December 27, 2002

The problem with having an entire day to yourself is how easily it can become a day for no one.

Case in point: yesterday, the day was (supposed to be) mine, all mine! So I logged on to a local cruise-y chatroom hotspot. (I don’t know how Faustus feels about unpaid-for website endorsement, so let’s just say it rhymes with “Neigh Fraught Prom” …) And I was popular. I’m talking Faustus levels of popularity, here. 100% flyer cheerleader popular. And then, it happened.

Some guy sends me a picture of himself, but I’ve seen the porn it’s from.

Epiphanic moment moment here. Boys in chat rooms lie. Who knew? (OK, I realize everybody knows this, but give me a break. You can take the boy out of the suburbs, but you can’t take suburbs out of the boy…) Always priding myself as a glass-is-half-full, make-lemonade kind of guy, I immediately decide to channel this whole lying thing to my advantage. You know, as a kind of gay sociological experiment. So I alter my profile to become a 19-year-old college freshman fratboy swimmer with a girlfriend and a nine-inch dick.

Much more popular than before.

So I change my profile again. Leather daddy. Closeted Hollywood actor. Bi-curious Abercrombie model twins. (That one was a real hit.) And suddenly, it’s 4:00 in the morning, and I haven’t had sex with anyone. (Well, the twins watched each other masturbate, but I don’t think that really counts.)

Lying is fun! And safe! And not very messy!

There’s a big bottom deep down inside me that desperately wants to be whatever it is that the person I’m talking to wants me to be. Don’t like tall guys? Prefer men from Oregon? Looking for someone with a Prince Albert? I can do that. Let me alter my reality to fit your fantasy.

Whoops. Life lesson, here. Damn life lessons. All I wanted was to get laid.

Anyway, after my second epiphany (sadly, not a euphemism), me and the twins and the leather daddy and the fratboy swimmer and the closeted Hollywood actor all crawled wearily into bed together.

And the bed felt really, really empty.

(The twins kept hogging the sheets, though.)