’d share these pics anyway. I really was doing a work-related photo search on Flickr when I found them, honest.

• If Franken Berry and Christina Ricci had a baby, and the baby was a kitten…
• Racoons Have a Midnight Snack

In you’re trying to find the best deal on airfare, it helps to know how much one airline will nickel and dime you over another. For those of us who can’t keep all the fees straight, this handy airline fee chart can help.

Say hello to SpongeBob’s latest weapon in his ongoing mission to turn America’s youth gay: the SpongeBob Squarepants singing thermometer. Studies indicate that rectal use of this thermometer creates a Pavlovian response, causing kids to forever associate the SpongeBob theme song with stimulation of nature’s most delicate flower. I really hope this concept is expanded to other products. I’m sure there’s a huge market for Hannah Montana glycerin suppositories—the only suppositories that play Hannah’s biggest hits while providing gentle and effective constipation relief.

When I went to graduate school several years ago to get an MFA, I thought being a professor would be the best job in the world. No being chained to a desk all day, summers off, and a job title that my friends and family would finally understand and respect. Of course, I also I thought it might be nice to help people learn, be a mentor to my students, yaddah yaddah. Along the way, I got sidetracked by a career that has kept me in academia, but on the staff side. Now I find myself in a comfortable routine. I can take a vacation whenever I want, my boss adores and appreciates me, I like my coworkers, and I rarely have to do anything unpleasant.

The only major downside to my current job is that there isn’t much room for growth. For the first time in my life, I’m not sure that I want my boss’s job, which leaves me wondering what’s next. When I began working in my current position, I jumped through countless hoops to get someone at the university to let me teach. At the time, I still thought teaching might be a great gig. Now, having worked closely with faculty for a few years, I’ve seen many of the less appealing aspects of the job—nasty student evaluations, colleagues with massive egos, the pressure to publish, and last-minute changes to teaching assignments that force instructors to become overnight experts on subjects they don’t like and don’t fully understand.

Now that I’ve survived my first year as an adjunct, I find myself questioning the pros and cons of becoming a full-time faculty member. I had hoped I’d have a few more years of part-time teaching to weigh the benefits of my current job against the joys of professor-hood. However, it looks like an offer for a full-time teaching position is going to come sooner than I had planned. Obviously this is a good problem to have, but it also means I need to hurry up and decide if I want to chase the thrill of the new or embrace the peace and predictability that come with my current job.

I figured while I was taking the time to make a list of pros and cons, I might as well exploit my friends (and complete strangers) for free advice.

Professor Job Pros and Cons

• Pro: working 33 weeks per year, off Thanksgiving to New Year’s and all summer (optional)
• Con: can only take off when school’s out
• Pro: room for growth and advancement, multiple options (tenure, dean, admin)
• Con: must exhibit work and/or publish research regularly
• Pro: having my own office and a more prestigious title
• Con: no division between work and personal life, very busy when school’s in session
• Pro: working directly with students; advising and mentoring would be rewarding
• Con: being evaluated and criticized by 90 students three times a year

Current Job Pros and Cons

• Pro: seven-hour work days
• Con: must sit at a desk all day
• Pro: six weeks off per year
• Con: can’t travel for extended periods of time (two, maybe three weeks max)
• Pro: low stress, low pressure
• Con: only growth opportunity is director-level job at another school
• Pro: able to teach part-time for additional pay (around $4200 per 11-week class)
• Con: teaching one class on the side leaves no time for other interests
• Pro: enough free time to take advantage of free employee tuition or pursue hobbies (although this would probably also be true of teaching after surviving a year or two of hell)

One last thing I should point out is that becoming a full-time professor would probably mean about a $10,000 pay cut if I only teach three quarters per year. However, I’d probably wind up a few grand ahead if I taught over the summer, which would still leave me with seven to eight weeks off per year. So, fair reader, what would you do in my shoes?

 Loading …