Small

And other things I wish you were.

Five years ago, I was a groomsman at a wedding where I met another groomsman named Drew, who was there with his wife and four-month-old baby.

His wife was pretty. She held her son in a light blue blanket. 

I thought Drew, too, was attractive, but Drew was tall, and though there are exceptions, I typically think tall is disgusting.

At the afterparty, Drew asked how long I had been gay for, and I told him that when my neighbor Michael Boyce and I were five years old, we used to play a game where we’d shine flashlights at each other's buttholes. 

“So I guess, since then,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I came out when I was 22.”

Drew told me that he recently decided that he might be partially bisexual, and then a few minutes later, he tried to hook up with me in the hotel room next to his sleeping child and wife.

I asked him to leave and check with his wife if this was allowed, not because I was against him cheating, but because I didn’t want to be the gay guy who caused drama at the wedding.

He left to ask.

There’s an app called Feeld that all the kids are using nowadays. 

It can help you ask.

Unlike the boring worlds of Hinge and Tinder, Feeld is full of anything you can possibly think of. 

You can make a profile as a couple or alone. You can match with other pairs or singles. A man or a woman or a transgender person, and if you think yourself open-minded, there are 19 additional options besides those three, and even if you’re able to name 3-5 of them, there is an option on the picklist for “other.” 

Tida wena is a phrase I just learned. 

It means twisted woman.

Feeld seems to be having a moment. 

Over the past three years, it’s paid memberships have skyrocketed 550%.

For a while, it was a threesome app called 3nder, and then it became more kinky, but now it’s trying to be everything to everyone.

• Monogamous

• Polyamorous

• Open Relationships

• Ethical Non-Monogamy

• Heterosexual

• Homosexual

• Bisexual

• Pansexual

• BDSM

• Role Play

• Cuckolding

• Bondage

• Threesomes

• Swinging

• Kink

• Tantra

• Emotional Connection

• Friendship

• Spiritual Connection

• New Experiences

• Curiosity

• Experimentation

• Emotional Intimacy

• Physical Intimacy

• Intellectual Intimacy

• Vegan

• Yoga

• Long-term Relationship

• Casual Dating

• Asexual

• Queer

• Straight

• Non-binary

• Transgender

• Cisgender

• Exhibitionism

• Voyeurism

• Sensory Play

• Soft Swap

• Full Swap

• Online Flirting

• In-person Meetups
  

I think it’s working.

Take Feeld user Lucy Holden, for example, who doesn’t look like the pink-haired introverted furry I’d expect to find on Feeld, but rather, the pretty, long-brown-haired, post-sorority college girl I’d expect to run into on Bumble, one of the mainstream dating apps, whose share price has plummeted recently.

Feeld seems different from what I remember.

When I used it in LA in 2019, my friend told me that he hated the app because “it was all fuggos.” 

Looking to prove him wrong, I began swiping through mostly non-hots until I matched with an attractive 23-year-old straight couple who insisted that, instead of SMS, we chat on Kik. 

They then asked me for naked pics.

And so I sent them.

And they ghosted. 

I, fuggo.

But now, Feeld is filled with hots. 

And pings and “majestic” members and far-away-from-your-home-location-settings and hidden likes and all the things that seem to indicate a high rate of a very engaged user base.

I think this is because non-monogamy is on the rise. It seems that people are all starting to think that “the one” was an idea that made sense when people lived till 35, but now, our unmet needs have more time to fester, which leads to resentment and cheating, and while life is very long, it’s also very short — before you know it you’ll be old and full of regrets, wondering if the guy at the gym with the sleeve or the girl at the coffee shop with dark eyeshadow were someones you forwent having human experiences with simply because you and your partner were never able to figure out how to be less insecure.

We’re all insecure. 

Full of unsure-ofs and I-could-nevers that prevent us from becoming more comfortable with ourselves — lurking shadows and silent self-rejections we avoid being too curious about.

There was a girl I once knew. 

Let’s call her Jackie.

I met her at a networking event when I was fresh out of school.

And so was she.

But unlike corporate-grind-22-year-old Alex, Jackie was the “number one SEO-ranked Asian female dominatrix,” she told me.

She had not intended to become a dominatrix.

It all started when she needed money and tried to sell a pair of running shoes on eBay. 

How often do you use them? One buyer wrote in.

Once a week, she replied publicly on the listing. 

Then came other questions from potential buyers.

Did you sweat in them? How old are you? What do you look like?

And then she understood. 

19-year-old Asian female college student selling running shoes. I run in them three to four times/week. Very used, she wrote.

Up went the bids.

“And so, I went to Goodwill, and I bought all the women's running shoes they had.”

She was a psych student at the time, hoping to, one day, become a marriage and family counselor, but that all got derailed when the shoe thing started taking off — curious, she reached out to a woman online right outside of Madison, who became her mentor.

Jackie developed her craft, got better at SEO, and soon graduated into a self-made international entrepreneur.

In March, I’ll be in Shanghai. 

April in Paris. 

May, London.

Clients all over the world filled out online intake forms, paid a deposit for the appointment, consented that they’d never touch her, and then, if approved, received their session.

“I ask everything I need to know on my intake form,” she said to me. “It’s super thorough. The motivations for the session always ends up coming from something that happened to them when they were a kid.” 

“Like what?” I asked, thinking about how when I was ten years old, I had a crush on my piano teacher, Brian, who killed himself.

“Well,” she said, “I had this one guy who had me tie his hands behind his back and then I put on a pig mask, and then he’d plead as I shoved whipped cream pies into his face.”

“What? Why?” I asked.

“I guess he used to watch the Muppets and there was some gag where Miss Piggy did that to Kermit.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah,” Jackie said. “It’s always something like that.”

I believe that we all have these, whether we’re aware of them or not. Desires rearing their heads as insecurities in fear’s clothing.

Too scary for us to look at or figure out why they’re there, so we never ask.

I wonder what mine are.

I hate feeling small. 

Maybe, growing up, some large hyper-masculine neighbor diddled me, and I just can’t remember it.

There was one mom in our cul-de-sac, Pauline Lamont, who fit the description, but I don’t think she had it in her. 

She was always late to the carpool. 

Bad at follow-through.

Perhaps, one day, I’ll get to be someone else’s trauma. That’d be nice. To be important enough to cause someone to go see Jackie or download Feeld to try and figure it out.

Drew, the groomsman at the wedding, ended up coming back to my hotel room that night.

He knocked on the door and brought, with him, his wife.

We all started hooking up, and it was going well.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

But then she freaked out because they had “never been with another man before,” and it was too much for her, which I would have thought would have been less of a concern than the fact that their four-month-old was in the adjacent room wrapped in a light blue blanket without a baby monitor.

But maybe that’s how this all works.

Maybe one day, Jackie will receive an intake form asking her to bring a male companion, and the two of them will swaddle adult-baby-Drew in a blue blanket just so they can leave him to have sex with the guy in the room next door.

How nice that would be for me. 

To feel so important and powerful to someone.

To be someone else’s Miss Piggy.

Something unsmall.

Hello.

This was a shorter piece than usual.

Questions for you all:

1. What are your thoughts on open relationships? Am I in an echochamber of annoying hippy liberals who will soon age out of their beliefs?

2. Have you ever been on Feeld/AshleyMadison/Similar whatever you’re comfortable sharing?

3. If I posted this on LinkedIn and you were a client of mine, would you stop working with me, or would it be humanizing to see me not as a corporate drone, or is that only a thing that people encourage, but then, in practice, once I posted this on LinkedIn you’d fire me lol