Binge

by Tyler Oakley

  As we were trying to figure out what movie to watch, he took a sip of his drink and asked if I wanted anything.

  “That lemonade looks good, thanks.”

  “Hmmm, I don’t think I have any lemonade.” He walked to the fridge.

  I looked at him, trying to read if he was joking. Straight-faced and clueless, he took a sip of his drink, a murky, whitish, thick liquid that I had spent all night assuming was lemonade.

  I felt uneasy. “Wait . . . what are you drinking then?”

  He smiled and pulled a carton of egg whites out of his fridge. I squinted to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me as he topped off his glass.

  “No . . .” My jaw dropped as he gulped half of his glass down.

  “Good for personal training!” He put the carton back in the fridge. He came back to his bed, pressed play on the movie, assumed his position behind me as my big-spoon cuddle buddy, and treated me to the most distinct egg breath I’d ever experienced. I could have sworn he was deliberately breathing extrahard behind me, and my stomach felt wobbly for the rest of the night.

  THOU SHALT NOT FANGIRL

  There’s nothing wrong with knowing a bit of background about the person you’re about to hook up with. In fact, I encourage it. Nowadays, with the Internet at your fingertips, you should utilize this resource not only to find new potential partners, but also to make sure they aren’t serial killers.

  This does pose a problem when your entire existence is online. I like to keep it casual, like when people ask me what I do, I’ll say something like “Brand marketing” and withhold that I am the brand and my Twitter is the marketing. Of course, some guys already know the scoop about me. Sometimes they’re casual, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they act like they have no clue who I am when in fact they’ve seen every video. One guy, after we hooked up, asked for a selfie.

  THOU SHALT KNOW WHO YOU’RE FUCKIN’

  One of my favorite getaway weekends during my time in San Francisco was to Lake Tahoe. Fifteen of my SF gays and I made the journey all the way to a huge log cabin, complete with plenty of bunk beds, a hot tub, and a five-minute walk to the beach. Most of our time at the cabin was spent drinking, and one night everyone decided it was a good time to get outrageously drunk.

  My friend Lucas was an especially slop mess that night, which was pretty normal for him, but when Lucas was drunk, Lucas went on the prowl. We soon realized his goal was Jason, another guy in our group, who looked a bit like me. The rest of us whispered among ourselves, as we knew those two were going to end up fucking. We gave them their privacy as they made their way to the six-bunk communal bedroom. As I snuck through to grab my toothbrush before bed, sure enough, they were at it, loud and unashamed. Good for them!

  The next morning, as I scrubbed dishes in the kitchen, I heard someone coming up the stairs: slop-mess Lucas.

  He was wide-awake and groaning from his hangover. “So about last night . . .”

  “Oh, girl, y’all were gone.”

  “Yeah, I just don’t want the rest of the trip to be weird between the two of us.” He began to massage my shoulders.

  I put down the dish I was scrubbing, turned around, and looked at him, puzzled. “Wait. What are you talking about?” I couldn’t believe what I thought was happening.

  “It’s no biggie! We’re friends, and friends have fun sometimes.” He went in for a hug.

  “Lucas! That was Jason you were fucking! Not me!” I screamed, before letting out a witchlike cackle.

  I spent the rest of the weekend screaming at Lucas between fits of uncontrollable laughter. Get drunk and have fun, but, girl, don’t get so drunk you don’t know who you’re having fun with.

  THOU SHALT NOT CATFISH

  Catfishing is when you lie about your identity to someone else online. The term is relatively new, originating from a documentary starring Nev Schulman, where (spoiler alert) he gets catfished. Nev then created a TV show where he helps people who think they’re getting catfished meet the people they’re talking to online. It’s horrifying. We’ll get to that show later.

  I was introduced to catfishing early on because my Grandma Oakley was the victim of a catfish.

  Grandma Oakley was what you might call an early adopter of the Internet. If you tried to call her, you’d get a busy signal, as she’d more often than not be online with her dial-up Internet, in chat rooms. She was always talking to someone. We didn’t find out who until about a decade later.

