It hasn't been five days and as you can guess, I am back on PR. Its that weird gravitational pull towards something which is like an essential part of your life. Including its previous version G4M, it has been such an integral part of my life. Like the one and only portal that sort of lets you disassociate yourself from the straight, normative world and drown yourself in a world full of people who you can instinctively relate to. And oh yeah, also have sex with them. Gay "Dating" Sites: Maintaining Sex Lives since the 90s. Sex becomes so easy in the gay world. All you need to do is just chat with someone. And there you go. You got your fill for next week or so. It's like a recharge coupon. There's no chase. There's no efforts. There's no anticipation. Sex is just there. In a giant buffet platter. Help yourself whenever you like.
When sex becomes like food, then everything related to it becomes very objective. Like I have no real motivation or drive to actually log on to the site. It's just a habit. A routine. Whenever the comp is on I just have to click on the bookmark without even giving it any thought. Like it's a given. So to break that habit is far more difficult than breaking away from something you're passionate about. I am in fact, trying to break away from the intense emotional attachment I fell into with someone. And I find myself to be far more efficient at that than to break away from PR. I guess its just not about sex after all. Its a strange kind of addiction. To just escape away to a world where you feel like you finally belong to. Although this sense of belongingness is questionable, but just for a few moments it feels like you're surrounded by people who you are strangely closer to than anybody else. Even though they don't see you. And even if they see you and choose to look away. There's a strange inherent feeling of comfort and relief in this world. It just feels like home. A very dysfunctional home, but your home.
I am very biased about PR. Since G4M was taken over by PR four years ago, I have seen it evolve into what stands today. And what it is today is so entirely contradictory to what G4M was. It was a community back then. People used to talk and interact and make friends. People had the decency to at least put up a conversation even if all they were looking for was sex. Now it just feels so plastic. There is absolutely no effort, Its all straight to the point and so mechanical. They can just make a movie about robots with artificial intelligence who discover sexual pleasures. Hi. Hi. Where in Delhi? South. You? West. What are your likings? I like ABC. What about you? I like XYZ. Cool, When are you free? Right now. Let's meet? Alright, here's my number...
And this is a rare occasion when you do find a mutual attraction. Most of the time its just ticking off checklists. Checklists of acceptable qualities in a potential mate. It's not a conversation. Its like an interview. So here is my biased opinion and I know you are going to hate me for saying this. But what the hell. PR is meant for a very specific section of the gay community. Cisgendered, masculine, 'straight acting', conventionally "good" looking gay men. Most of whom, who are so privileged in different ways that all they care about is conforming to the that industrial stereotype of The Gay Man. It's the same stereotype, images of whom are plastered on the home page of PR itself. Its a market demographic. And PR is a product moulded and modified to cater very specifically to them. If you don't fall anywhere within that normative section of the spectrum, you are going to have a very hard time. If you're queer in anyway, even just by the appearance of your body, you are going to need a LOT of patience.
Once I started going through my transition of gender identity, I realized that the perception of me also evolved alongwith it. Its like I was invisible before that as I wasn't conventionally good looking or masculine enough as per the stereotype. But after I started embracing my feminine side and flaunting it as well, I realized I had everyone's attention. People started to actually look at me and not just look through me. Now apart from the general appreciation and admiration, which I am humbly thankful for; there are two main type of perceptions here: Femme-Phobic and Femme-Phillic. The first one is a very apparent and blatant display of disgust and resentment towards men who are feminine. Almost 8 out of 10 profiles on PR mention the ineligibility section on their checklist: No sissies. No aunties. No girlies. No trannies. And so on. Some profiles go as far as being outright sexist with profound words like "I am gay because I am a Man. And I like to have sex with men, not women. So please, be a man before you decide to contact me. Not a woman." It was quite hard to actually suddenly realize on which margin of the gay community you really stand upon. The second type of perception was the intense attraction and attention. Like these men, they will take interest in you just because you are a man who is being feminine. They are mostly straight or bisexual identified men who don't considered having sex with effeminate men as gay because for them the effiminate men are essentially women. So they are straight because being gay is obviously somehow an inferiority than being straight. Because you see, these so called straight men (who are technically termed as MSMs in medical research terminology) never a passive participate in sex with men. They only penetrate and never get penetrated. So that keeps their sense of masculinity intact, because their ass has never been fucked. It's like somehow all the masculine ideologies about concepts of Pride and Honor is stored in an invisible hymen of patriarchy placed a little inside of their anuses, that once breached can never be restored. Its as twisted as the perception about a woman's virginity in our society.
These men are the men who I have sex with. Because I don't want to be in any way involved with that section of the gay man stereotype. Because this section of men, are the men who at least look at me. Whatever their reason, they are in some way attracted to me. They at least make the effort to approach me. And this is where Talulah takes her shades off, shakes her head, folds her arms and starts lecturing: They are not looking at you. They are looking at a mass of flesh with a hole. Two perhaps. A hole for them to fuck. You are just a reduction into an object for them like a blow up doll. So any attention from them doesn't mean it has any real value. Because you will always be a little offended when those men ask you if you will dress up, wear heels, make up, and a thong when they are fucking you. Maybe the whole erotica of someone wanting to fuck you because you look so hot in it, was lost somewhere when I was trying to build up my self-confidence in my genderqueerness brick by brick just a few years ago. But to be honest, everytime I dress up I not only feel like I am in my own skin, but I also feel like a sexual being. Like I can literally feel every part of my body as capable of sexual pleasure. So I do fantasize about experiencing actual sex while I am riding on the high of such sexual realization. So yes. I go back to PR. Everytime. Because I like the idea of being objectified by these men. It's a strange illustration of my inherent weakness for men in general through my desires of submission towards these men. And this is when Talulah transforms into Bridget.
Now my Bridget is actually a far more twisted version of Bridget Jones. It all started obviously with the movie after I watched it I used to joke around that I am the essential gay version of Bridget Jones because I used to relate so much to the character. The eternal search for a man and finding love. Being concerned about basic things like losing weight and doing something about her career. And then obviously reaching that fantasy of finding men who are actually interested in her. I used to feel like that. When i was 16. When I was hopeful that, that fantasy would come true some day. It's been ten years now, this Bridget has come a long way and that fantasy never came true for her. She is so weak at heart that she falls for every other man who treats her with some affection. She gets so overtly emotionally involved with men who she is supposed to be friends with that in the end she finds herself in a tangled mess of complications and she realizes she is in love. And obviously she gets her heart broken because of course, those men are unavailable. And she was aware of it since Day 1. But she falls for them anyway. Because she is a rejection junkie. She has lost so many a potential friendships in life that could have only enriched her own life because she would drown in her own conflated emotions and then drive them away as she would realize that she is drowning. And once she has crashed and burned, she tries to heal. Tries to be born like a phoenix from its own ashes. And while she does that, in the meantime she uses sex to suppress that eternal weakness for men that has become the bane of her life. There's a strange comfort in being with these men. Because for once, they are the ones who are attracted to you. For whatever reasons it may be. They want me. And a strange sense of gratitude takes over and makes me want to submit to them. Forgive all the ways they are wrong or problematic. Ignore everything else and just give in to the fact that I am with someone who actually wants me.
And then, next morning I wake up and find Talulah sitting there staring at me with narrowed eyes and shaking her head in absolute judgment. She has decided to give Bridget a silent treatment.
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