…Are among many other revealing pictures guys who claim to be “discrete” post on sites like Adam4Adam.com and Grindr. While they are a neatly, organized 12-to-a-page photo spread (Yes I do frequent them), the man-meat catalog that is A4A has me wondering is this the future of gay cultures’ dating scene. Allow me to set the scene: *Clears throat and does his best Sophia Petrillo impression*

Picture it: Fresno. Summer 2001.

There I was: A fledgling gay making my way through the dance floor of the local it-bar, BamBams. The tribal beats of Pepper Mashay’s “Dive in to the Pool” begin to pound through the speakers…

“Well, alright…” The club erupts into cheers and hands fly up into the air “How all feeling tonight? Ya’ll feelin’ good?” It’s almost deafening the amount of energy that’s pouring from the, now packed, dance floor. Dancers begin to make their way atop the go-go boxes with water bottles in hand. I had never seen anything like it, but knew something big was about to go down. Still making my way through the writhing crowd, I spot him. Blond hair, no shirt, jeans barely hugging his hips and beads of sweat glistening off his chest showed evidence he had been there long before I showed up.

“..But you see, Baby. It’s a little hot in here, in more ways than one. So I’ve got a little proposal to make to each and every one of you here tonight. I think it’s time we all go down to the pool…”

I swallow deeply. I’d never been totally immersed in this kind of environment. Sure I was part of my local Gay-Straight Alliance, but this was the big leagues! This was a club! I feel a warm hand grab my arm. “Shirtless’- I had dubbed him- was peering down at me from the stage with a grin, motioning me to join him.

“…Ya’ll wanna go down to the pool? I know that you all wanna go DOWN to the pool…”

“You’d better hurry.” His words somehow were clear over the speakers pumping 4 feet away from me. I took his other arm and found myself chest to chest looking into his hazel-brown eyes.

“… C’mon! C’MON! Let’s go!

LET’S!
GET!
SOAKIN’ WET!“

The dancers on top of the go-go boxes began to flail their arms dousing the crowd with water, their tight bodies move to the song’s main hook. The crowd is loving it, welcoming the streams of water being splashed all over. It was a frenzy of bodies as the laser lights and fog machines pulsed. Shirtless and I were on stage, our bodies moving as one. It was at that moment I knew that being out and meeting someone new was terrifying, exciting and liberating all at once.

A few songs later we managed to make our way out onto the patio. We began to make small talk, but never revealing too much to each other about ourselves. My eyes nervously darted back and forth only to occasionally steal a glance at him smiling at me. He asked me if I’d be back again the following night – I had made no plans for it, but if he was going to be there, then I knew I had to be too. I told him I’d come out the following night, and with a smirk he took my hand and lead me back onto the dance floor.

This was before the luxuries of cellphones and the modern internet we know and are addicted to today. Back then if you had one of those Nokia 3210s you were pretty awesome. Instead, screen names were exchanged, be it AOL Instant Messanger, ICQ or -for the time and scene- gay.com. Shirtless and I exchanged screen names after a few weekends of being dance floor dancing partners. After a few weeks of IMing each other on Gay.com and AIM we moved on to seeing each other and grabbing lunch. After dating for about 8 months we wound up making it official and got together in March 02. It was a relationship that lasted me 9 years. Some good, some bad, but no regrets. But this brings me back to my tag line that some of you lost interest in when there were no pictures.

Today it’s all too convenient to hide behind “Private Pictures” and a screen name of SFHOTJOCKDUDE86. And if you don’t catch the eye of your potential suitor with your standard iphone-in-the-mirror shot (Checks his Gravatar photo: shit) then it’s on to the next one. Sure the club scene still is out there and alive as ever in the Castro, but now it’s just a common ground. Clubs and bars used to be the place you needed to go (well outside of seedy parks. *ahem*) to find gays like you. Gay.com was just a specialized chat room that allowed you to connect with other gay men when the clubs weren’t open. I feel that with the introduction of Manhunt, Adam4Adam, Grindr and the like the experience of the hunt – so to speak – is dying out. Being newly single, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t um… *ahem*… met the locals…but there’s something that doesn’t feel quite like it used to. Everything seems like it needs to be planned. “Can you host?”, “When can you host?”, “Are you discrete” are now the standard when it used to be just a simple “Hey, how’s it going?” as the two of you bobbed to the beat of the bass drum.

I think it was that needing to get to know your partner rather than exchanging sexts or a tide of emails back and forth which allowed my ex and I to last for so long. I really don’t even look forward to doing it all over now with the aforementioned methods of meeting people. I’d love to hear what some of you folks think about sites like the ones I listed and their effects on our dating culture. Do you think they’re easier ice breakers than just walking up to some one, or only help to contribute to the *Internet Fuckwad Theory *(while that’s mainly for online video games, I think it also applies to dating/ hook-up sites), or do you think they’re just merely designed to do what they’re designed to do and nothing more.