  Before I get to that, let me explain Grandma Oakley. For decades, she worked at the local grocery store—Meijer—where she bagged groceries 365 days a year. She was in a bowling league, and after their games they’d have block parties and she’d get so drunk that she’d have to be taken home in a wheelbarrow. While I was growing up, Grandma Oakley lived in a trailer park, with my uncle and cousin, and her poodle named Peanut. She’d often babysit me, and the only game she had on Nintendo was a casino game. My grandpa died before I was born, and I always knew my Grandma Oakley to be single—or so I thought.

  Not until recently did my family find out that for all those years my grandma was romantically involved with a stranger online. He claimed to be a younger NASCAR driver who also worked at the Vatican. Either Grandma Oakley had found her ideal match, or she was getting catfished. I might have bad news for you, Grandma.

  Shocked, appalled, and fascinated by the phenomenon of catfishing, I was ready to embark on a catfish journey myself. MTV (casual name-drop) called to ask if I wanted to cohost an episode of their show Catfish, and I went along for the ride. Knowing how unrealistic and scripted the majority of “reality” television is, I had low hopes. But after a week on the road with the production, I can safely say that catfishers exist. People do lie about who they are, and people put up with years of lying. In that one week, I pursed my lips, widened my eyes, and shook my head in disbelief more than ever before in my life.

  At the end of my episode, it was revealed that (spoiler!) the two people involved were actually who they said they were. The person was not being catfished, but was just talking to someone who didn’t want to meet in person. Yikes.

  When all was said and done, I realized the scariest form of catfishing: when people are honest about what they look like or what their job is, but not about who they are as a person. You can easily spot through your peephole whether someone looks like the pictures he sent you, but can you also detect rudeness, selfishness, or, even worse, if they don’t appreciate The Golden Girls or ranch dressing?

  It doesn’t matter if someone really is a NASCAR driver or really does look like a GQ model if at the end of the day he is horrible to be around. Over time, people’s true colors show. They may have told you that they enjoy museums while you were talking on Tinder, but often enough they just wanted to seem cultured. They actually spend their Saturdays watching Judge Judy marathons (which might be preferable). Listen! My grandma thought she was going to fall in love with the pope’s right-hand man, and look where that got her! How am I supposed to believe in love?!

  No, no, no . . . not all those you meet online are lying about who they are or what they’re into. In fact, I once chatted with someone online who was 100 percent himself in every way, from his profile picture to his very, very specific interests. We’ll call that cummandment “Thou Shall Embrace Thy Fetish”—and that one gets its own chapter, coming next.

  hopeless toemantic

  A few cardinal rules to being stereotypically gay are:

  1. No carpenter jeans.

  2. Overuse the painting-nails emoji while texting.

  3. Have an overly self-conscious Grindr profile.

  If you’re unfamiliar with Grindr, let me break it down for you. It’s an app that lets you see who the closest gays are, as well as how far away they are from your location. It’s perfect for stalking hot bearded guys, if you’re into that, which I am. Your Grindr profile is a quick snapshot into who you are as a gay—it includes your interests, your general background, and what you�
��re looking for in a partner. Some gays spend years perfecting their profiles, trying to put forward their most message-worthy selves—attempting to find (some level of) love in a (relatively) hopeless place.

  Depending on where you are in the world, the location-based, person-to-person app can work wonders. For example, I grew up in Michigan, where so few gays were logged in that the closest ones often included people in Ohio at Cedar Point. At the other end of the spectrum, during my time in San Francisco, the closest user could be as close as three feet away from you, which was often an overestimate due to GPS accuracy errors.

  Now, I know some of you ladies at home may be thinking, “Wow, I love gays, I’m looking for a gay best friend, this is the perfect networking app for me!” No. Stop it. We are not collectibles, and considering the nonpremium version only shows the two hundred closest people, your being in our feed could bump our soul mate out of the queue, so don’t you fucking dare.

