Mar 23, 2007  |  By: ZACK ROSEN  | COMMENTS     

Tim Bergling has a good idea of what men like. The Washington-based author spent a year collecting data, opinions and personal anecdotes from gay males of all ages on the subject of desire. This research formed the core of Bergling’s new book, “Chasing Adonis: Gay Men and the Pursuit of Perfection,” an in-depth look at the ways that attraction (or lack thereof) informs all aspects of gay life.

Bergling, who will be signing copies of his book at Lambda Rising on April 5, previously authored “Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior” and “Reeling in the Years: Gay Men’s Perspectives on Age and Ageism.” “Chasing Adonis” rounds out a sort of trio on homosexual prejudice, a subject that, Bergling says, has always interested him.

“I always joke that femmes, fats and old people are the unholy trinity in the gay community,” he says. “I’ve written about femmes and I’ve written about age, so I only had the fat people to cover. I wanted to talk about gay men and image issues, what we find attractive and why.”

Tired of the overly theoretical, “ivory tower” approach to queer studies, Bergling decided to go directly to the people. He established a web site that, over the course of a year, collected surveys and stories from a wide range of gay men who seemingly provided a certain level of candor on the things that turned them on.

Some of the results were rather surprising, like the fact that only 7 percent of men surveyed listed the penis as their favorite body part. Some were a little less salacious and a little more depressing.

“I was surprised about the number of pretty people who were so insecure about their looks,” Bergling says. “Most dismaying to me was the number of people that absolutely value any kind of exterior over the interior. There are people that are deeply shallow. They think that because they’re pretty they don’t have to be nice.”

THERE’S MUCH IN the book that isn’t nice. Providing a close look at some of the thought processes that go into both rejection and acceptance of possible sexual and romantic partners, this book should be required reading for any man who has found himself alone at a club, baffled at why he’s been turned down or whom he’s been turned down for.

Bergling says attraction is hardwired into men the same way as sexuality and there’s no accounting for what makes the legs weak. Some men go for men who look like them; some go for their complete opposites. Regardless of the variables, it’s clear that men are true to their own aesthetics.

“Because they had to fire up the creative part of their brain as a survival mechanism, gay men seem to be more in love with beauty, art and creativity,” Bergling says. “That’s a positive stereotype if you have to have one. We tend to be in love with male beauty.”

Male beauty runs through every chapter of “Chasing Adonis.” The way image is defined, marketed, resented and worshipped has changed depending on the era and the specific individual, but beauty’s death grip on gay men appears to be suffocatingly tight. Since the ideals of beauty vary widely from person to person and since a gay man could easily go crazy trying to live up to these ideals, Bergling says there’s one solution to avoiding the beauty trap altogether.

“The gay community’s biggest problem has always been low self-esteem,” he says. “You improve that and you improve all the problems. If you can feel better about yourself, then you’re insulated. It’s an awfully tall order, but if you’re happy with how you look, it won’t matter what others think about you.”