I’ve been going through a bit of a dry spell lately.
My favorite (male) fuck-buddy, bless his heart, has been putting his silly “future plans” ahead of “pleasuring me beyond all reason” on his personal priority list. Meanwhile, my favorite (female) fuck-buddy is just as sleep-deprived as everyone else around this time of year, and seems to enjoy falling asleep on my (admittedly super-comfortable) sofa to the How I Met Your Mother title track just as much as she’d enjoy hypothetical makeout times.
What was a poor, sad, orgasm-less sex columnist to do? Why, put an ad on Craiglist, of course!
Like most certified procrastinators at our fine institution, I troll Craigslist’s “missed connections” section at least three times a week. Maybe it’s a futile hope, but I can’t help occasionally yearning for a certain kind of query: u were the chubby girl with the holes in her pants and a wonky-toothed smile, perhaps. Even: heard u mumbling to urself abt genetics, let’s fuck , would suffice. But alas — because I am not, in fact, actually a gay man who frequently lifts weights at Teagle, most of those seeking to track down their anonymous hottie of choice pass me by.
In light of this, along with the aforementioned lack of sexy oases in the desert of my vagina, I decided to take matters into my own carpal-tunneled hands. A few Tuesdays ago, I posted a simple enough ad in both the “w4m” and “w4w” sections: stressed out Cornell student seeks release. not looking for anything long-term. sti free please!
By the next morning, I’d received one hit from my “w4w”. From my “w4m,” I had around 105. Strangely, only three or four were pictures of strangers’ dicks. Aside from a few creepy professors who would just not let lie my polite refusal of their sex-on-a-desk fantasies, the vast majority of those who responded seemed like genuinely nice dudes who were tired of the never-ending grudgery of the bar scene.
This pattern was consistent with an experiment conducted by a friend of mine, who found that when he posted an ad each on “m4m” and “m4w,” a huge percentage of responders were male. Dudes just seem to feel more comfortable tossing their man-junk about willy-nilly on the interwebs. Forgive me for getting tiresomely evo-psych about this, but maybe on some level, ladies who desire casual sex are hard to find, especially for guys tied to their doctoral dissertations. The result was an intensified version of the feeling I used to get walking onto the campus of the guys’ school in my hometown.
As a rare be-breasted Craigslist sex solicitor, being fawned over becomes almost routine — even with the awkward chub and the tendency to trip over nothing, I’d still become an object of desire for what eventually fizzled out at about 400 strangers, an entire three of them identifying as female. At best, such attention is gratifying; at worst, it’s downright intoxicating.
For me, the most unfortunate part of my foray into Craigslist-ism was my complete and utter failure to get the deed done. Sure, I overcame my slight natural tendency towards social anxiety enough to meet a handful of the guys for coffee, trying to guess whether or not they were actually serial killers trying to harvest scalps for their wall hanging. I even responded to the occasional subsequent booty text. But when it came right down to the naked nitty-gritty, I found myself bailing. I’m not exactly a timid sexual adventurer, which is why my doe-eyed retreat in the face of Strangercock is extra-baffling.
These guys were perfectly nice, if a little quiet, and going home with one of them was really no different than tripping home arm-in-arm with a dude from your sociology class after Group Therapy Wednesdays. But I found that Craigslist, unlike the socially scripted venues of first dates and drunken hookups, lies somewhere outside the bounds of normalcy for both parties. The closest comparison, I suppose, would be that feeling I occasionally get when I go home for Christmas and a closeted former classmate and I get to chatting over coffee. She knows I want to fuck, I know she wants to fuck, but damned if either of us are going to be the first to take off our pants. I’m not the best at completely random sex anyway — I prefer to at least know my partner’s favorite Glee episode, so I can hum a song from it around his or her genitalia — but something about the whole construction of expectation turned me off way more than I would have ever anticipated.
For the braver or less inhibited, Craigslist has become a sort of cyber-bathhouse, which is wonderful (just please, meet in public first, and for the love of god use protection). For me, though, it functions solely in the realm of idealism. Sure, I’d like to think that someday, someone will post an ad somewhere along the lines of, Remus Lupin seeks his Sirius Black for moonlit romps around the Plantations; any gender welcome. But even then, I’m not sure I’d respond — except maybe with a picture of my dick.
Kate C. is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She may be reached at [email protected]. Ball You Discreetly appears alternate Thursdays this semester.
Original Author: Kate C.