Searching on Explore reminded me of my experiences in big gay bars when I first started to come out: simultaneously overwhelmed and reassured, freaked out and comforted. I went to the Philippines and Brazil, Alaska and South Africa.
I went to Buenos Aires, where I had studied abroad, and Brussels, where I’d once stopped on a layover. I kept thinking how, if I had had Grindr when I was just coming out - or maybe just its rocket, proving that I wasn’t the only one like me - I could’ve felt less alone. I had even set up a fake email account to talk to someone the details were lost years ago (Yahoo, maybe?), but I was flushed with how alone I had felt, and filled with compassion for my 18-year-old self. I remembered for the first time in years how, as a freshman, I’d waited until my two roommates fell asleep to look at the Craigslist Men for Men personal ads, bewildered and disgusted and turned on by the images and requests. I went to my college town in the Midwest and scrolled through art students and business majors, DL frat boys and lonely grad assistants. I searched Santa Monica, my hometown, and saw the guys I never knew existed when I was growing up in the closet. for far longer than I wanted to, but it also let me travel further and further in an effort to escape him. The Explore feature allowed me to compulsively fixate on B. from his hometown back to Los Angeles to, as of a few months ago, Brooklyn. Over the next year, I checked in more and more, following B. Months went by, and I soon began clicking the rocket right away when logging on, disregarding the guys in my neighborhood. It was an act of self-destructive voyeurism I’d never experienced or anticipated.
Despite our differences in queerness and experience throughout the year I’d known him, we were suddenly, devastatingly, looking at the same men on Grindr. While I couldn’t talk to him, I was looking at the same boys he was looking at it, deciding which ones I’d fuck, which ones seemed nice. It was more than the pain of seeing him as single and no longer mine: with his profile and stats and a bashful, somewhat uncertain selfie, I saw myself, and every gay man I knew, in him. on Grindr - which, of course, I did when I searched his middle-of-nowhere hometown on the Explore feature the first time - felt like a punch to the face, stomach, and throat simultaneously.
We’d keep each other company on FaceTime, share our favorite clothes, and send each other love letters for the simple purpose of reminding the other that he wasn’t alone. The relationship was my first healthy emotional experience with another guy.
#LONELY GAY MEN CHAT SKIN#
He came out to his parents a few months after we first met in 2016, about a year before I discovered the Explore feature, and had slowly been getting more comfortable in his skin as a gay man. A two-week fling turned into a lot of talking, and visiting, and eventually a relationship. and I had first met in Los Angeles when he moved there for grad school, right before I moved to New York. I kept thinking how, if I had had Grindr when I was just coming out - or maybe just its rocket, proving that I wasn’t the only one like me - I could’ve felt less alone.ī.