Grindr-Idle, New Bigot

Grindr is becoming a source of social anxiety. I feel beholden to the pushier guys, flattered initially but afterward stuck whether to fuck or decline them, like in passing up sex opportunities I'm not living to the fullest or being ungrateful, a cock tease etcetera. You can't fuck all the time (actually guys for whom all leisure time is dictated by grindr are testament to the contrary, and I know they're out there). 

For example today, I've got a list of dryish errands I've thus far shirked for grindr idle. I'm nowhere nearer that delicious sense of accomplishment I know I'll have if I just pulled finger. The day progresses and I may as well have stayed in bed, unstamped life-admin collecting dust, house suffering silently in a week's worth of grimes, library books accruing fines. Argh!

 My stall consists of agonising over having just told HotFun I can't make it to his this afternoon, not being able to justify the diversion or even rouse enough interest. He was just too easy. There's also a gentleman whose delectable profile pic has the disclaiming caption 'into str8 acting fit lads, don't be a cliche'. 

Are you fucking kidding me? You fucking wannabe jock meat head, you're the goddamn cliche! 

Which is what I should've said to him but didn't. That kind of hating on the typically flamboyant homosexual is nonsensical to me. It exhibits an ignorance of gender functioning I wouldn't expect from a fellow gay man, but then I guess that's idealistic. And what is it that's so repugnant about an effeminate man? So far as I see, the repulsion stems from Man embodying traits and behaviours classically categorised with Woman. Her position in society being inferior to man's, this is a transgression of his primary subject-hood, an absurd and meaningless sacrificing of his authorial coordinate, and the ideological event generating said-disgust. 

If the idea of a man in drag makes you feel uncomfortable, being an overt incarnation of the effeminate man, you may unconsciously hold the societal primacy of man over woman in some varied esteem, even in 2014. 

Progress isn't linear. 

But I suppose if you don't find it sexually attractive, a forum like grindr that elides so much requires abbreviated and disembodied likes/dislikes, not having access to the consummate person. 

So am I saying anyone not into fem guys is a bigot? Of course not. But isn't that curious, I'm not into overly effeminate men either. So how does sexuality translate politically, if it does?

I like daddies. Is that a political stance? 

It is if you work out a rough Freudian-esque science of sex as a synthesis of my life story to date, a wondrous and spontaneous affirmation of where I've been and where I'd like to go. But that's an involved process not recommended to everyone and anyone, maybe just those slightly sex-obsessed looking to elevate their basest drives to the soaring scale of myth. 

Curating and Cocks

So I had my third grindr related hookup that spanned two nights, having both enjoyed the others company and also being too convenient location wise. Follow ups will ensue frequently, I predict. And if I was in the market, which I'm not ('The Market' being the framework of those singletons inclined to monogamy), then I'd be preemptively filing this one under 'Keeper'.  Instead, I'm just describing a nice guy I had a really nice time with who I might spend even more time with, but not to the exclusion of other nice guys who piqué my interest in similar (but not identical) ways. 

Firstly, I loved his space. A single-apartment whitewashed and minutely furnished, a meticulous economy of limited space giving the impression it was larger than it was, sparse ornamentation but the pieces he had were cool. Almost curatorial. Cerebral. A Virgo.

I had to forego my usual ice-breaking cigarette which is my method of relaxing into foreign social terrain (the prop being a kind of misdirection) because his dwelling had an overly sensitive alarm system, or so he told me the first night, permitting me to smoke the following evening maybe because he'd decided I was worth the allowance. 

I was a lot more distracted and less charged sexually this time round, maybe because the novelty had already worn off, a premature summation of this grindr thing. Anyway the first evening of sex lacked actual penetration, was petting and stuff, a supplement to the easy conversation. 

It wasn't until the second night I fucked him, and even then I'd been working so hard that day at my various jobs I aborted midway, with apologies. He said he was fine with that and we resumed the spooning. 

And yet, falling short of expectation physically, that 'date' left a better after-taste than the guy previous, Mr. Too Much Cologne. The experience was somehow more fulfilling, despite the conventional lack of 'sex'. 

Because sex is defined by penetrative acts right? Without penetration, no sex has taken place. Right? 

