It was the middle of the night, and I was standing on top of a shit-stained toilet, staring out the broken window of a dirty motel bathroom. As the wind blew through my hair I could smell weed burning and definitely some kind of animal giving birth. I heard a gunshot, then a scream, then a woman crying, and then silence. Before I could process the murder I just witnessed, I was distracted by a beat-up car pulling into the parking lot with a bumper sticker that said “DOWN TO POUND.” My Prince Charming had arrived. I never expected my life to end up this way. Well, I did expect to be twenty-six years old, hovered over a motel toilet with someone else’s turd floating in it, but I never expected to be waiting for a Craigslist hookup.
Before I came out as bisexual I had only ever been with women, and I was always too scared to try anything with a guy, even though I wanted to. I never went to college, so I kinda missed out on my experimentation days. Instead I had chosen to cross-dress on the internet in front of my webcam for children, which, now looking back, I guess is pretty experimental. Now that I was newly single I was ready to dip my toe into the gay pond and see if it turned pink. Would I like gay sex the way I liked straight sex? Would I hate it the way I hated watching my parents have sex? Would I feel nothing like the way I feel nothing when people ask my opinion on politics? Many questions left to be answered.
My main issue with finding a guy to have sex with was that I wasn’t just a normal guy in the closet. I was a semi-kinda-but-only-online-famous guy in the closet. If I were to go out on a date with a guy in public and a fan saw us, it would turn into a scandal on Twitter, and the last thing I needed was another Twitter scandal. I’d already accidentally tweeted a picture that had a reflection of my junk in it, and that was a nightmare. Most of the people that watched me online assumed I was gay anyway. The closet I was hiding in wasn’t even a closet; it was more like a beaded curtain. Pink, glittery, loud hanging beads just waiting for me to pop out and say, “HEY, QUEEN!!” Even though it wouldn’t have been a shock to my audience, I still wasn’t ready to publicly talk about it, so I had to take matters into my own hands.
First I tried Tinder because I figured maybe people in my area weren’t updated on their YouTubipedia and would just think I was another sad single guy with way too many pictures of dogs on his profile. Seriously, what’s with that? As I swiped through my options I saw the same types of pictures on every profile.
1ST PROFILE PIC: Guy looking serious while sitting at a bar.
2ND PROFILE PIC: Guy crouching down on the floor putting his face next to a dog that doesn’t belong to him.
3RD PROFILE PIC: Guy who is shirtless but laughing about it ’cause it’s like sooooo lame and he’s sooooo self-aware.
4TH PROFILE PIC: Guy with a baby. No caption. No explanation. Just a baby.
LAST PROFILE PIC: DISNEYLAND. I have no idea what the fascination is with Disneyland, but it made me want to climb to the top of Cinderella Castle and jump off. Hopefully crushing a Mickey-ears-wearing gay dude taking a selfie.
After swiping over a hundred guys whose bio said, “How come nobody writes back on here??!” I finally had a match. He was an attractive guy who surprisingly wasn’t holding a baby and wasn’t wearing a shirt that said “My Disney Princess name is Taco Belle.” I’m not kidding. I actually saw a guy wearing that. It made me want to “Crunchwrap” my hands around his neck and choke him to death. But the guy I matched with didn’t look like the kinda guy I wanted to kill. He looked like the kind of guy I wanted to have anonymous sex with and then never call back.
DING!
I got a text, so I closed the app and opened the message. What I saw only made me feel even more helpless.
FRIEND: Shane! You just matched with my gay friend on Tinder! You’re GAY ?!?!
And then there were about five peach emojis and an eggplant. My heart broke. The second I thought I had found a potential date I was outed. It was going to be impossible to date privately. I deleted my Tinder app and decided it was time for something sneakier and potentially creepier. I recalled a conversation I’d had a few years before with a fellow YouTuber named Tyler Oakley, and if you don’t know him, then you must live under a rock. A rock that has incredible sound protection, ’cause that motherfucker is LOUD. And it’s not just his laugh that’s loud; it’s everything about him. From the pink hair to the tie-dyed reindeer head on his wall, the guy has no problem being himself, and I was always so envious of that. One night we were hanging out, and he referenced an app that I had never heard of. The conversation got real weird real quick.
