The world of online dating continues to fascinate me. Granted, it no longer has the attached stigma of a few years ago, when couples would sheepishly concoct fabricated stories to hide from their friends and families that they actually met as a set of pixilated, posed portraits and series of halting email exchanges.
“So where did you two meet?” an inquisitive mother would ask.
Both would studiously avoid eye contact and mumble something about a bar or mutual friends. Anything was better than “online,” which smacked of pathetic desperation. “That’s nice,” Mom would continue. “At least you didn’t meet your husband at an S&M ball like I did!”
But times have a-changed, my friend. When we now learn of a new friend’s single status, we ask which dating site they’re registered on. When you break up with your boyfriend, friends crowd around to console you with ice cream and the increasingly more common promise to help revamp your online profile with gorgeous candid shots showing just how much fun you’re having without him.
The gays have it a little differently. The wonders and options of online social networking are nothing new. Since the dawn of internet chat sites, queers have been working them to their advantage to meet new people. But my people take it to a more primal depth. From AOL to Grindr, if there’s a chance for sex as an eventual outcome, we’re all over it. As long as I can remember, the internet has been the gay gateway to porn and sex. Only recently has Farmville started taking the gays away from their hunt for cock and placed them on their own virtual plot of land.
As a timid young college student, trolling the internet for sex was always a forbidden novelty to me. While guys my age were whittling notches on the bedpost at a pace which would put a beaver to shame, I stuck to the shadows and waited for Mr. Right to pull me out into the light. My parents were somehow tremendously successful in instilling a 1950’s sense of morality and shame which hobbles me to this day.
Not that I wasn’t online. I was, but I insisted on conversation, wit, and intelligence. I latched onto any guy that started a conversation with anything more complex than “Horny?” or the ubiquitous “Lookin’?” Yes, I was lookin’, but not for a quick blow in the library bathroom or no-strings sex with a guy who didn’t even know my name or major. When I didn’t match the sexy banter, and my flirtation was limited to a winking emoticon, men moved on to find a quicker, guaranteed good time.
As the world of online dating flourished for my straight friends, so too did it flourish for the gay community. Though barred from certain sites which catered exclusively to the straight community, we had our niches where I was free to post a few comments about my quest for something beyond a sweaty roll in the sheets. I had my carnal needs, true, but also the specter of Catholic guilt crouching on my shoulders. Though there were indeed men searching for the same things as me, there were more and more men blatant about their need for sex above all else. Even Craigslist, a site originally dedicated to apartment hunting and used furniture sales became a hotbed of hook-up activity, with men posting frank descriptions of their fetishes and phone numbers to avoid the tedium of email exchange.
I cannot knock the world of online dating. Two of my former relationships grew out of a connection made online. And though they both eventually ended, for their duration they were meaningful and real. For the online gay community, they can probably be described as success stories, lasting more than one night and not fueled by poppers and ecstasy. Granted, no ads will be made any time soon spotlighting my online match as we celebrate our 10th anniversary, but a nice tagline could be “Managed to celebrate a 365-Night Stand!”
I have, however, made mistakes. For all the harsh puritanical notions drilled into my skull, I’ve had the odd moment where I’ve fallen from my moral high horse and into the gutter of baser desires. More often than not, these moments come in times of extreme stress and anxiety; dumped by a boyfriend or frozen out by a prospective new one, my answer to “Lookin’?” suddenly becomes “Yeah, why not?”
The fat kid growing up, I’ve always had body issues plaguing my adult sense of self. My greatest nemesis in life is the crease in my jeans waist band made when I sit down and my gut pours onto my lap. Though I qualify as “straight skinny,” I’m two toes into “gay fat.” There are only a few commonly accepted gay body types, and mine is not one of them. I’m too thick to be a Twink, and no chubby/hairy enough to be a Bear. The Holy Grail of gay bodies is the Gym Rat, the man whose daily routine includes at least two hours in the gym and crunches measured in sets of thousands. The body, chiseled and toned, is usually hairless (though whether through genetics or Nair is left a mystery). Men clamor for this body. Ideally, a gay man wants to develop one of his own, but it requires too much work and commitment, so we settle for touching that of someone who has put in the work.