If not, what's the measure of actual sex? Are oral/ handies merely sex acts skirting sex in its's standardised form, which is a penis entering an anus or a vagina, the former being 'anal sex' and it's own act peripheral to true Sex; a penis entering a vagina. Is homosexuality simply masturbatory, impotent diversion compared to sex proper? Is what lesbians do, in the absence of a penis, ever really sex?

I don't believe any of the above myself but do feel the idea of sex as an act is too hinged on ejaculate and penetration, a genitality that's fixedly male. Sex to me is any near-to-fully naked intimacy resulting in pleasure, with or without a literal fuck of someone's orifice and someone else blowing their load (I'm a fan of both). Gratification comes from shared vulnerability; and of the purely physical, sharing nakedness is to me a beautiful thing. Loves it. 

Even between gay men, there can be more to sex than a hard cock. 

Catfish

WARNING; essay-like rant ahead

Grindr is making me wonder; how do people fall in love online? (not necessarily on grindr but via forums less suited to the casual encounter). Because it happens doesn't it, people meet online and go a certain amount of time exchanging messages, which can lead to romantic feeling for a person without having even met said-person, until such a time when both parties agree to meet. What is the basis of this romantic feeling? What's generating attraction here, and are such cases so distinct from the manner in which people develop an attraction in 'real-time'?

I'm asking because I'm experiencing a vague fondness for guys I'm chatting with, but there's also a reluctance in that fondness from my awareness of it being a glamour of some kind. Because really, I have captioned static images to relate to, and that's it. I'm responding to a loosely structured fantasy of a person, rather than that person him or her-self. 

I know the problematic vapidity of 'chat' has been hot-topic since the nineties, more so recently with social-media's escalating omniscience, the same qualms returning as popular cautionary tales. 

For example MTV's Cat-Fish, in which filmmakerJoel Schumacher expands his feature-length 'documentary' of the same name into a series. 

Cat-Fish the film sees Schumacher chronicle a burgeoning online romance that blooms predictably enough (by Hollywood standards, despite it's hand-cam delivery style), without the interests actually meeting. When they do finally meet its apparent one of them is not who they've said they are, having deftly woven a fictional persona with pathological gusto. What was presumed to be honest self-representation was in fact a fabricated lure.

This isn't overly groundbreaking. Warnings about chat rooms to children and teenagers abound, the aphoristic threat of pedophiles and other sexual predators hiding hungrily behind Veronica's Secret stills (with drooling Cheshire-cat grins one imagines) is one we know too well. 

However, the deceit in Cat-Fish is more nuanced. After teetering on a match-point between thriller and drama, the doco takes a high-road, commenting on hegemonic ideals of beauty/success while exhibiting the weird alternative of one loner. That alternative is to immerse in a fantasy wholly supported (arguably induced) by social-media's narcissistic insularity. 

The incentive to present an avatar (a genre crossover wholly informing social-media in the strangest ways) tailored to remedy ones shortcomings, is a different incentive from rote games of sexual persuasion and subterfuge. The gratification is one of inclusion for someone who, for whatever reason, perceives themselves on the margin. A wish-fulfilment requiring a minimum of effort.

Interestingly, the film's series expansion does away with the tone of caution, instead lauding online dating for its ability to bring people together. Each episode tells of an online couple estranged either by distance or circumstance whose attraction overcomes these obstacles, declaring love's power as nobly facilitated by the online forums through which they met. Social media no longer distorts (or invents) attraction, but is advocated as a neutral lens. 

Which is fucking preposterous.

In summary, if you're packing a chode don't sell it as a whopper.

Feeling Shit

So I'm a pretty vain guy. Not pathologically I'd say, but definitely consistently aware of myself. A healthy egotist. And grindr is changing that. Having had an account for a rough fortnight, I'm already feeling inadequate.  

There are defined leagues or 'tribes', and in spite of myself I want to be top shelf! Functional ego is transforming into something else. 

I've never been in with, and have even quietly resented those new age neo-Buddhist camps declaring war on ego. Egoless-ness, an idealised absence of self-interest, sounds like a hell-state to be in. It's demonisation is explicable only in terms of massive self-loathing. 

