Many moons ago, when Allygatorlover had asked me how often I blogged, I replied confidently enough that it was at least two to three times a week. He'd seemed impressed back then. This evening, however, over a late-night coffee conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmother and the Penguin over the online chat phenomenon, I realized, that was hardly the case anymore. The fact is: my blogging activities have been taken over slowly but surely by the rather more lurid promises held out by the Late Night Chat.
I've always looked at online chat as the best form of cruising. No more the roundabout-walkathons of my sallow youth in Minto Park in Calcutta or CP in Delhi. Bombay has been a coming-of-age for me on more counts than one - and Cruising Methods also falls in this category. Listing user profiles, uploading pictures, writing some (hopefully) fun and witty introductory remarks, and then the usual shit about body type, sexual preferences, yadayadayada... The idea of screening who you meet before you meet them was so much more appealing that walking round and round the proverbial mulberry bush, making furtive eye contact, and then probably finding out that the guy you fixed your glare on doesn't know a word of English.
But the thing is, the damn thing is addictive. The thrill of logging in to the website and seeing that popup window scream out NEW MESSAGE is racy, to say the least. That prompts SS to log in regularly from home, even when his assistants are working in the very next room. That prompts me to regularly sign on and chat till late into the night. I've become so regular on a certain chatroom, I can pretty much predict who I'm going to see there, and who I'm not. That place now holds only one novelty for me - chatting with the foreigners who drop by from time to time, looking to chat with an Indian guy, because as I've told SS, I've somehow come to the conclusion that most of the Indian men in Bombay who're online are thoroughly boring or not my type or both. Somehow, it's the foreign guys I prefer to chat with - not just in the hope they're coming to Bombay soon on a little trip that might mean some great sex, but there's also that fantastic thrill that comes from flirting even when they're not coming anywhere close to the subcontinent...
Am I the new Gay Jane Goody?
The Penguin asked us this evening, whether we didn't find the entire situation a tad boring. He had profiles of his own on all three or four major sites, but has deleted them lately, citing 'boredom'. (Boredom, by the way, is a common phenomenon with the Penguin. *grin*) But both SS and I replied that we were anything but bored, really.
"You can leave it, if you make up your mind, after a point, that you've had enough of it, and don't want anymore of the whole stuff," said SS, "But no, I don't think there's a situation boredom sets in. It's like CT said - addictive. Quite addictive."
The addiction in my case, of course, goes an extra step than it does for SS. He doesn't find himself awake at 3 am, chatting with NYC-HotBoi (or whatever they're called), a smart, hot 27 year old doctor from New York City, laughing about the lack of edible Bombay boys, and trying to convince him to come over for his next vacation. I do. And he doesn't have a list of five men who've made tentative plans to have sex with him over the weekend. I do. And he doesn't suddenly bump into an ex online in the dead of night. I do.
This morning, after my sex-date left, and the flatmate was finally free to come out of her room, she asked, very matter-of-factly, while pouring out some water for herself, "So, how was it?"
And I thought - Is this routine? Do the flatmates of all gay men ask them this when a sexual encounter has ended?
Or is it because of my apparent addiction?
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