There is a photograph in a grid. Taken in the harsh yet flattering light of a locker room. You click on the picture and then read the shopping list.
”Vers”
”Under 40”
”Smooth”
”Muscle”
”Neg Guys only”
And then there is it; the three word clause, so common as to be almost a default mantra of the hook up app profile;
”No Time Wasters”
You do a quick sum and calculate the amount of time it will take to travel the 1.2km it says he is away. Hey, you may be horny but you’re busy too and can only spare an hour. Two max.
So please don’t waste my time.
We know just what those words on the phone screen mean. Showering and douching for the fit muscle guy a couple of streets away that never shows. The chain of hot cock pictures that abruptly goes cold. In order to secure a casual Sunday afternoon hungover f**k, we write it on the list. When you encounter yet another one; curse those f’king apps and I AM gonna delete all them this time for definite; it becomes another piece of evidence to pluck out and present how all gay men are shit.
So we write it down. If only to save ourselves from minor irritation. After all that half an hour spent negotiating could have been invested in a hot bloke who followed through. It’s annoying isn’t it… Every gay man can swap war stories of the casual time waster that’s inconvenienced him, the ones who don’t show up, the guy that didn’t text back.
Much has been documented about the ”Together Alone” nature of social media and how isolating the faux intimacy of virtual relationships can be. There is something brutal about how the Grindr and Scruff’s of the online world at their most ruthlessly efficient can pare interaction down to the bare minimum. Why spend half a day traveling into the city to engage in drinks ‘n small talk with a good looking potential conquest when one can in theory be naked with a like minded individual in the vicinity via the exchange of a few messages?
At a time when we are told we work on average far longer hours than our parent’s generation, it’s hardly surprising that more so than ever time has become a currency not to be squandered. In the prehistoric pre web days, quick casual sex was the domain of the scuzzier gentlemen’s toilet and public park cottages. Now though, due to health fears, the risk of law and advances in portable technology, sex on the doorstep has become infinitely more convenient. Not unlike putting in a grocery order online. Witness the amount of gay businessmen away from home who reach for the smart phone and check out who’s nearby barely a split second after the hotel room door is shut.
It’s true that No Time Wasters has become a hook up app cliché but it’s there though because phones and laptops have made us increasingly impatient and searching for what’s instant. No matter how small the investment we’ve made with that currency.
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Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you'd like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.