A FRIEND AND I ARE WAITING for a table at Hamburger Mary’s, one of the gayest restaurants in the heart of gay Fort Lauderdale, which is one of the gayest towns in America. As we stand waiting for the host to seat us, we both notice a particularly striking man alone at one of those small, round, high tables just inside the eatery’s entrance.

My friend, who I’ll call Robert, notices the man because of his appearance. He’s handsome and extremely muscular. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a tight red tank top that shows off every ripple of his physique. He is definitely eye-catching. But I am aware of the man for a different reason.

I’ve noticed his beauty before—on many occasions. In fact, it seems that every time I walk into Hamburger Mary’s, there he is, at the same table, always alone. I comment on that to Robert, and add that I can’t imagine why someone who looks like that would always be eating alone.

‘Oh, I can,’ Robert responds without a pause. I look back at Robert blankly, and he cracks a smile. ‘He’s obviously alone,’ Robert whispers conspiratorially, ‘because no one else is quite good enough for him.’

We laugh, but the joke hits home for both of us as single gay men in a gay La La land.

HERE IN FORT LAUDERDALE, one of the Holy Grails of gay life on planet Earth, my single friends and I often ask ourselves: If we live in such a gay Mecca, why is it so hard to get a boyfriend? Forget a boyfriend … why is it so hard to get a real date?

Gay guys in Chelsea and San Francisco and other similar gay ghettos have the same complaint—and the same answer. The supreme irony is that when you live in a gay ghetto, it seems an impossible task to get a boyfriend, or sometimes even a date, precisely because you live in the gay ghetto.

Every gay man who has been single in the gay ghetto has had the experience of going out to a gay bar and meeting Mr. Incredibly Handsome. ‘Could this finally be Mr. Right?’ you wonder silently in your head as your mind races for something witty or smart or sexy to say to the dashing stud standing in front of you.

But then, as is so often the case, Mr. Incredibly Handsome turns into Mr. Player.

He appears to be talking to you, but you can tell he’s only half there. In fact, as he’s chatting you up, his eye is on the door, or peeking over your shoulder, on the hunt and on the lookout for that next ‘better’ guy he doesn’t want to miss.

And then he smiles and delivers the blow-off: ‘Are you going to be here a while? I’m just going to go for a little walk … .’

Of course, it’s one thing to have this happen when you’re trying to pick up a total stranger at the leather bar. It’s another when the person is someone you thought you were dating.

You know what I mean: You’ve gotten together half a dozen times now, and not just for sex, either. You’ve actually gone to the beach or to the movies and out to dinner before jumping in the sack. And the sack stuff is pretty damn hot, too, for both of you.

However, you notice he never asks you out on a Friday or Saturday night. It’s always, ‘What are you doing Tuesday? Or Sunday afternoon?’ The prevailing attitude seems to be: Why ‘waste’ a weekend night on someone you already know—someone you’ve already been intimate with—when you could be out there looking for the next ‘better’ guy?

OF COURSE, IN THE GAY GHETTO, because we are blessed with such an inordinate number of hot men, there will always be someone ‘better’ just around the corner. That’s particularly true here where I live in Fort Lauderdale, which isn’t just a gay haven but a gay tourist destination, too.

If you just wait 10 minutes, or log online, or go to a different bar, someone with bigger arms or a hairier chest or broader shoulders or a rounder ass will magically appear.

Maybe he’s just moved down from New York or Boston or Washington. D.C., or one of the other many feeder cities that gay men seem to be fleeing in surges to come here, to frolic in this subtropical paradise of buff gay bodies tanned by the endless summer of sun. Or maybe he’s one of those built tourists who’s been sending you seductive notes and naughty pictures on Manhunt.

We’ve all been there. And it can be exciting and thrilling and sexually overwhelming—an endless orgy of mind-blowing sex in the gay city. But sometimes I do the round at the bars, and I see the same men circling for prey, over and over again, looking over new shoulders for new conquests, time and time again.

And I see that we are not men in our 20s playing this game, but men in our 40s, circling like hawks, trapped in this endless cycle of random sex and over-the-shoulder glances, this web of belief and self-deceit that the next man to come through the door, the next hunk to round the corner, will be ‘better.’

I’m not casting stones. I’ve played the game, and been played by it, as much as anyone else. But I can’t help wondering: When does the merry-go-round end? When are we satisfied? When is someone ‘good enough?’

Like so many gay men all around me, I’ve been on the merry-go-round for a couple of years, and I’m dizzy from it. I’m tired of juggling and being juggled like a prop in a floor show.

Many friends protest that the game will always be played, no matter what we do, and that it is simply the nature of men in general, and gay men in particular. Perhaps they are right.

But I have higher hopes for us as a group, as a community of gay men who moved here to create a world better than the ones we left behind out there in the corners of not-so-gay America.

We have the power to treat each other better, to look at each other as more than just the next trick, to show ourselves, individually and collectively, a little respect.

Otherwise, we may all end up one day in our tight tank tops and muscles, eating alone and waiting for a ‘better’ guy to walk through the door.