Two anecdotes from the road that illustrate what turns me on the most:

I was sitting in the truck stop diner having some lunch. Contrary to what you may have seen in porn, most truck drivers are not terribly hot. Many are in pretty poor condition, the combination of a sedentary job with a terrible diet. And many wouldn't be all that attractive even if they were in shape.

This guy was. Most gay guys wouldn't look twice at him. But he was in his early-to-mid thirties. Average height, decent build for a driver (large framed, but not overly big or obese). Decent looking face, but not turn-your-head handsome. Certainly not pretty in the way some gay guys are. Shaggy...he had a beard going and hair he'd let grow out a bit. Unkempt in the way we often are when we've been out on the road for a while.

And clearly, he'd paid little attention to how he'd dressed. Worn work boots. Old blue jeans, worn without a belt. The back seams had frayed where they'd dropped down low enough for him to step on them. An old, comfortable sweatshirt. An old baseball cap. All in all, dressed with an eye to comfort and not to how he looked. He looked like he didn't give a damn.

In retrospect, it was the effortlessness of how he looked. Literally, he'd put no effort into his appearance. It was his take-it-or-leave attitude that really got to me.

Let me explain: most gay men I know will put extraordinary effort into how we look. Whether you're dressing professionally or just heading out to the neighborhood bar, we'll typically put a lot of thought into the image we project. Even if you're deliberately cultivating an "I just threw this together at random" image, it'll still be, well, deliberately cultivated. You're projecting an image.

I think a lot of this comes from spending our formative years in the closet, where we spend years having to pretend to be something we aren't. The rest comes from learning how to dress to attract the men we like. We think about the kind of thing that will draw their eye. And dress accordingly. We spend hours in the gym perfecting our bodies. Everything about us sometimes seems like artifice.

This guy was different. He looked like he'd never pretended to be anyone other than himself in his life. And he clearly wasn't interested in attracting any attention. He was who he was, and that, naturalness, that integrity was incredibly sexy, in a way I've never seen a gay guy be sexy.

I recently had a breakdown with my truck. The main air line from the compressor to the tanks that hold the air under pressure used for braking had worn and was starting to leak. This is serious because if the air pressure drops enough, the parking brakes will automatically engage (so you don't end up in a situation where you're trying to manage an 80,000 pound vehicle down the highway at speed without any brakes at all). The pressure was dropping slowly, but steadily.

I'd made arrangements to have a mechanic meet me at my delivery. He turned out to be the head of his company's maintenance department (all of his other mechanics were out on other calls). Mid 40s, potbellied, balding and bearded and very friendly. Typical sort of man you might see hanging out at your local bear bar, if he'd been gay (his wife came along on the call but didn't leave his pickup truck). We chatted a bit as he worked and I gave him a little bit of a hand here and there.

As he got down on the ground and was crawling under my truck, I felt the stirrings of attraction to him. And it struck me what it was I really liked about him.

This guy really knew his job. He was good at what he did. He'd been in the industry since he was 18. And he still wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. In fact, he seemed happy to have the excuse to get out of the office. Hardworking, competent, and cheerful to be around.

In my years in the workforce, I've often been struck by how rare what I consider to be basic skills actually are. Basic reading and writing. The ability to show up on time. The ability to actually meet a commitment. Willingness to work, even do physically demanding labor without complaining. Willingness and ability to learn whatever kills are needed to get the job done.

And maybe it's a symptom of my old age, but more and more, I find those basic attributes incredibly sexy, far more so than that perfect body.

So it's basically an old-fashioned guy I want. Not a big head turning. Not a guy with a perfect body. Certainly not one with attitude. Not even one with the big paycheck. Just an ordinary, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy.

Course, a bit of a pig doesn't hurt either.