ME: What’s it called?
TYLER: Grindr! You’ve never heard of it?
ME: No. Is it like FatBooth? ’Cause I LOVE FatBooth! Or UglyBooth?! Or OldBooth?! Or fat ugly old nasty acne cross-eyed dumb stupid bitch booth?!
TYLER: You use all those?
ME: I have a lot of issues. Back to Grindr.
TYLER: Ok, so Grindr is an app that tells you where all the guys are in your area that wanna hook up!
ME: Oh! So it’s like Yelp! But for penis!
TYLER: Kinda. Except you don’t leave reviews, and you NEVER return to the same restaurant or else you’re actual gutter trash.
ME: Totally. One time I went to the grossest Chipotle and the guy serving me left an arm hair in my guacamole, and I left such a mean review. And then I went back the next week ’cause the only other Chipotle was like twenty minutes from my house.
TYLER: Ya, it’s totally like that. Except not at all, and I think I’m gonna narf.
ME: Have you ever used it?
TYLER: A lady never tells her secrets!
ME: I wish someone would tell that to my mom. She recently told me that when she gave birth to me, she shit on my head.
TYLER: You make me sad.
So I deleted my Tinder account and decided to download Grindr. As the app loaded it asked me to enter my name. I obviously wasn’t going to give them my real name, so instead I made up something cute and sexy that I had seen work in the past.
Name: Taco Belle
Perfect. Then it asked for a picture. I didn’t want to show my full face obviously, and I didn’t want to show my body because . . . obviously. So I just posted a picture of my mouth. In hindsight that was probably the wrong move, but I was nervous and wasn’t thinking clearly. I even added a joke under my name that I thought was funny but then later realized how disgusting it was.
Bio: Just a bean and cheese princess awaiting her extra spicy beast.
Ya. I was just asking to get raped. So after I submitted my info, the app took me to what looked like a tic-tac-toe board, but instead of Xs and Os, there were dick pics and LOTS of nipple hair. There were over one hundred guys in a ten-mile radius of me, and the second they saw my mouth pic I had five messages. I was so overwhelmed. I saw words I didn’t recognize, like “BTM” and “VERS.” I saw pictures of the insides of guys’ asses, which were surprisingly cleaner than I expected. I had only ever seen the inside of my own ass when I was twelve, using my mom’s makeup mirror. I still can’t believe she never got pink eye.
I finally got to a message that caught my eye. It was from a guy whose name was “Bob,” and he seemed relatively normal. Granted, his face wasn’t in his profile pic, but hey, neither was mine. Maybe he was a YouTuber in the closet too?! Maybe they were ALL YouTubers in the closet! I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of them. I opened his message and initiated some casual small talk.
TACO BELLE: Hi! I’m really scared and I’ve never done anything like this before because I’m in the closet and I’m not even sure if I’m gay or not. I actually think maybe I’m bi but I’m not sure if that’s real because I feel like maybe it’s my Christian guilt making me want to eat pussy. Like maybe I don’t actually like it? Maybe GOD is making me like it?? KNOW WHAT I MEAN?!
Ya. Super smooth.
BOB: Calm down, man. Everything’s ok. What’s your name?
TACO BELLE: I can’t tell you my name ’cause if you have teenage kids they probably know me, and then what if they find out you had sex with me?! What if you brought them to VidCon and when I gave them a hug they whispered, “I know you fucked my daddy” in my ear?!
BOB: I don’t know what half of those words mean. What’s VidCon?
TACO BELLE: I’m sorry. I’m just so nervous.
BOB: It’s ok. I was nervous when I was young too.
TACO BELLE: Thanks. How old are you by the way?
BOB: 75. But I look 70.
FUCK. He was old enough to be my grandpa and was staring at a picture of my mouth, fantasizing about putting his shriveled old dick in it! This was too fucked-up even for me. Except he had been so nice to me that I couldn’t just block him. So I decided to let him down easy.
