by Rick R. Reed
“Yeah, right.” Ethan blew out a big sigh and hit the Tab key to take him to the first box needing to be filled in. “That’s not the way it happens these days. These days guys meet online. Period. Jane Austen would be appalled.”
Filling out the application to be a member of wingpeople.com was not all that different than filling out a job application. Ethan shook his head. That wasn’t true at all! Filling out a job application was much easier. At least a job application didn’t ask you about your most intimate physical dimensions, or if you considered yourself a top or a bottom or “versatile.” A job application would never ask if you considered yourself to have a swimmer’s build or if there was “more of you to love.” A job application would never ask if you “partied,” although they might test to see if you did, if they became serious about hiring you. Filling out paperwork for a job would never require you to tell, in great detail, what you were looking for in a potential mate.
But Ethan supposed all this information, all this nosy prying, was for a good purpose, which was to match him up with other like-minded souls. And Ethan actually adored the idea of that. He was not one of those middle-aged men he saw wandering around Halsted Street dressed in head-to-toe Abercrombie & Fitch, hoping to find a “boy” of no more than thirty years or so.
Ethan wanted a companion, someone he could relate to, someone with a bit of a shared history. He wondered if this route could ever deliver such a bird.
He wondered if such a bird even existed, or if it had gone the way of the dodo.
Finally, Ethan got through the laborious screens of questions and was ready to hit Submit. He was even pleased with the photo of himself he had decided on using, dredged up from some of his event publicity files from his work folder. In the photo, taken just a few months ago, he was shown smiling with the director of the latest offering at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He had simply cropped out the grinning, bespectacled director, and voilà, he had himself a halfway-decent headshot. At least the picture was honest and, in its way, flattering. He hoped at least one or two men out there in cyberland would be inclined to agree.
He hit Submit, wondering as he did if the obvious sexual connotations of the word had occurred to anyone else.
As soon as a thank-you message popped up, telling Ethan his application was in the queue awaiting approval—which would take eight to twelve hours—sweat began to pop up on his brow. “Good Lord,” he wondered aloud, “what did I just do?”
He thought of the poor folks whose forays into dating sites and social networks like Myspace or Friendster ended up on Dr. Phil or, worse, Judge Judy, and the woe those people experienced when they exposed their more intimate sides to the world. They were idiots, as Judy and Phil would say, with no more sense than God gave a grasshopper. His little adventure could end up coming back to haunt him. What, for example, would Bubbles have to say about his profile once it was approved and active? Would he snicker behind manicured nails and call over the entire office to gape and guffaw at his photo and his predilection for forties noir classics? And that kind of information was the least of his worries—he had divulged to the entire world his sexual likes and dislikes, for cryin’ out loud.
He got up and got a Coke Zero and tried to reassure himself that he was just flattering himself. Everyone was online these days, and the truth was no one would even care about him or his little profile. All he needed to worry about was that some imagined man out there, reasonably good-looking, well-read, and with a quirky sense of humor, would pause long enough at his profile to send him a message.
AND WONDER of wonders, someone did… the very next day. But the circumstances leading to that first message, and the many, many messages that followed it, took a somewhat circuitous route.
Ethan had checked the Yahoo! email address he’d set up just for wingpeople.com—[email protected]—at least a dozen times since his profile had gone active late the previous night. And each time he checked, he was dismayed to find no one had reached out. “Come on, Ethan. You haven’t reached out to anyone either. And besides, it’s only been a few hours. Patience, my dear, is a virtue.”
By the time he was settled in his cube at LA Nicholes, he thought sure someone would have contacted him by now. After all, it had been almost ten hours since his profile had gone active. Yet the empty mailbox item with its surly “no messages” continued to taunt him, making him wonder if he was not quite up to snuff for the online game. After all, that crazy queen Bubbles claimed he didn’t know how he’d find time for work with all the suitors lining up for his hand… or whatever appendage he had on offer.
Maybe Ethan had erred in being honest with the photo? Maybe his whole strategy was naïve. Maybe this game was won not on honesty but on embellishments. After all, he had checked Bubbles’s profile, and the young man didn’t even show his face, just a close-up of a very tan, very defined chest… which could have belonged to anyone.
Ethan checked his mail one more time and found two messages, one trying to interest him in a bigger penis—referring to his own, which was not what Ethan had in mind—and the other telling him his PayPal account needed to be verified. Since he didn’t even have a PayPal account, he wasn’t concerned.
So it seemed the spammers had already found him and his newborn mailbox, although the men of Chicago were still determined to ignore him and it.
After finding no messages at lunch from anyone on wingpeople.com, the thought continued to nag at him that perhaps he really was going about this the wrong way. His decent photograph of a man in his early forties, his likes of classic film and Kabuki theater, and his collection of Patricia Highsmith novels were, apparently, of no interest to anyone.
No, Ethan knew, if he wanted to roll the dice in the high-stakes game of online amour, he would need to try on a new persona, one that was flattering and, at the same time, not so far removed from the truth that it would expose him as a liar and a fake should an actual face-to-face meeting ever result.
