We see more these days; the Grindr interface is new. You can now choose between different ‘tribes’, which are: Bear, Clean-Cut, Daddy, Discreet, Geek, Jock, Leather, Otter, Poz, Rugged, Trans, Twink, and Not Specified. There are a lot of men, I see, who self-identify as geeks and jocks at the same time – this will warp the American high-school stereotype continuum. No more will you have to choose your camp. You can be in all the specified camps. Jonny McGovern sang in his : ‘I don’t need Grindr; I need a Nerd-Finder’. Now you can do that with Grindr itself. You can click on ‘Geeks’. Or on any categories, in all various combinations.

Apart from the new tribes, you can also see more in the new interface. The pictures are twice as big and very, very clear. Now we can really see whom we’re going to have sex with. And that’s a fantastic thing, because who would want to bang a munter? Come on, people, let’s rephrase that more nicely: attraction is not a muscle, you can’t train it! You’re attracted to whom you’re attracted, there’s no changing it. And if it’s something chiselled, perhaps, and young, so be it. Let’s zero in on that.

No more empty and possibly futile chasing. None; you can wait in your lair and the antelopes line up and jump in your mouth. This wasn’t new, this we had already in the previous version. It’s easy and uncomplicated. You turn Grindr on and you see the high-res icons of men who are nearest to you and waiting. Except it might not be sex they’re waiting for, but a relationship. This complicates the chase. But there’s a solution now. Just tick the box that says ‘looking: for a relationship’. Let me show my cards now and say that my own relationship started on Grindr, on the old Grindr, before you could specify anything. I said didn’t want a date. Then I found myself on a date. I didn’t know how to work the system. But now the system works for me. Just tick the right boxes, Gus, I tell myself. Just tick them all! Or tick none of them and see what comes up. So much glorious choice.

And let it be said as well that sex isn’t called sex on Grindr. It’s called ‘fun’. Fun and play, we’re just boys ready to have fun and games and play a bit. Just fun and play. The profile pics must not be pornographic; this is a rule outside the users of Grindr. This is the rule that absolutely cannot be broken, in other words this is the rule that we need to find all the oblique ways of breaking without explicitly breaking. Codes, we know about codes and barriers! God forbid it should be about sex. No, this is fun and play, this.

Countless headless torsos, chiselled abs, grunts by way of responses. Let it be said that the grunts are mine, too: if you can’t stand the heat and so on, so I grunt in the same way they grunt. We grunt. I have removed the app from my phone four times and put it back on. It’s too tempting to stay away, because just behind a click there’s fun and then more fun. And dialogue is more stunted than in Cormac McCarthy.

‘Hi,’
‘Hi.’
‘How are you?’
‘Good, you?’
‘Good.’
‘More pics?’
‘Looking?’

Yes, looking! We’re endlessly looking, sometimes nothing but looking. London has got the highest density of Grindr users, so there are lots of boys around the corner who are nearer or more handsome, more chiselled, more witty perhaps, more up for fun and play. Now you don’t even need to specify on your profile that you’re into it, you can just tick ‘Right Now’ on your profile settings and the prey will know to lay in front of you, right now.

There is a site called Douchebags of Grindr and several which provide a lot of fun. No, not that kind of fun. The sarcastic, cutting, mordant kind of fun, with a lot of self-loathing thrown in. Whatever you are, don’t be feminine, fat, or non-white, many profiles featured on the sites demand. And if you don’t have pics, fuck off. It’s everyone’s prerogative at least to see it all, in hi-res. The excerpts tell a lot about one type of desire, theoretically unadulterated but hyper-regimented. One quirkier exchange goes (punctuation as in the original):

“Love to be in my bed wearing speedos and cock ring sniffing amyl. I leave front door open get undressed and walk up to my room jump into my bed sniff amyl.and we play while I eat your hole making it nice and wet before sliding my hard tool in.”

-”Yeah but. Is there cake?”

We keep playing, don’t we? And you have to be in the game to play the game properly. The game of desire doesn’t quite understand jokes, cannot quite sustain jokes, won’t have jokes on its expense. Instead, desire tries to go straight for the kill. Except here the kill equals ‘fun’. Even that straightforward desire is delayed, if you check your messages on the train, on the bus, when you want just a bit of instant gratification. If you check your messages half-heartedly, there’s an upside that you won’t be too horny to cloud your thoughts and settle on any old thing that comes your way. On the other hand, if you only check your messages when you’re horny there’s a possibility that you’ll have to wait for too long. No one wants to wait, do they?

Let’s hope the wait is not too long. Otherwise the game is suspended. And suspension is not fun. Whatever you do, I keep telling myself, never forget that it is supposed to be all about fun. Let me specify this one more time. This is supposed to be fun.

Gus Whitehouse is a ‘twink’ ‘geek’ from Darlington. He is ‘in an open relationship’ and lives in London.