  When it comes to Grindr, you can find many, many types of people. OMG, y’all, I was about to start going through the different archetypes of gays, and it was starting to sound very Mean Girls cafeteria scene: “You got your freshmen, ROTC guys, preps, JV jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black hotties, girls who eat their feelings,” etc. Okay, sorry. Essentially, Grindr lets you select what “tribe” you consider yourself to be a part of, with options such as:

  bears (hairy)

  daddies (older)

  gaymer (gay video gamer)

  jocks (sporty)

  twinks (younger and boyish)

  I’m clearly a big bear daddy (read that all drawn out and in a moany voice for the full effect: biiiiig bearrrrr daaaaaddyyyyyy). Okay, I’m kidding.

  The average gay may use Grindr for one of many reasons . . . or at least, there is a drop-down list of options: networking, dates, relationship, and the one nobody picks but everyone means: right now. If I had my way, the list would also include the main reasons I have the app downloaded: “looking for someone to make me guacamole,” “bored and feeling insecure about my body because of everyone else’s torso profile pictures,” and of course “in need of someone to figure out how to use all the clickers for my damn TV because Lord knows I don’t know how.” What can I say? I’m a catch!

  As someone who feels no shame in being a living, breathing sexual being, I don’t believe in being coy about having the app on my phone. I think being embarrassed about having Grindr is another form of oppression we put onto ourselves, rooted in a systematically enforced belief that homosexuality is inherently wrong—while heterosexual people can discuss their OkCupid and Tinder profiles free of shame.

  Sharing that shame of having the app, many users don’t show their faces, as they consider themselves “discreet”—which I completely respect in terms of different people being in different places in their coming out. When they do have a face picture available, it can sometimes be misleading. Think of it this way: you untag any unflattering pictures on Facebook. Of all those pictures still tagged, you pick the best ones to be your profile pictures. Of those profile pictures, you pick your best one to be your Grindr picture. Sometimes, with the right lighting, the right angles, and the right photoshopping, you’re a work of art . . . barely recognizable when you show up at my front door at 1:00 a.m.

  On Grindr, as with OkCupid and Tinder and Scruff and Match and all those other apps, you put your best foot forward to try to find “the one.” Whether that is for good or for right now, it’s hundreds of thousands of people carefully constructing their profiles to make themselves as message-worthy as possible. Not to say people are never honest on these things, but you’re typically not going to lead with what makes you freakiest.

  Over the years of my having the app, I’ve had my fair share of encounters, ranging from onetime coffee dates, to substantial short-term relationships, to new friends, to business-networking opportunities, to hookups—or, as I like to call them, adult slumber parties. Some went well, some not so well, and that’s the gamble when you use the app.

  I should mention that with each experience I’m extremely safe, in many ways. For example, I’ve got a buddy system with my friend Korey, wherein we communicate when/where/who we’re meeting up with, for the sake of actual physical safety. You never know who might be catfishing you. (I keep holding out that maybe it’s Zac Efron catfishing me.)

  One weekend in early 2013, I was invited by Taco Bell to accompany them to SXSW, an annual festival celebrating music, technology, and film. SXSW can be a lot of fun. There is so much to do, and many hot spots to check out, but in the city of Austin, Texas, during the midst of the festival, it’s almost impossible to get a cab. Sure, you can always travel on the local favorite transport, a tuktuk (a cart pulled by a man on a bike). But I once saw a pretty frail guy pedaling one with calves the size of his head—it was like those douche-bag bros at the gym who forget leg day for ten years, except the exact opposite. Does that even make sense? Well, let me tell you, it was a sight and it scarred me for life, and I never felt right taking one of those tuktuks ever again. So to transport myself around Austin during SXSW, it was all about walking.

  Unfortunately, the weekend prior, I drunkenly stumbled, and (although it was never confirmed by a doctor due to my lack of health care at the time) I am pretty sure I had broken my big toe. It was healing, but judging by the color of the bruise that was spreading from under my toenail to my entire toe, it was definitely not in the best condition. This was not convenient, considering all the walking.

