Save me from “discreet” encounters

Twice in the past couple weeks, I’ve had people approach me via online connections for “discreet” encounters.  (I covered what the term means in a previous post.  Basically, it means the guy is either closeted, cheating, or uncomfortable with his kinks.)  After this, I’m done with agreeing to such encounters.

With the first one, who approached me via a Craigslist ad, he asked during our negotiation exchanges if I was “discreet”, and I made him tell me what he meant by it.  To me, it means the simple stuff — don’t go telling details of what we did, and look/act like a normal person when you come to my place or we see each other out.  To this guy, though, it was “Never connected; never met if asked or not asked” (that is: “You don’t know me, you never saw me, you’ll never contact me.”)  Sorry, I don’t work that way: if I see you in a social setting (be it the gay bar, the supermarket, or a business lunch), I’m not going to ignore you or feign ignorance.  I’m going to say “Hi, how are you doing?” as I would to any casual acquaintance.  If someone asks how we know each other, then I will properly feign ignorance/memory loss: “Heck, I don’t remember, I meet so many people.  It was a few months ago, maybe?”

At the end of our negotiations, he pulled back from meeting (when I was actually on the way there, in fact; lesson: never head their way without a full address and room number), saying he was “too uncomfortable to have any fun”.  My hope is that he realized that he can’t really have his kink cake and eat it too for very long; that the more people he plays with, the less “discreet” he can actually manage to be, and that he’ll eventually overcome his fears (or have a good talk with his partner).  I accepted his apology (at least he didn’t totally flake out), and gave him a mild reprimand/encouragement to realize that his “discreet” requirements really don’t mean anything to most guys: we just want a hot scene and aren’t going to care to give him anything other than a vague acknowledgment in other social settings.

The second guy hit me up on a formal cruise site.  Looking at his profile, I saw that he was from Chicago, but because he keeps his sex life “private”, he only wants to play with guys in Minneapolis.  And further, he only wants to play with guys who are visiting Minneapolis.  In other words, he wants to keep the chance of meeting you in any other context vanishingly small, and also wants to minimize the chance for a repeat encounter.  That’s not keeping your sex life private, that is being embarrassed about the sex you choose to pursue.

I’ve dealt with another guy here in Seattle who expressed a similar but different version of this: he wants to go to play parties, but only in other cities.  He bartends at a local bar and he doesn’t want there to be a chance that someone at the party might be one of his customers.  I can’t say what the concern is beyond that, though — they might expect free/stronger drinks, they might puncture a “tough top” image he tries to project as a bartender, something else?  I find it hard to picture a scenario where the fact that actual sex was involved in how they knew him would make things any different.  (Maybe if they felt he gave bad service, they would have additional dirt to bad mouth him with?  Please, girl, this is the gay community: they can make up plenty of dirt without having seen you in action.)

Going forward, if a guy ask if I am “discreet”, I’m going to say “No, I’m not.  If you have to ask, then I’m not discreet enough for you.”

Bear, Legs Akimbo

This picture was one of the available pieces of wallpaper photography from National Geographic Magazine for May 2011. I know that pose.  I've seen many a bear in it.

You can get the photo here.  Photograph by Meta Penca.  (A pity: the photo caption identifies the particular bear as female.)

Most useless CraigsList photo ever?

This ad showed up on CraigsList the other day:

Masc casual fun - 35 (Seattle)

Nice & normal, good-looking white masucline and horny looking for some no-strings, safe, casual fun with like-minded fit bro around my age or younger.

I'me five-ten, one sixty, packing a thick 8 inches. Nice bod, hairy chest and legs.

I cannot host but can travel to you in and around Seattle. Real here ... in Seattle ... wet day

All perfectly fine, nothing out of the ordinary there.

And then it had this pic attached:

Now, I know you’ve probably seen pics in CraigsList ads which are bait-and-switch pics: knowing that some people won’t click through to read an ad if there’s no pic, some guys will add a sunset or a drawing or some other image.  Those offend a little (since you’re either looking for porn shots or some hint of what the guy on the end looks like other than his dick/ass), but they are part of “doing business”.

This one, though, what is the point of this pic?  You aren’t showing your “thick 8 inches” (heck, you aren’t even showing a bulge from it!).  You aren’t showing your “nice bod, hairy chest and legs”.  Hell, you aren’t even showing that you’re male!  But at the same time, neither does this seem to be in the same class as a bait-and-switch pic; there is a different level of intentionality attached to using this.

So, yeah, “Most useless CraigsList photo ever.”

What does “Woof!” mean?