TACO BELLE: I HAVE TO GO BYE!
Whew. Close call. Nice guy though. I hope he’s not dead. Then I read the next message, from a guy named “Paul,” and it seemed a little more my speed.
PAUL: Hey. Looking to try out guys on the down low. You down?
TACO BELLE: Ya! You’re not gonna film it, right?
PAUL: What?
TACO BELLE: I don’t know. I feel like people film sex a lot. I don’t have it often, but I see so much porn online of people having sex and filming it on their iPhones and that’s like my nightmare. The iPhone camera is SO unflattering.
PAUL: I have to go bye.
Damn. Instant karma. Oh well. Then I got a message that I will never forget.
NO NAME: Oh hey. You live in the same building as me.
WHAT?! How does he know that? Then I looked at his profile and saw that his current location was three hundred feet from me. OH MY GOD. He could see where I was! What if he was a serial killer? What if he was a neighbor I had ridden the elevator with? What if he was that annoying lady who has twenty dogs to fill the void in her heart from not having a husband?! What if THIS was what she did for fun? Find young guys and feed them to her dogs?? My mind was racing.
NO NAME: You got a nice mouth. I bet you really know how to use it.
HOLY SHIT! His current location was 200 feet away! He was getting closer!
ME: I’m sorry! I’m not interested!
NO NAME: You sure?
PICTURE SENT. I opened it, and it was the creepiest man chest I had ever seen. His chest hair was long enough to braid, and his nipples looked like they were crying!
ME: No! I’m sorry! Please stop talking to me!
Fifty feet away.
ME: PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!
NO NAME: What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything.
Ten feet away.
ME: PLEASE!!!!!! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!!!!!!!!!
Five feet away.
I dropped my phone and stood up from the couch. I started to breathe heavily. I imagined him standing on the other side of my front door with his shirt off and his nipples crying all over my welcome mat. I slowly walked over to the door, each step I took more terrifying than the last. I made my way to the peephole and slid it open. I put my face against the hole and I saw . . . nothing. Then I heard noise coming from above me. Keys rattling and a door opening. He lived ABOVE ME. He wasn’t stalking me. He was probably coming home from work and was trying to get a little action on the way. I felt like such an asshole.
ME: I’m sorry. I thought you were stalking me lol.
GRINDR TEAM: You have been blocked from talking to No Name.
Andddddd time to delete Grindr. Which meant there was only one other place to find a potential hookup. Not a bar, or a mall, or a sexually open church. No, no, no, those all made way too much sense. It was time for me to go to Craigslist.
As I opened up Craigslist I had flashbacks of my mom and I shopping for a couch. Little did I know, twenty years later I would be shopping for someone to eat my ass. But hopefully they also had a couch. Hooking up in bed with a stranger you met on a website is a little tacky.
As I scrolled through the list of ads I noticed that they all had very similar headlines, most of which started with “NO AIDS.” I’m gonna be honest though, NO AIDS was a plus. One ad stuck out, and I opened it.
SUBJECT: NO AIDS. LOOKING FOR DISCREET WITH A FIRST TIMER
Hey, my name is Greg. I’m a 6ft nice guy who likes helping straight guys figure out if they are interested in men. It’s like I’m giving back to the universe. But with my dick. If you are a straight guy and want to see what you’ve been missing then hit me up for some animal style sex. Don’t worry, I don’t bite. Unless you want me to. ;) But I probably won’t because that’s one of the ways Aids is spread.
For some reason I thought this ad was a winner. Probably because I had already been through a night of getting caught by a friend and almost getting murdered by a guy whose body looked like it was a jar of old mayonnaise that started growing hair. I texted Greg and we started planning on where we were going to meet up. I hadn’t thought it through this far. I didn’t want to go to his place because what if he was secretly filming everything, and I didn’t want him to come to my place because what if he recognized it from my videos and told everyone he fucked Shane Dawson? Worse than that, what if he knew I was a YouTuber but didn’t remember my name and then after we had sex, said: “Oh, WAIT! Now I remember! You’re Fred!”