Browsing though online gay personals, it’s impossible not to notice the vast majority of profile photos are of naked, headless torsos. The men I am chatting with (should they decide to return my opening chat invite) are reduced to washboard abs, pecs, and pert little nipples. The implication is impossible to miss: men aren’t wanted for what’s in their heads, but for what’s underneath their clothes. It’s a virtual meat market, where we choose potential mates not on personality and dependability, but on BMI and max bench press.
I don’t have that to offer up. My unclothed torso will drop no jaws nor trigger salivation in admiration. I’ve never posed scantily clad in my boudoir, or even soaking wet as I emerge from the pool in my Euro trunk swim suit. I rarely swim, and when I do, I scurry like an exposed crustacean from the water to my towel to prevent others from seeing my jiggling flesh. I tend to dress in clothes even the Amish would deride as being overly-conservative, and love winter fashions which allow me to hide my extra pounds under layers of sweaters and scarves. You’re never fat in the winter—you’re jolly.
But gay men don’t want jolly. There’s a reason kinky, man-on-man Santa fantasies aren’t flooding the internet. Gay men want the Adonis bodies, the ones that show a man spends an equal amount of time at the gym as he does his desk job. And Santa’s never been on a treadmill in his life.
Even with just a headshot I can’t win. My neutral expression reads as severely pissed off, and smiles morph into a forced grimace. So, paradoxically, from a distance I’m jolly, but increasingly angry and pained as you come in for the closer look.
I have landed a few hot bodies my rare forays into the world of hooking up. When I can keep a pair of pecs (or is it set?) talking to me beyond the initial “Sup?” or “U hung?”, they notice I have a quirky sense of humor, and maybe a spark or two of smarts. If somewhere in the conversation I notice the guy too is funny and intelligent, all bets are off. I’d gladly—nay, eagerly—saw off my left foot at the ankle with a rusty hacksaw to land a guy with the trifecta of hot, smart, and funny.
But not all men are as perfect as they might seem on a computer or phone screen. Chiseled abs can hide some very disturbing insides.
We began talking one night as I stared up from the bottom of a very oppressive well of sexual frustration. He was never meant to be Mr. Right, and wasn’t even supposed to be Mr. Right Now. My initial plan had been to land another guy, the tantalizingly mythical hybrid of geek and super hot jock I’d been talking to all week. But, like a magician’s illusions, he’d turned out to be all smoke and mirrors, leaving me to pull the rabbit out of the hat solo. So when I received yet another “Horny?”, I could only honestly answer “Yes.”
Though hook ups in the past had left me feeling unclean at the molecular level, my morality was forced to ride shotgun as my libido took the wheel. Our conversation was a series of monosyllabic words arranging a meet, like apes trying to communicate the best way to navigate the New York subway. A quick text to let a friend know where to find my dismembered corpse should I wind up missing, and I was out the door.
The cooler winter weather was just arriving in Houston, which meant the temperature dropped thirty degrees in the twenty minutes it took to find his house based on his cryptic directions. While the thin shirt and flip flops had been practical upon leaving, they were comical stepping out into the 50 degree night air. With my car parked precariously ditch-side on an unlit street, I began my search for his condo in the sprawling complex. He hadn’t given any street numbers, just vague landmarks with nonsensical directions: Enter gate 18, go left to stay straight, after four rights, go left with a slight northerly trajectory. I wandered aimlessly around the complex, one paranoid corner of my brain waiting for the garrote to slip unexpectedly across my throat until I heard the whistle.
It wasn’t the wolf whistle favored by construction workers to express admiration for a beautiful woman, nor was it like that used to call your faithful Labrador Retriever to your side; it was a bird call. Three notes, repeated twice over, the signal my hook-up had chosen to let me know I was in the right spot. A scan of the area revealed nothing, and I peered awkwardly into the shadows, willing him to emerge. Nothing.