“Woof!” is a greeting, especially in the bear community, generally meaning “Hi, I think you’re hot!”  It is the verbal (or in online chat, textual) version of a wink/smile/tug.

(Why do bears say “woof”?  The most likely answer is that the snurfling sound a real bear makes can be written as “whurf” — half growl and half snort — which easily transcribe into “woof”.  Alternately, start from the greeting “Yo, dawg!” and follow that path to get to the same destination.)

Of course, one person’s “Hi, I think you’re hot” can be another person’s “Hi, I think you’re hot, let’s have sex now.”  Take this exchange from Adam4Adam this past weekend for example.  (Of not: the guy’s only profile picture is a side shot of his dick, and his profile text is equally sparse: “Not looking for love or anything other than getting my cock off.  Blowing a load”.  Occasionally you can check out the profile and respond to a tersely worded potential sex request.  But not with this one, and especially not when I tend to be looking for kinky fetishy sex partners and the profile indicates nothing of the sort.)

him: Woof!

me: Thanks

him: which translates as "no thanks?"

me: "Woof" doesn't usually translate as a specific offer. I'm not available until later tonight anyway.

him: yeah, good luck with that

And he blocked me.  Whatever.

If you want “Woof!” to mean more than “Hi!”, that’s great.  But you’d better be ready to follow it up with an offer and specifics.

Stuff I Read: “Imaginary Encounters” by Mysh

I despise most poetry.

Spending much of my time as a kid and a teen with books, I embraced novels and comic books, works which spread a broad tableau of clear imagery and abundant words, not just telling a story but building a world.  Poetry, on the other hand, comes off as tight, small, and absorbed, twisting on individual words and phrases to depict a single idea or evoke an emotion.  When you’re used to lots of words building a story, consumed at a fast pace, having to mull over each word and syllable, backtracking over and over to get at the true “meaning” of the poem… it’s slooooooooow.

(Those who “get” poetry are hopefully saying to themselves “Yeah, that’s the point.”  Those who don’t get poetry are probably saying “Yeah, I know what you mean.”)

That said, some specific forms of structured poetry, I have great respect and even love for.  Taking an idea or emotion and capturing it in a limited number of lines, or forcing it into a rhyming couplet (or a limerick!), that awes me.  (So I guess it’s really unstructured, longer form poetry that I can’t stand.  How does that phrase go, “I don’t know what it is, I guess it’s poetry”?)  I’m especially fond of haiku (when done right, at least in the modern Western sense; some people think just three short lines of whatever is all it takes, sigh).

I recently got an e-mail from Israeli artist and filmmaker Mysh, pointing me to his site of queer haiku comics, “Imaginary Encounters”.  Wow!  Could stuff get any better than that?  Combining the elegance of haiku with shortform cartooning, usually illuminating rather than illustrating.

Highly recommended.  Not safe for work, though; some of the cartoons contain sexual imagery.

Grindr Censors User Text, Blames Apple

A week ago, I signed into Grindr and got an alert saying that my photo or profile text had been forcibly deleted because it didn’t conform to their Terms of Service.  According to the page they linked to, my crime was apparently in having (sexually) suggestive text.

This e-mail was sent to help@grindr.com:

I recently had my Grindr profile’s text zapped.  So far as I can tell, this was because something in the text was deemed “suggestive”.  Not explicit or offensive or in violation of copyright.  (Of course, since I don’t have a copy of the text that was there before, I can only go by my memory of how “suggestive” it may have been.)

We’ve become used to restrictions on imagery with social networking sites (gay and otherwise) — many won’t allow any naughty images in the publicly available pics (and especially not pics which depict actual sex), and some even require an identifiable face — so the similar restrictions you have had in place there do not bother me.

But now you’re limiting text?  Really?  And not even explicit text, but “suggestive” text?  Double really?

I never like to tie things to malice or stupidity where there may be a rational reason.  Is this something that was dictated by Apple or RIM in order to get in/stay in their app stores?  Did you get purchased by Disney?  Are you trying to back away from the market that made you popular for some reason?  (Because let’s be honest: Grindr’s #1 use is chatting up prior to hooking up.  Please don’t try to deny it.)

Limiting what people can say (or write) edges into the realm of censorship.  And even though it may technically be your right to limit what we can do through your system, if this over-the-top limitation of content is your own choice and not something forced on you (er, “insisted upon”) by external partners, I can’t help but think it’s going to bite you.  (Actually, it’s apt to bite you even if this is capitulation to external requirements.)

Here’s hoping you’ll be willing to reply to this in some understandable form, whether that’s a personal reply or a press release or a web page which addresses the issue in a generalized manner (and hopefully has guidelines for what is and is not “suggestive”).

