Playing PING pong

Playing PING pong

Meeting some one new is like making a financial investment. There's the same amount of initial lift, the same amount of trepidation, the same amount of uncertainty when you're considering the various options, the same amount of "will I, or won't I?" that plagues you while your finger hovers around the choice, and the same amount of happy surprise (mingled with still-niggling second and third and fourth thoughts) when you realise that you probably chose to chat up the right person.

Welcome to the gay chat room, and yes, I'm a capitalist pig. Whatever gave me away, I wonder.

;-)

I've been a chatroom afficiando for a long time now. I don't subscribe to that by-now-famous picture of gay men circling and circling each other in deserted parks, till they finally lock eyes with the hot-bod of the night and take him home for a screw. Ever since I discovered the internet, and such things called chat rooms, my opening lines have been "asl?", and the intended (if he likes me) gives me his age, sex and location. True, the 'sex?' part is a bit inconsequential in a gay chat room, but that's just part of the baggage we gay men have to live with, in order to survive in a heterosexual world. I'm not complaining. That much.

But, despite the better quality men and the less hassle involved in finding a match via cyberland rather than circle-circle-park-situation, the trepidation/ nervousness/ intricacies never lose their shape. They're all there. Perhaps, reinforced, because in this situation, you're meeting a person online, so you really have no idea how he will behave, whether he walks funny, whether he talks funny and a host of other IMPORTANT items, till that coffee date or that sex hook-up actually turns up. And that's where you decide and say: "Yes, please, sir, two lumps of sugar for me" or "Ewww! Too bitter!"

Which probably makes the internet chat all the more important as a First Date (Of Sorts).

Next issue: What actually happens in an internet gay chat date? Don't miss it!