I came to the app scene very late in the game. I’ve never had a tinder profile & only know of the other dating apps from friends and acquaintances. While this sounds like bragging, the truth is, when I entered the gay dating scene, OkCupid, as a website, was still one of the predominant ways to meet guys. Rather my intent here is to set the stage for what my experience with Grindr has been like in the past, and how it’s colored my view of these apps & hook-up culture in the gay community.
My very first grindr profile was a joint account with my fiance, seven, maybe eight years, into our relationship. At that point neither of us was looking to date or find new boyfriends. As can be imagined this made for a very different experience than a single individual would experience on the app.
Logging on as a paired couple, in some ways, made hook-ups & chatting with guys easier. We weren’t there looking for partners or long term commitments. We were on there for more ephemeral & light hearted, well, hook-ups. Whenever we chatted with a guy, we were always up front, our profile even stated it, “couple looking for NSA fun”. For those that were interested, we often discovered it was an arrangement that was highly successful, it satiated the needs of both parties, without the concern for romantic entanglement or deeper commitments. In short we had fun & the guys we met did too.
Those early days of hooking up were quite exhilarating. I enjoyed the conversations, the photos exchanged, & the eventual meet-ups. I mean what’s not to love if you’re horny & looking for sex? Also as someone who had engaged with a grand total of three sexual partners up until this point in his life, it was opening up an entirely new side of me I hadn’t ever explored. I felt like I was discovering new things all the time. I learned that sex was something to be enjoyed, not coveted & secreted away. Through those hook-ups and encounters I learned to be more comfortable with sex and talking about it.
Lest I be judged for viewing hook-up apps through rose colored glass, I’m not so naïve as to believe the culture is without it’s dark-side & toxicity. I know, as I/We experienced it on numerous occasions. I’ve also spoken with a number of my friends & acquaintances about their own experiences. There is plenty of petty cruelness and deception to go around. Any gay guy will tell you how quick individuals in our own community can be to tear another down, even when we so often preach unity and support. To say there is some serious work to be done, is an understatement.
From the perspective of an individual closeted most of his life, to come to find a culture when sex was celebrated & openly enjoyed, it was a breathe of fresh air & a definite release. I’m lucky in how I came to be introduced to the culture, in an environment where I wasn’t alone & we had clear boundaries & guidelines.