(A URL to your existing Terms of Service isn’t going to do it, especially since it doesn’t have the same text as the app put out notifying me of the zapped text.)

Looking forward to hearing from you.

— Jim
Seattle, WA

I was finally able to dig around in their website Terms and Forums to find this:

Apple places limits on what can be displayed in a public profile.  This includes not only your picture, but also text.  Even masked text is not allowed.  This means all public profiles have to be G rated.  (link)

“Masked text” would refer to things like “f*ck” and “po**ers”.

So they are trying to pass the buck to Apple.  But when Apple did their booting of boobie apps a year ago, here what they said:

We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store (link)

Here are the full Grindr profile guidelines, which specify:

• No sexually explicit or overly suggestive text.

In others words, no, Apple doesn’t say it has to be G rated, just that it cannot be “overtly sexual”.  Notice what has happened in part: they dropped the “T”, turning “overtly” (openly) into “overly” (excessively); by definition, suggestive text cannot be “overtly” sexual.

More to the point, though, they don’t (presumably won’t) define how much becomes “excessive”.  But by use of the term “G rated” (which Apple apparently does not require), potentially anything (sexually) suggestive becomes “overly” suggestive.

We shall see, though.  I’ve entered new profile text, referencing hanky colors instead of any spelled-out activity (previously, I said something about “put me on my knees”), so the suggestiveness should be more vague; you need specialized external knowledge to decipher things.

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants, if gay social networking apps running scared caused a resurgence of the hanky code, only in textual form rather than actual cloth-in-a-pocket?

(Hmm, “kick in the pants”.  That would be dark blue with white boot print pattern, right?  Teal blue with boot print for “kick in the balls”?)

(And yes, I know there are Apple haters out there who are going to try to lay the blame right back at Apple’s feet.  Your belief is already noted; only comments with some substance beyond that tired tirade will be retained.)

More fun with “Craiglist bots”

See this post for more on these sex-post phishers.

For some reason, I got several apparent Craigslist bot responses on Friday to a post I made on Wednesday.

The “I’m so excited I can’t type” Reply

This one came from “Nga Abdullai”:

in nice shape and average good looking would like to give u massage dwviwsncq

And this from “Syble Rendina”:

hella excited to do this never done this before, kinda nervous as well kilgjl

I guess the intent is “You are so hot that I’m jerking off here just thinking about— oh fuck, I just came all over the keyboard.”

In addition to the note in the previous post about replies mentioning things I never talked about in my ad, these studiously avoid referencing anything I did mention.

The “Don’t Scam Me, Bro” Reply

From “Cory Raden”:

What's happening?  Im a real fella seeking something hot...my stat is 22 years old, 5'10, versatile and fresh.  I just got conned by a doode on here so I am trying to determine if you're real or not.  But yeah this is my buddy's email so I got to get trucking but if you wanna, I am currently on my profile site so let's swap phone #s and photos on there to be reliable.  This way we can verify to each other that we are both genuine. Don't even respond back if can't even put any time, I ain't trynna to get scammed again.  P-e-a-c-e!

It was followed by a URL, a pic of a guy playing field hockey (me.jpg), and a pic of a guy’s crotch in tighty whiteys with a hard-on (mine.jpg).

And an hour and a half later, from “Mariela Barocio”:

What's going good?  Im a real guy wanting something incredible...my stat is 22 years old, 6'1, versatile and fresh.  I just got conned by a doode on-line so I am trying to see if you're real or not.  Anyhows this is my pal's email so I gotta get bouncing but if you are serious, I am presently on my profile site so let's exchange phone #s and pix on there to be trustworthy.  This way we can show to each other that we are both legit.  Don't even respond back if can't even put any effort, I ain't trying to get scammed again.  Cya!

And it was followed by a (different) URL, a pic of a guy playing field hockey (me.jpg), and a pic of a guy’s crotch in tighty whiteys with a hard-on (mine.jpg).

I swear, it’s Attack of the Mad Libs or something.

The “Married and Down Low” Reply

This one came from “Catrice Strickland”:

hey, straight guy here curious of this, wife just went out of town and i am wanting to try... n

Gee, guy, if you want to stay married, maybe you shouldn’t use your wife’s e-mail address for cruising.  She might find out.

(You’ll note that other bot posts came from Syble and Mariela, also women’s names, and the only Nga I’ve ever met was also female.  Suggestion to the bot programmers: use only male names on replies to Men Seeking Men ads.)

All five of these had Hotmail return addresses, and all with the full name that was listed as the owner plus one or two random trailing characters.  So there’s another bot spot technique.