  Now, I had just finished up a full day of adventuring around Austin, and with my broken toe and the stifling heat, I was exhausted, gross, and sweaty. Not cute, and my feet were stanky. You know when you walk in your front door and take off your shoes and it’s the best feeling in the world? That was me arriving back at my hotel that day.

  I sat on my hotel-room bed and did what any gay would do while traveling to a new town: logged on to Grindr to see what the locals had to offer. Going to a new town is like finding a new, delicious restaurant. When you live in the same neighborhood for a year, you get used to the menu—but a new location was fresh meat. I scrolled through the assortment of gays—some locals, but mostly SXSW attendees from all over the nation. Given the mix of interests catered to by the festival, all types of gays were up for grabs: hipster music buffs, artsy-film types, and nerdy tech men . . . as well as the local varieties.

  Brrrrppp! The noise of an incoming message. I checked what fate had sent my way, and a headless torso offered a simple hi. Normally, I have no interest in replying to people who don’t lead with a face picture, but that day I said hi back. I checked out his profile and saw his stats: five feet six inches (around my height, preferred), interested in anything and everything, and at the bottom of his description something that I had never seen and that grabbed my attention: “into foot play.”

  Back in high school, I’d somehow developed a life motto of “try everything twice,” with the assumption that life is too short to pass up a new opportunity, and also too short to dismiss anything just because it was shitty the first time. When it came to what foot play could mean, I figured, Okay, Tyler, this is time number one, in which you try something before saying you’re not into it. Whatever foot play was, I wanted to know more. I was intrigued.

  We started conversation normally, talking about what we were doing in town (he was here for work, just like me) and where we were from (both the Midwest). We exchanged more pictures. As I waited for them to load, I was bracing myself for some freaky hoof shots . . . but I received nothing but the normal Grindr exchange: face pictures in normal, everyday situations, shots of him surrounded by friends, and a picture of him shirtless at the beach. Okay, this guy isn’t going to, like, chop off my feet, I guess.

  Conversation continued, then finally, at just the right moment, I realized it was coming—the first mention of his main interest: toemance. It came up subtly, but I knew exactly where he was going.

  “So, did you w
alk around a lot today for SXSW?”

  “Yeah, literally everywhere.”

  “You could probably use a foot massage right now, no?”

  It was as if I had hit the jackpot. Nothing sounded better than a foot massage, and even though I had a feeling it might go a bit further and in a kinkier direction, I was in no mood to deny the most tempting comfort of all time.

  “Honestly, that sounds amazing. I’m not a local though, I have no clue where I could go.” I played coy.

  “Well, I mean, if you’re interested, I could always give you one.”

  “Sure!” I replied with a faux naïveté. What could possibly go wrong? I sent him my location, and I let my friend who was staying at the same hotel as me know I was having an adult friend over for some fun, and to keep her phone near her, just in case.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Perfect! I’ll take a quick shower—message when you’re downstairs.”

  “Wait . . .”

  I waited.

  “Your feet are pretty smelly . . . right?”

  “Yeah, I’m gross right now.”

  “Don’t shower. I hope it’s not weird, but that’s really hot to me. Put on your stinkiest socks and keep your shoes on when you answer the door. I want to take them off of you.”

  And there it was. I was in too deep. He already knew my location. All my thoughts were rushing, and I had no clue what to do. Do I freak and tell him never mind? Do I just not reply to his message when he arrives? I was flustered and my heart was racing and I was feeling anxious and my feet stank.

  So I did what anyone, I hope including you, dear reader, would do: I put on my stanky shoes.

  After what felt like an hour, my phone brrrrrp’ed again, and my cankle connoisseur was here. I let him in the side door downstairs, and we awkwardly shook hands. He was cute, looked like his pictures, and was gentlemanly and seemed normal. I guess I didn’t know what I expected? My preconceived notion of what it meant to have a foot fetish—or any fetish—was being thrown for a loop. I led him to my room, inserted my door key, and let him step in first.