Those same types would probably argue the value of community over consumerist self-obsession and brut, individual-centred competition. I don't see how community is possible without being comprised of healthy egos, as any community exists by way of a collective narrative which needs its aggregates to be sufficiently self-aware, lest the story they're telling themselves to sustain their affiliation become something automatic and compulsive, slave to precedent etcetera. I'm talking about intersubjectivity as the generative kernel of true community.

So there I've justified my medium-level vanity as a symptom of healthy ego. 

I feel like grindr is promoting an anti-social image obsession, which would be the opposite of ego serving the good of any community, least of which an online community of horny fags. 

I don't have the kind of six pack you'd start automatic payments to see via webcam a few times a week, nor would I feel comfortable jamming proud dick-pics down every casually begun chat. So what's my lure?

I guess I'm just mourning the loss of 'presence', and how persuasive/charming I at least think I can be in person. 

Second Date (new guy)

Last night I went on my second grindr date. 

Profile pics can be very misleading. I wasn't disappointed or anything, merely had a moment of lag at said-gentleman's door opening onto someone ten to fifteen years the senior of what I'd been expecting, in hindsight inexplicably. I hadn't gathered as much information as I'd thought, I'd made an assumption from a profile pic (fuckin rookie) and obstinately went with that. I've gathered it's totally etiquette to request not just one but a series of pics from a person, and people are generous enough in mutual avoidance of a 'god not another uggo' moment when you do meet, at which point I'd imagine you either go through with the date (hook up), excuse yourself lamely with a faked emergency, or be brutally honest (maybe even state the instance of false advertising in moral outrage before suggesting a revised diet and exercise plan). 

He was wearing too much cologne. It smelt good from a distance but at close range I could taste it on the air all metallic and off-putting. I thought later he went overboard with the grooming out of nervousness. David Foster Wallace says hygiene anxiety is social anxiety (through an equally meditative character in his first book The Broom of the System, I rate).

I feel less comfortable writing this one up. Something about this guy made me feel all maternally concerned; not a swoon, more a dull kind-of-annoying ache, maybe because he seemed sad. Or maybe it was the initial mood being awkward I then misread as sad, because his flat was the opposite of sad, it gleamed modern and bright with tasteful art stuff and overstuffed bookshelves. Maybe I think no one's as happy with themselves as I am, which is fucking ludicrous.

Anyway he was not my standard-issue guy. Grindr had engineered an otherwise highly improbable meeting, and I made a quick-fire decision to go with it (all adventurous girls do!).

What resulted was some comparatively tender fucking, by the previous date's standards anyway. A new body in all it's willing vulnerability is just delicious. I can't think of anything I like more, but this from a twenty-three year old gay guy with an oral fixation. Maybe next year I'll be off sex and my thing'll be horses, or botany. 

Later, I had coffee and he had Coke Zero on his porch and it was freezing at like four in the morning and I had, as always, too many cigarettes. I know they in fact elevate heart rate but something about them takes the edge off certain situations, if not bodily soothing then spiritually. I caught a cab home because he had work in the morning and, as I'd gauged, he was comfortable with the idea of me staying over which bothered me for some reason. 

Am I missing anything? The conversation was pretty awesome, and there was as much of that as there was fucking. We talked meditation, mindfulness, the psychic detriments of being too future-oriented, the flimsy ideals of youth and life's frequently surprising dismantlement of these. 

Back to his cologne. There was definitely too much and the taste gave me headaches. It made me wonder what I taste like and whether its pleasing to strangers, like hints of something that take said-stranger to a nicer place than 'I don't wanna know where the fuck you've been'. I reckon my skin'd be a blend of coffee, truffle oil, Nutella and cigarettes. Lovely. 

First Date

As mentioned, I did indeed have a 'date' shortly after obtaining the app, which included a piss-take sexy-selfie session with the flatties, before the more serious business of baiting. Within an hour I'd arranged for a guy to pick me up and take me to his house, which ended up being some distance from mine. 

Being without vehicle or licence might mean I'll have to set up separate funds for constant taxiing, as well as txt-bombing nearest and dearest with where I'm headed and with whom in case of Patrick Bateman-esque eventualities. 

Reckless? I guess so. But maybe there'd be less actual stranger-danger if there wasn't so much fearful expectation. And how is that any more reckless than going home half or fully intoxicated with someone you've just met in a bar? At least in my sobriety I could've knocked the cunt out, should things have turned nasty.

