Basic Trope: All gay men have an exorbitant number of sex partners.
- Straight: Bob is gay and Really Gets Around.
- Exaggerated: Every time we see Bob, he's in bed with a different guy. Or at the cruising park, or the basement of the seedy leather bar, or...
- Downplayed:
- Bob sometimes two-times his current boyfriend.
- Bob's body count is a bit higher than his straight friends, but not very much so.
- Justified:
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It x2, minus any pesky prudish women.
- Or, less apologetically, Bob and his sex partners are consenting adults; he can sleep around if he damn well feels like it. He may give some long-winded rant on how he believes monogamy is unnatural and an archaic relic of heteronormativity.
- Bob is explicitly a sex addict.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex and it's a Cast Full of Gay.
- Bob's choice of career is the oldest one there is.
- Inverted:
- But Not Too Gay
- Bob is a gay Casanova Wannabe; he can't get laid to save his life.
- The heterosexuals change partners so often you can't keep track without a list. The homosexuals just wonder what the hell is wrong with these straight people.
- Bob is a diehard romantic who dreams of finding his One True Love.
- Gender Inverted: The gay men in the series are relatively chaste. The lesbians, on the other hand, all seem to think the whole world is their band camp.
- Subverted:
- Bob was the campus bike in his college years, but he later settles into a stable, long-term relationship with Alan.
- Bob seems gay at first, but it turns out he is actually bisexual which may or may not lead to a different set of stereotypes.
- Bob is gay and acts promiscuously, but he has recently been through a traumatic experience and this is a coping mechanism; he's not usually like this.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob's relationship with Alan is an open relationship.
- That's what he tells everyone. Honestly, nothing happened and he just needs an excuse.
- Parodied: In the background to a No-Tell Motel scene, Bob bounces from one room to the next in varying styles of dress, faster than someone could even change clothes.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is a slut, but falling in love with Alan (who expects monogamy) causes him to reexamine his values. But old habits die hard...
- Averted: Bob is gay but actually keeps his pants zipped. Either he's completely celibate, saving sex for marriage, asexual, or simply prefers to get to know someone before jumping in bed.
- Enforced:
- Guy on Guy Is Hot
- "We're Showtime and we need to be edgy dammit!"
- "It's a gay porn flick, we can't have any prudish gays here"
- Lampshaded: "I have a date tonight!" "You mean, you're going someplace other than his bedroom?"
- Invoked: "Thanks for buying me that drink...wanna go see if the handicapped stall is empty?"
- Defied:
- "Um no, how about I give you my number and you text me tomorrow?"
- Bob is gay and asexual (but not aromantic) and makes sure to tell everybody he meets.
- Exploited: Jason is straight and becomes a male prostitute.
- Discussed: Bob wants an open relationship, Alan does not. The couple may very well break up if they can't come to an agreement on the matter.
- Conversed: Does every gay guy on this show wake up in a different bed every morning?
- Implied: A brief glance at Bob's cell phone shows that he has every gay male hookup app known to man.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob is So Beautiful, It's a Curse; men only want him for his body. At one point he loved the attention and the sex, but as he matures, he becomes increasingly isolated and lonely as he desires a more meaningful relationship in hookup-oriented gay culture.
- Bob has deep-seated issues from a traumatic past, such as Abusive Parents and/or cruel classmates. He grows into a handsome adult and sees others' physical attraction to him as the acceptance he's been longing for, even if it's shallow and fleeting.
- It's revealed that Bob doesn't know how to maintain a relationship or attract a man with his personality, because he's so used to banking on his looks for hook-ups. This may hit him particularly hard if he's middle-aged or older and isn't the stud he used to be.
- The reason he's so promiscuous is that he has some deep-seated internalized homophobia and figures that he'd be better of dead from AIDS than gay.
- He was deeply closeted for much of his adult life. When he comes out, he's finally free to enjoy the sex life he denied himself all those years and, well, he feels he has some "catching up" to do.
- Reconstructed: Regardless of his personal reasons, Bob enjoys casual sex and does so in a safe and responsible manner. If he does pursue a relationship, he's honest with his partner that he requires a degree of openness.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is known as "The Blanche" among his gay friends.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob finds out he's HIV-positive as a result of his promiscuity.
- His sleeping around spells doom for his relationship with Alan.
- Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male. Bob gets raped and he's ashamed to report it or talk about it because he thinks people will downplay it, not believe him, or worse, imply that it was his own fault for sleeping around.
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