I would kill myself. Right there. Right in front of him. Luckily I figured out a solid plan B. I would find a cheap motel, get a room, and wait for him with a knife under the bed just in case. Ya, that seemed like the perfect place to lose my butt virginity. Romance was in the air.
A text from Greg popped up on my phone.
GREG: Hey. I’m on my way to the motel. You hungry? I was gonna stop by In-N-Out.
Awwwww, he was offering to bring me food? This is third-date material! Maybe this would be the guy of my dreams?
GREG: Also, are there water bottles in the room? I need to douche.
And my dreams are over.
GREG: If you already used one on yourself, that’s fine. I can just wash off the tip.
Nightmare. Actual nightmare. Shit-covered nightmare.
At the motel, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t a murderer, so I stood on the toilet and stared out the window. I stood there with the cold wind freezing my face for at least an hour. Why would he pick In-N-Out? Doesn’t everyone know those lines are ridiculous? And for what? A burger in a box instead of a bag? Get over yourself.
Then I saw his car pull up. My heart started pounding so hard my body was shaking. I was more nervous than I’d ever been in my life, and I couldn’t think straight. As he got out of his car, I realized that he wasn’t really my type and I wasn’t even sure what my type was. I just knew it wasn’t a huge hairy dad with neck tattoos spelling out the names of his dead wives. Most likely that he killed. I started to panic. This was just like the Grindr experience but worse because I couldn’t just delete the app! The guy knew where I was and was walking up to my room! Even worse, he was holding a box of In-N-Out. Really, dude? You were gonna fuck me while the smell of pickles and onions filled the room? I know your ad said you were into “animal style,” but this was a little much.
As he walked up the stairs I began to plan my escape. Maybe I could jump out the window? Maybe I could play a gunshot sound effect on my phone, and he would think I shot myself ? And that would be pretty normal for the neighbors. I’m sure someone killed himself in this motel at least twice a week.
KNOCK KNOCK.
Shit. It was too late. I walked up to the door and put my ear to it.
ME: Hi.
GREG: Hi! Can I come in now? My fries are leaking.
His fries were leaking? What did that even mean?? You had sauce already on your fries before you were even at the table? What kind of person does that? A fucking sicko, that’s who.
ME: I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Please don’t be mad.
GREG: Let me in, man. Let’s talk about this.
ME: I can’t. I’m too scared. And I just want to go home.
I started to cry. I was so overwhelmed with emotion that I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Nobody else I knew had had to go through this. None of my friends had had to find a stranger to have anonymous sex with to figure out their sexuality. They just went to bars and met people like normal human beings. Not hide in the shadows while the smell of secret sauce filled the room.
GREG: Hey, man. You really have never done anything with a guy?
ME: No. That’s why I answered your ad. To see if I was gay. Or bi. Or whatever.
GREG: Can I give you some advice?
ME: Sure.
GREG: I know you wanted to do this to see if you were interested in sex with men but . . . if you were looking for it in the first place . . . you were interested. You don’t need to have sex to realize that, man. Just live your life and do it when you’re ready.
Of course he was right. I’d suppressed my attraction toward men for so long. For some reason I thought that since I was ready to try it out, I needed to just have sex with the first man I could find to make sure the feelings were real. But of course they were real. That’s why they’re feelings. My heart had known the truth all along, and I didn’t need to have sex to prove it.
GREG: Good luck, man. You’re gonna be fine. Just look how I turned out!
Not a great example, but I was still appreciative. As he walked away, I sat on the motel bed and considered how far I’d come. And it was far. I used to be a kid who was terrified to admit that he liked boys, and here I was a guy who had been just about to have sex with a guy he met online. As creepy as it sounds, I was proud of myself. I knew that the first time I hooked up with a man I actually cared about would be just as amazing as the first time it had been with a woman I cared about. After I came out all bets were off, and it was time to go out and live my life. And without getting too graphic, I did find a guy to be with, and it was amazing. Definitely more amazing than it would have been with Greg from Craigslist. No offense, Greg.