He also knew he needed more peace and quiet than he would find here in the office to do this work, so he powered down his computer, stuffed a few Playbills in his messenger bag, and stood, peering over the partition at Bubbles, who, he could see, was right now instant messaging someone on wingpeople.com. He heard him whisper something like, “Oh, you nasty, nasty man!” Ethan was tempted to just be quiet and see if he could read what had prompted Bubbles’s delighted whispered comment, but he had work to do. And it was the kind of work that needed peace… for inspiration.
He cleared his throat, and Bubbles’s shoulders went up as he stiffened at his keyboard. He hurriedly clicked his mouse until the instant message screen disappeared from view. An Excel spreadsheet of LA Nicholes employees and their phone numbers was hiding behind it, looking perfectly respectable.
Bubbles turned to glare at him. “Yes?” he hissed in a way that would have done Joan Crawford proud back in the day. Bubbles could convey disgust, annoyance, and irritation beautifully in one three-letter word. Now that was eloquence.
Ethan smiled, trying to indicate his innocence of the little project he had seen Bubbles working on. After all, he was going to be engaged in similar work just as soon as he got home, so he didn’t want to travel too high up on the road. “You know what? I’m not feeling so great. I’m just going to take some work with me and go home. I should be back tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Bubbles turned to resume staring at the screen.
As Ethan left the office, he wondered if the new profile he planned on creating at home would be time-stamped, and if so, would Bubbles see it and put two and two together? Heading outside, he reminded himself that he was flattering himself once more with the assumption that Bubbles would even care.
ETHAN DESPAIRED and took another sip of his Coke Zero, to which he had added a generous shot of Dewar’s. It seemed there was no way to be honest and embellish his cyber self at the same time. To be an online “catch” might be beyond his reach.
He sat back in his desk c
hair and rubbed his eyes in an effort to forestall the headache he felt coming on. Maybe this whole idea was simply ludicrous. Like the bars, perhaps online dating was just as superficial and just as much a club for younger folks. Really, this whole online game was no different than standing around in a bar, wearing your most flattering jeans and T-shirt and hoping someone would take notice. Being ignored in the cyber world was exactly the same as being ignored in the real world. The only difference, Ethan supposed, was that in the cyber world, there was no one around to witness your humiliation.
Ah, but in cyberspace one could do something one could not in the real world… and that was be someone else. Ethan glanced around his little studio apartment, almost as if someone was hiding and able to read his mind to see what he was contemplating. Don’t go there, Ethan….
He glanced at the screen of Chicago men in front of him, with their manly, athletic faces and bodies, and knew he could never compete. A little voice in the back of his mind, one that sounded suspiciously like his dear departed mother, told him, “Stop being so hard on yourself, boy. Your self-esteem is lower than a snake’s belly. Why, if no one is talking to you, you just have to get up some gumption and make the first move. Show some initiative!”
Ethan had never listened to his mother, even when she was alive, and saw no good reason to start now. What good would actually writing to some of these guys do him? If they answered at all, they would probably tell him, with varying degrees of politeness, to get lost. It was the same thing that happened to him in the bars, over and over, whenever he’d had the audacity to try to strike up a conversation with a stranger.
The thought kept returning, nagging at him like a mischievous little boy. Why not? Why not just create a whole new persona? Have some fun! Be the man you always dreamed you could be… and then see who you reel in. Of course you’ll never actually meet any of these people, but the responses might be amusing—at least more amusing than watching DVR-recorded episodes of Judge Judy or Who Wants to be a Millionaire. What would be the harm?
And just like that, Ethan put fingers to keyboard and conception, like a sperm penetrating the walls of an egg, began on Ethan’s new persona. He snickered to himself as he typed in the URL for Hot or Not, where he knew the face of his new persona was just waiting for him to come along, click on it, save it to his pictures file, and take the first step in becoming a whole new man.
This was going to be fun! And again, Ethan thought, what harm could possibly come from it?
Hot or Not offered a bounty of photos from which to choose. Ethan had only a couple of prerequisites. He did want a man close to his own age. For some reason, choosing the face of a twenty-three-year-old crossed some arbitrary line in Ethan’s mind, even though this whole enterprise was founded on deceit and subterfuge; but he just couldn’t be that dishonest. And he also wanted to make sure he did not choose the photo of anyone from Chicago or even close by. He would stick to areas as far-flung as Seattle or San Francisco, where the chances of someone local recognizing his new face on wingpeople were slim. Again, back to the arbitrary rules, he wanted to keep his profile based in his own hometown, perhaps out of a perverse desire to see if maybe some of those who had once scorned him would come sniffing around, should he arm himself with a blindingly handsome face and an array of dazzling pastimes, like skydiving, snowboarding, and a taste for outsider art.
