Iframed myself inthe still-steamy mirror, adjusting the towel so that it looked like only luck was keeping it just about hung around my waist, and snapped what I hoped was an alluring shot.It was undoubtedly a Queer Man Cliché, but then again there was a reason we kept returning to old favorites.
“You’re gonna tell me I’m still overdressed,” I tapped out, adding the photo, and hit send.
I’d been nervous, sharing my first nearly-naked photo with a stranger.These days, I occasionally wondered about how many phones, and computers, and servers had copies of my exposed flesh saved to them.Collections of skin-colored pixels, nestled up against all the other nudes the world was so used to exchanging, now.A perpetually-traded mass of digitized flesh.
My phone vibrated; I scooped it up from the bed.Frowned as I saw the first few words of the message preview, before tapping it open.
“Okay, don’t hate me, but I can’t meet up this weekend.”He’d added a couple of sad-faced emojis, presumably so that I’d know he really was apologetic.“I kinda met someone, and we’re seeing each other now.”
My fingers hovered over the screen, as I weighed my options.We’d chatted yesterday, full of teasing excitement about my trip; about the things - listed in increasingly lurid detail - we’d do to each other.Either Conner had been recounting that to-do list while his new boyfriend sat on the other end of the couch, or they’d met and fallen straight into an exclusive relationship on Friday night.
Honestly, based on my track record with gay men, either possibility was equally likely.
Part of me wanted to ask, to find out which it had been.Or to point out that I’d just driven several hours, and paid for a hotel, and yet he hadn’t even had the decency to update me without my nudging first.
Or, I could call him an asshole, suggest he was the very worst example of the godawful ways of young gay men, and list off a few ways by which he could go fuck himself.
I chuckled, softly and without any real humor to it, at the idea.
“Sounds like fun,” I tapped out, instead.“Good luck with that.”And then hit the ‘block contact’ button.
#
He wasn’t “mine,” thatwas the truth of it.What weight there’d been to our arrangements, what anticipation had been generated, was by virtue of the distances involved.Logistics adding a sense of importance that reality didn’t actually inspire.Conner’s entire footprint in my life amounted to a handful of photos and videos, and a back-and-forth of poorly spelled messages.If I knew his surname, it was only because I’d pinch-zoomed on the office lanyard hanging from his neck, as he arched his bare ass while leaning over some conference room table.
I had no more claim to him than this new “boyfriend” he’d acquired, and I had no greater expectations for the longevity of their relationship than I’d held out for the length of our tryst.It was just annoying to find the latter had already run its course, having driven what felt like halfway across the state.
I pulled on fresh boxer-briefs and slumped back against the mounded pillows.Fingers already pulling up the usual apps, only this time the list of options was so much longer and more varied than what I was used to seeing.
I’d tried to explain how modern gay hookups happened - well, for some people, anyway - to Catherine and Kyle, one Saturday night.Unexpectedly, it’d been Kyle who turned out to be the most horrified at the transactional nature of it all: almost as though, in being boiled down to the essentials of preference, attraction, and availability, he felt like some key aspect of seduction had been lost.He’d flushed red when I pointed out that he’d met his last girlfriend while puking on the hood of her car, after eating a questionable gas station hot dog.
Catherine, in contrast, had seemed oddly enthused about the app convenience.“Like one-click shopping for dick,” she’d suggested, and then pouted when I refused to show her my - meager, but still potentially mortifying - chat history.
The nearest options now weren’t exactly surprising.Headless torsos of varying degrees of fitness, billed as belonging to visiting men looking for an evening’s distraction.Judging by the distances involved, I could potentially be that distraction without even having to leave the hotel lobby.
I scrolled further, not quite ready to limit my selection.
I could see how you might get addicted, the deeper I dug.How the array of flesh on offer - complete with photos, descriptions, and a catalog of kinks and preferences - could become all-consuming, all too easy.This was the polar opposite of my lackluster selection back home: a cornucopia of men all with, broadly, one thing in mind.
The inbox icon lit up, with a ‘new message’ badge.
For all I’d scrolled past the headless bodies, it wasn’t like my profile was any more illustrative.A couple of shirtless photos, carefully cropped to avoid the sort of personally-identifiable details that might make home life particularly awkward.One of me in my boxer-briefs, far from pornographic but certainly promising.The basics in the description section: six foot (I’d rounded up a half-inch), brown hair, green eyes.Versatile and open-minded.
Hardly encyclopedic, then, but apparently enough to get someone’s attention.
“Hey.Couple here, looking for a third.You interested?”
I tapped through to their profile.“CityShowboy101” was 29, a vers-bottom, with a handful of photos that - though not revealing anything above the neck - certainly suggested he went to the gym plenty.
He’d sent a second message by the time I returned to the chat.“I get fucked, my boyfriend watches.”
I’d not had a threesome yet.And, from the sound of it, that wasn’t what I was being offered now, either.
“He doesn’t get to play?”
A couple of seconds later, and a reply popped up.“We like it when he watches.”
A photo appeared: a bed, with two people on it clearly having sex.The legs of the person holding the camera visible at the bottom of the frame, in a chair watching from across the room.