The bird call again.
I finally saw him on the darkened upstairs balcony to my left. I started making my way to the unit and he receded back into the shadows.
He’s already naked? I thought, figuring he was trying to avoid drawing unwanted attention to himself. The door in front of me unlocked, but didn’t open. I knocked timidly. Nothing.
Should I do the bird call? I wondered. I knocked again. This time the door cracked open slightly. A bird call came from within.
The logical part of my mind should have told me to leave, recognized this for all kinds of weird shit, thrown up a deuce and gotten the hell out. But if Morality was riding shotgun that night, Rational Thought was hogtied in the trunk. Plus, I was freezing and his house at least promised heat. I stepped inside.
Though not unattractive, I understood immediately why his profile photo prominently featured his torso and not his face. Soon to coast over the hill into middle age, he had the look of a forlorn rabbit who’d seen a few too many freaky things his earlier days. I extended my hand and offered my name. He shook it and said “Nice to meet you,” but gave me no name in return. At least he’d stopped whistling. Slipping out of my flip flops, I followed him into the bedroom decorated in the classic style of a Motel 6. And that’s when it started to get weird(er).
Rather than ask if I wanted a drink, his first question was: “Are you ticklish?” My answer that no, I wasn’t, seemed to disappoint until a small grin crept onto his face. “So that means I can tickle you anywhere and it won’t bother you?”
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been tickled. Probably as a small child, and most certainly never as part of foreplay. The concept of tickling has never been remotely erotic to me, though the Whistler seemed to feel differently.
“Um, I guess?” More of a question, really, not a definitive statement.
“I could tickle you all over your back and it would be okay? I could tickle your armpits and you’d enjoy it?”
“Well, I think ‘enjoy’ might be a very strong—and wrong—word to use in that case.”
He didn’t hear me. “And I could tickle your feet while we’re fucking and you’d get off on that?”
Whoah there. This was a man who looked like he should be filling out tax forms for the school board, but sounded like he was planning the dirtiest birthday party ever. I started to inch my way closer to the entryway, fearing his next question would be feeling out my inclination to dress up as large furry animals and squeal for his pleasure.
“You have big feet.”
That I do, I can say with all honesty. When I hit my growth spurt in high school and shot up to 6’2”, my feet exploded into size thirteens. My flip flops are like skis on slick, tractionless surfaces. And those flip fops were now lined up neatly by the door leading to my freedom.
“I guess,” I said, suddenly self-conscious of my flipper feet.
“Are your feet ticklish? It would be so hot to watch you squirm while I tickle your big feet.”
“Again, not really ticklish.” I left out the fact that all sensation in my feet had been destroyed by my years walking around barefoot on the searing hot sidewalks of the Middle East. He’d just take that as a personal challenge, like the messiah come to heal the quadriplegics.
“Can I suck your toes? Do you want to suck mine? Do you want to tickle my feet?”
The answer to all three posed questions was a resounding “no,” but I simply shook my head in mute amazement.
“What are you going to be doing with your feet while I fuck you?”
“Well, I figured they’d just kind of be … there, you know? I didn’t have anything special planned for them.” His face fell as if I’d just told him there would be no pony rides at his birthday party.
“Look,” I continued. “I don’t think this is the best plan. I don’t think we’re looking for the same thing tonight, which means at least one of us won’t have fun. And I’m willing to bet that’s going to be me. I’m just going to head out now.”
“Can I at least slap your feet with my cock before you go?” But my big feet were out the door before I had a chance to respond.
Morality was waiting for me back in the driver’s seat once I clambered back into my car, while Rational Thought mean-mugged me from the backseat. I drove home, my only stop a brief meeting with friends to get an outsider’s opinion on my freakishly large feet. I ended the night as it began, settled into the couch with my non-ticklish fins tucked beneath me, clicking through endless online profiles, looking for the genuine Mr. Right.
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