After searching through countless profiles and feeling both chagrined that there were so many beautiful men in the world and hopeful that now one of them could be him, Ethan settled on the perfect candidate for his new self. Tony lived in Portland, Oregon, where he practiced veterinary medicine. Like Ethan, he was a gay man in his early forties. Unlike Ethan, he had the kind of good looks Ethan was sure turned heads in the street. In fact, he had the kind of good looks Ethan was certain would make grown women weep, cause grown men to fling themselves down on the ground and wonder why they should go on living, and children want him for their daddy. Tony’s profile and picture had been up on the site for quite some time, and Ethan noted that Tony landed squarely in the eight-to-ten range on a scale of one to ten, ten being the very best looking. Just looking at Tony, Ethan knew the lower marks Tony had garnered—so few, so very few—were probably from jealous old queens who hated him because he was beautiful. Tony’s interests lay in eighties music, cooking, travel, photography, and theater. A very reasonable part of Ethan tugged at his conscience, telling him he should just create an account of his own and contact Tony. They did have several things in common, especially the theater part. Maybe something would happen….
Yeah, right. Tony was the kind of guy who would have passed right by Ethan if he encountered him in a bar, making him feel invisible and unworthy.
No, stick to the plan, Ethan told himself, right-clicking on Tony’s photograph and saving it to his pictures file as “Ethan.” It wouldn’t matter if he used his own name. Who would know? He looked nothing like the gorgeous Tony, and Ethan was, while certainly not a common name like John or David, common enough that this character and he could share it.
He lingered over the tantalizing close-up of Tony, pleased at his two-second makeover. Tony had a full head of silver hair, black eyebrows and lashes, intense pale blue eyes, and the kind of tan one got on the slopes in Aspen. His jawline was strong, his nose patrician, and the few wrinkles on his face only served to give him character, making him look like someone who laughed a lot. His teeth were perfect and the shade of whiteness that hinted at professional intervention. He wore a tiny diamond stud in one ear. His faded blue Oxford-cloth button-down shirt was open just enough to reveal a mat of black chest hair. Ethan could only imagine the kind of pull Tony would get on wingpeople.com.
Right then and there, Ethan decided to make this little adventure into a social experiment. Yes, there was some risk to what he planned, but it would be interesting to see what occurred. What Ethan wanted to do was leave most of his personal stats the same, other than some of the more obvious identifying ones, like where he worked, his alma mater, and his hometown. By keeping all his interests—in and out of the bedroom—the same as before, he could see how much difference simply putting a different face on things would make. Essentially he would still be showing the world the same person he was inside, but with simply a much more handsome face. Wasn’t that what they did on Extreme Makeover every single week? And Ethan never heard anyone crying foul about that.
Ethan had little doubt what would occur, these being superficial times we lived in. But still, it might be gratifying, in a way, to see himself proved wrong.
He logged back on to wingpeople.com, found his profile, and hit the Edit key. Once in that mode, he uploaded Tony’s picture to replace his own and wondered if there were folks on the other end of wingpeople.com who were on the lookout for such trickery. Even if there were, what were they going to do? Shoot him? Sue him for fraud? Post a huge banner on the home page with his real photo and his new one with “Fake” written across it in bold red letters?
Ethan knew people did stuff like this all the time. He just hoped Tony wasn’t planning a trip to Chicago anytime soon.
Ethan hit Submit and whispered, “Let the adventure commence.”
WITHIN A half hour, Tony had eighteen messages in the mailbox he had set up in conjunction with wingpeople.com. Eighteen! And only three of those were spam. Within thirty minutes, with only a different face, fifteen people had felt compelled to chat Ethan up, whereas not one had before. And all because of a facial photograph. Were people really so superficial? As his email gonged to alert him to a new incoming message, Ethan was forced to concede that, yes, people really were that superficial.
Quickly, Ethan tore through the messages. And just as quickly, he saw that many of them were not worth answering. Most were fawning emails telling Ethan how gorgeous he was and how the sender would do anything if such a heavenly creature could just condescend to drop him a line. Ethan could imagine the writers of these pathetic messages on their knees bowing up
and down, whispering “I am not worthy! I am not worthy!” The other group was nasty, nasty missives from very dirty boys, boys with filthy minds and no scruples. Without even the benefit of a proper introduction, or even so much as a how-do-you-do, these young men cut straight to the meat of the matter, if you’ll pardon the expression. Without even knowing how he liked his coffee, if he slept on his side or his back, or if he leaned toward the right or left politically speaking, they used spare, raw language to tell Ethan how much they wanted to suck his big dick, fuck his ass hard, have him fuck their asses hard, eat his cum, drink his piss, and a couple even wanted to lick his feet, especially if they were smelly. Ethan rolled his eyes, appalled, offended, amused, and aroused all at once.
What kind of luck did these poor souls have in the romance department, if one could even call what they were trading in romance? Didn’t their mothers teach them any social graces? Didn’t Mom tell them to at least say hello before offering to perform fellatio, as one fellow promised, for hours and hours?
Ethan wasn’t really sure how he should respond to these blatant sexual come-ons. He was surprised to find his face burning as he read, in graphic detail, what so many Chicago men were willing to do to a complete stranger with whom they had hitherto absolutely no acquaintance. I will suck off not only you, but all of your friends. And after I’ve taken each and every one of their creamy loads down my hungry throat, I will get on my hands and knees and let all of you take me from behind… bareback, and fill my boy pussy with man cream. I don’t care how many friends you have, either. My personal best is thirty-six loads in one night, and I’m willing to see if I can top that (or should I say bottom?).