![]() ![]() The app has no matching process - all profiles in the grid are visible, all are fair game. On the app-missing-a-vowel, users in your area are presented in a “grid,” which has a smorgasbord of torsos and blank profiles to choose from. It gives me something like a disgraced court jester living out his days in a 16th-century dungeon, or a scary burglar who came only to steal a single vowel. It doesn’t quite evoke queers in mesh shirts, holding hands and marching through the city singing kumbaya. With pretty much no options left, and having heard all the hullabaloo, I went “unhinged” (stopped using Hinge), finally downloading the app-that-must-not-be-named.įirst off, the app logo – a creepy shadow mask – really sets up the vibe. I had no gay people in my life, and I needed at least two: one who would pound me, and another who would slap me across the face and tell me to get my act together. To be clear, my gay identity was not at all new to me - rather, it hit me that things weren’t working anymore. This parasympathetic storm came without so much as a warning! In terms of “skin hunger,” my skin was ready to punch someone at Llaga to grab the last serving of Deliciously Imperfect Vegetables. More pressingly, however: I was growing concerned that my body might explode from pent-up arousal. Also, I wanted to wait until I emanated so much sexual confidence that people would be surprised to learn that I wasn’t sexually active - only then would I visit the Dick’s Sporting Goods of my fellow man! On the scale from “Zumba instructor” to “fisting,” I landed somewhere healthily in the middle. But over the last year, I went from gay to, well, gay gay. ![]() I’m an undergrad of Indian descent, a bit below average height and my body hasn’t changed for the last four years or so. Usually, I start things when I run out of reasons for avoiding them. It would be reasonable to ask, then, why did I download the app? But maybe the better question is, why did I wait so long? Knock, knock: It’s me, your psychosexual development He immediately blocked me, disappearing from view. (And while chronologically it would have been a “preview,” I suppose anatomically it would have been a “postview,” since it’s my ass?) I imagined dramatized pictures of my ass on the big screen, narrated by the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman, accompanied by a Doja Cat musical score. Why the hurry? Maybe he worked in the back of a movie theater and misplaced the previews, so he urgently needed to put something on the screen as moviegoers trickled in. The response came so immediately that I got concerned. But I was also feeling spunky that day: “You have to see it yourself,” I said. I was sitting on the toilet, feeling little interest in renting a Zipcar to leave campus and meet up with macho man. “Send ass pic,” macho man said, messaging me from about 10 miles away. This is the second installment in a series titled “An Ethnography of Grindr.” Read part 1 here. ![]()
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