But they didn't. He was quite harmless. 

We went to his house, which he told me was his family home that he alone occupied while his separated parents were living out their new lives with new lovers, his sister (older or younger, he didn't specify) doing the same. It was kinda lonely, and yes he had cats. Lots of them. 

Was he cute? Yes. Half-cast Maori boy, arbitrary tats and piercings etc.

What'd we talk about, and was it awkward?

No it wasn't awkward, the feel between us was instantly chummy and comfortable. No inverted commas around chummy, I mean it. 

We wasted some time giving perfunctory back stories, smoking too many cigarettes in his man-cave/converted-garage, wasting even more time watching an episode of Game of Thrones which I'm not even into but didn't have the heart to say because I spied one of the books half-read on his bedside table. 

It was while Jon Snow impaled some burn-face enemy (I think it was a zombie or something) that I made my move, figuring this kid in that cultish revery Thrones casts. 

And fuck me was it good! To think I'd been bored of a Tuesday evening, thinking of going to bed before nine for fucks sake, and in two hours max with no groundwork or nothing really, just the swipe and type of a screen, suddenly not just good but AMAZING sex was happening!

Anyway, afterward it was unclear whether he'd be taking me home or not, which was preferable because tomorrow was 'me' day (treats and books, booyah!). After a coffee and more cigarettes and more unnecessary back-storying I gauged awkwardly that he would take me home, during which the back-storying peaked with an exchange of our hopes for the future, an element of melodrama stemming perhaps from a sense of finality, of our 'date' coming to an end and of having been mutually satisfied and of maybe not seeing each other ever again, such is the nature of the game (sigh).

And he dropped me off and I reminded him he had to pick up food for his cats on the way home like he asked me to, and he thanked me for said-reminder and that was that. Mission accomplished. Welcome to grindr. 

Intro; Adventures In Grindr

Yesterday evening I joined grindr. Mostly out of boredom, which is something I'll get to later.

Anyway, the experience being one of such unprecedentedly swift gratification (from flirtation to sweaty fucking to the after-glowing sojourn home), and me being so hopelessly cerebral, I've decided to blog what I intuit will be a new and notably lewd chapter. 

I'm still reeling. I know I'm definitely 'catching up', that the world of Internet dating with it's shameless collapse of privacy and nuances of blunt and tersely contracted communication (I'm guessing to weed out the incompatibles as efficiently as possible), is basically well established. It's me that's only lately discovering an existing world, rather than joining 'of the moment' to praise or curse an emerging phenomenon. 

Still, I can't believe this is a fucking thing! It's a hundredfold more disorienting than joining Facebook was. Maybe it's because the digitisation of sex is happening with the former, or more accurately the networking or convivial preamble to a sexual encounter has been condensed or even elided, a micro experience substituted for an actual one. 

I'm not saying this has or is even yet to occur, but conceivably the social skills necessary to meet the demands of that experience may wither and die in their neglect, should grindr become popular enough (which to my understanding it is). 

Anyway, this is a chronicle of a late-grindr-bloomer, a twenty-three year old dinosaur, navigating new terrain and even now only one 'date' in, mourning the loss of macro dating-methods.

Is it so idealistic to expect celestial forces to align with my desire and plop Mr. Right Now in front of me as the need invariably (inevitably) arises?

And on boredom. 

Having had the app for approximately twenty-four hours, perusing profiles of potential lays already proves compulsive, like Internet-porn compulsive, which I guess it's close to; I'm searching images for something I 'like', surface-level chatting to gauge whether I can render a fantasy solid enough to sustain an encounter, and an hour later I could be balls deep happily cumming. I look at profile pictures with the same bodily expectation of arousal and orgasm as I do pornographic material. 

Boredom often brings me to have between three and five simultaneous windows of porn open (no judgement please), but add grindr to the mix and you've got a form of escapist entertainment with the potential to lead out of fantasy into real encounter. 

Could this damage me emotionally, by way of supplanting any real desire for intimacy I might have on some level ( I make it sound so peripheral), with sexual or romantic longing only rearing as a means to defer boredom? Love as entertainment?