I know a little more about gay culture than I should. My cousin was gay, and let’s just say, I have seen some of the uglier parts of the underbelly of the Miami Beach gay lifestyle.
There is a phrase in Gay Slang, “Rough Trade.” It is a reference to risky homosexual sex with anonymous partners, often in public places.
Back in the day, gay sex was illegal. Gay men, often who had wives and families, were unable to have gay relationships and so casual gay sex was the only option. Since two men couldn’t get a hotel room together (which would look suspicious) this led to the rise of bathhouses, private clubs, and other venues in more progressive cities as locations for gay hookups. In other places, however, bathhouses and clubs were not possible and gay sex was had secretly in public places.
This was risky. A gay man might have no idea if the person he was hooking up with was safe or not, or of the location was safe or not.
This is where things get ugly.
While gay sex is no longer a crime and has become, for the most part, socially acceptable, there is a branch of the gay community that still fetishizes risky anonymous sex. Some even think of it as quintessential to authentic “gay culture.” There are some well known public restrooms in parts of Miami Beach that you do not want to go into after dark if you don’t want to be sodomized.
The app Grindr has exacerbated this. It’s made it even easier for gay men to have anonymous casual sex-based entirely on a superficial knowledge of the other participant.
(To be fair to the gay community, hookup apps have done that to the straight community too.)
When having an anonymous hookup (which is always a bad idea, that is a blanket statement that applies to everyone) not knowing anything about the other person can put you at risk for many terrible things.
Terrible things like being murdered and having your testicles eaten.
Hairstylist named Kevin Bacon killed, eaten by Grindr date from hell: cops
A Michigan man named Kevin Bacon was mutilated and killed by a man he met on the LGBTQ dating app Grindr, reports said.
Bacon, a 25-year-old hairstylist, met up with suspected killer Mark Latunski on Christmas Eve after they spoke on the app, according to Michigan Live.
Investigators found his car at a Dollar General parking lot and later tracked his last known location to Latunski’s house in Shiawassee County, according to the reports.
Inside the house, police found Bacon’s body hanging from the rafters with rope tied around his ankles, a local NBC affiliate reported.
Latunski told cops he killed Bacon by stabbing him in the back and slitting his throat, according to the report.
He also told cops he cut off Bacon’s testicles and ate them during the murder, WILX reported.
If you want to fuck a random stranger you met on an app, that is your business. But even as you drop your pants, do not drop your situational awareness.
This is a universality. It applies to everyone.
But I suspect that women are perhaps a little more inclined to listen to their gut feeling and bail while from my peripheral experience with a subset of gay culture, there are men who find that gut feeling of danger to be enticing.
Remember, you are your own last line of defense, and you don’t want to get your rocks cut off while trying to get your rocks off.
Grindr is PostMates for Jeffery Dhamer.
Dahmer-clone plus technology. Not a good combo. 😮
In the UK, the hook up place was in the public restrooms as well. Unfortunately for gay men, the people they met in those public restrooms were just as likely to be there to bash a poof as they were to have sex.
I met my second wife on line. The different amount of safety we both put in place for our first meeting was substantial. That included meeting in a public place, mutual friends, safety calls.
A friend of mine use to do photography as a sideline. He’d always load his camera’s in the parking lot before going in and take a couple of test pictures before going in. And those pictures always had the license plates of the vehicles the people he was meeting drove up in.
Meeting new people is always dangerous.
The danger in these meet up apps is not really any different than the old school methods. The real difference is that the meetup apps can give you a false sense of thinking you know somebody when in reality you have been talking to a fiction.
On the one hand, I understand and feel sympathetic to the gay men of generations past. When sodomy laws and social stigma left them with no options beyond cruising, coded exchanges, and tremendous risk. On the other hand, there’s no such excuse for that nonsense in #currentyear.
I can also understand why gay men in the present use dating apps. It’s pretty much the way of the world these days. Hell, I actually a Grindr account of my own. I don’t use it much and have never actually gotten a date via the app… But, I also have used other dating apps and dating sites with more success*.
Is it really so hard to meet for a cup of coffee in public first?
* Ah, the glory of being a bisexual geeky, balding, middle-aged dude. I’m awkward and insecure and terrible at dating twice over!
Coffee is easy, yes, and would be a wise first step. It’s a lot easier to pretend to be a nice person online than in person.
However…. Pretending to be a sane, fun, kind person for the duration of a coffee first meeting is also pretty easy.
Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned, but….
Part of the issue, as I see it, is the rapid progression to more private and intimate activities within a timescale amenable to a predator being able to fake normalcy (1). This is true whatever both parties’ genders. It’s harder to fake not being a creep, let alone evil, over the course of multiple dates and a week or so, so there’s a better chance of flagging serious problems pre-sex.
(1) as in, not serial killer or other vile personality types
Exactly. That’s why other reasonable precautions should be taken: tell someone you trust where you’re going, don’t abuse liquor or other intoxicants to the point of blacking out, don’t befriend the Clintons, etc.