Regular readers of Cypher Avenue know full well that when October rolls around, two important events happen: Our annual Halloween obsession will be coming soon and it’s also the official start of Cuffin’ Season!

For those not in the know, Cuffin’ Season means that all that fun being free & single over the summer is over. Time to get booed up and hibernate indoors with a (temporary) boyfriend who’s down with “Netflix and Chilling” aka Pretending to Watch a Movie Only To Start Making Out and Having Sex 20 Minutes Into It.

Once spring 2016 rolls around, you break it off for the warm weather socializing that only only single men can really appreciate. Once again, the blogging team over at The Unstoppable Toy Sldrs has dropped a hilariously accurate calendar (embedded below) to mark the official end of Summer Single Status and the beginning of Relationship Cuffin’ Season.

DRAKE is still the reigning rap champion (, single men and women worldwide will be digging into their cell phone contacts and Facebook friends list to send “miss you” and “How you been?” messages to their lust targets and the ones that got away. Not only is this a guaranteed side effect to listening to any of emo rapper Drake’s songs, it’s also par for the course this cold weather time of year.

WINTER IS COMING

Te first step to being successful at Cuffin’ Season is stacking up a good collection of potentials over the summer and have their phone numbers saved in your phone.  We’ve previously given a lot of good advice on how to do this in the following articles:

Art of Seduction: The Top 12 Ways To Pick Up Gay/Bisexual Men of Color

Cypher Avenue’s Top 50 Quick Dating Tips for the New Year

Eight Great Date Ideas

Once you’ve handled that, you can make full use of the calendar.

The Official Cuffin’ Season Calendar is your guide to navigate and maneuver through the intricacies of securing a relationship in a hurry. While a lot of the advice in the calendar is tounge-in-cheek (for example: The term “Draking” is the act of drinking and caking at the same time. Late night text messages, phone calls, DMs, etc during late night hours while drunk. I’m so guilty of this.), a lot of what is listed here is spot on.

While the Game of Cuffs calendar was clearly written by and for heterosexuals, a lot of the satirical pointers apply to gay men as well.

tumblr_lsv8o3feYu1qcs765o1_500


CUFFIN’ SEASON CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS

1. September 20th, Future and Drake’s “What a Time to Be Alive” drops causing Cuffin’ Season to be delayed for a couple weeks.

2. Beginning October 2nd, Cuffin’ Season officially begins and you should have started sending “Good Morning” texts out to your list of potentials. Play it cool, be consistent. Make use of The Flying V, if needed:

EmojisConsistency
—-DrakingEffort
———Dates

42-18955121

3. Beginning October 23rd, you should be starting to go out on dates, if you haven’t already. Winter is quickly approaching and soon the latecomer wolves to Cuffin’ Season will be out on the prowl. This leads us to:

4. Beginning October 27th, beware of Charles & Charlene. According to Toy Sldrs, this is the period where the Thirst (aka lust) truly makes people competitive. Charles & Charlene refers to male and female 3rd parties who see your keen cuffin’ efforts on your target and do all they can to throw salt in your game!

Example: His homeboy says to him, “He hasn’t texted you all day? Maybe he isn’t as interested as you think.” Or they email them the link to this Cypher Avenue article: Classic Lies Gay Men Tell Each Other.

Watch out for these crabs! They want to Cuff Up with your potential or keep your potential off the market altogether!

tumblr_lzm2bm8XVU1r2phcfo1_1280

5. Beginning November 3rd, if you haven’t yet sealed the deal, start dating on weekdays to throw of the competition. Many men think dating is only for Friday and Saturday. You can easily get a quick meet-up in during a happy hour or on a Wednesday before the new episode of Empire comes on.

You should be sealing the deal with at least one of your potentials by now. If not, for the next two weeks you will have to up your Social Media thirst activity into overdrive. Send likes, comments, texts and smiley face emoticons into overdrive.

Once you’ve narrowed down your potentials to 2 or 3, make a final decision and seal the deal with convo that starts with: “I really like you and well…” “How do you feel about it just being me and you…” “I don’t want to talk to anyone else…”

You may find yourself settling for a dude you don’t really want, but at least you’ll have a warm body next to you during the next few cold winter months.

tumblr_lxz7nx4cPc1qefjwbo1_500

6. Beginning November 15th, if nothing has jumped off with your potentials by this point, you’ve failed and you’re in the friend zone. Prepare for a cold lonely winter. At this point all of your efforts will just come off as desperate given that most people who would want a relationship would you typically would have secured it by Thanksgiving, the start of the relationship holidays.

Loneliness and sadness slowly settles in. The Marvins and Thirst Walkers come out in droves trying to break up new/old relationships in desperation. This continues all the way up until Valentine’s Day 2016.

Once Spring/Summer rolls back around, many of those temporary relationships will wilt away allowing everyone to regroup and begin again from scratch and on equal ground.


 THE UNSTOPPLABLE TOY SLDRS CUFFIN’ SEASON CALENDAR

(Click the image for full sized view)

 CuffinSeason_2015_Dec