Iodine: Where shall we meet?

Mucky_mouth: Corner of Canal Street 7.30, I’ll be wearing a brown leather coat.

Iodine: Tell me what you’re going to do to me again.

Mucky_mouth: Have you been a naughty boy?

We live in a society where we can get anything online now, including casual sex, and the once taboo around the subject seems to be disappearing quicker and quicker. With services all over the internet to find people; gaydar.com, gay.com, faceparty.com and they’re only a few. In fact, you’d probably be pretty pushed to find anyone who didn’t have a profile on one of these sites on a busy Saturday night out in the Village of Manchester, or on a quiet Monday night come to think of it. My personal belief of these sites is that they’re quite sad (ok pot kettle black, I admit I do have a profile on one of these sites).

Maybe I am just living in the past when I say I want to be wined and dined before sixty-nined. But surely I can’t be the only one. I’ve tried to argue my case with several friends with profiles who regularly meet men of the internet for sex and they all say the same thing, ‘we’re in the 21st century now, there’s no need for formalities.’ I beg to differ. So you go on the internet you scroll through profiles until you see someone who takes your fancy, you send them a message, you wait for a reply, they check out your profile (forget the profile they go straight to your pictures) they like what they see so you hook up and have sex. OK so there’s no formalities, but aren’t the formalities good? Aren’t the formalities the chats we have with someone before we discover if we like them or not? Don’t the formalities keep us safe? It’s those first lines and those first impressions that count. Formalities are fun, they’re social events, meeting in the pub, going to the pictures, spending an evening getting to know each other giggling at each others jokes, flirting, having one to many to drinks.

You build social skills in these situations, you laugh in these situations, you don’t do that sat in front of a computer. OK so dates aren’t always fun, and some can have those awful painful silences, but at least when you have those dates you know that person isn’t for you, and you don’t sleep with them.. How can you decide that when you first contact is offering yourself on a plate with a side dish of KY in an internet chat room? So maybe I’m 22 going on 40, maybe going on 60 actually, but still wouldn’t it be nice to be treated to a meal, an evening of company rather than a case of wham bam thank you mam? In this day and age it isn’t safe to meet up with men off the internet and jump into bed. I’m guessing someone you met off the internet has probably met quite a lot of others in this way, isn’t this how STI’s spread? Not that I’m saying everyone who uses the internet for sex doesn’t use condoms but you pretty much guarantee that somewhere down the line somebody hasn’t.

the ever-evolving online meet experience, and whether it really is possible to meet "the one" out there in cyber-spaceSo from now on I think I’m going to use the internet for booking my easyjet flights and browsing the Victoria Wood fan site. And as for dating, I’ll just wait and see who I bump into in everyday life, unless you can set me up?

Tags: cybersex, gay men, sexuality