Lost in Manchester - 7. Online Cruising. October 2009. Adam.

Being free to date was the best thing about being single. Well, ok, being free to have casual sex with hot strangers was the best thing about being single.

Within the first week of arriving in Manchester Adam had signed up to the dating website, Gayzer, an online fairground. He had quickly stumbled across the profile of a swimmer called Matt, who had a friendly face, big biceps and an extremely toned body. The pictures of him in very small trunks at the pool were particularly distracting. But, after mailing him and anxiously checking his messages several times a day for several days, Adam learnt his first lesson of online dating: sometimes guys don’t respond.

In those first few days exploring Gayzer, he received an impressive eight messages containing photo attachments of the sender’s appendage, each one just hanging there, like when your cat brings home a half dead mouse and presents it to you as a gift. Almost inevitably the face photos received later were disappointing, and his second lesson of online dating was not to reply to that sort of message.

In theory, internet dating was so much better than the old days of going up to a guy in a bar. It removed the dread of rejection, those heart-thumping moments standing in a no man’s land in front of a guy asking if he wants a drink, eyes all hopeful like a charity fundraiser. Getting refused online was private and impersonal. It didn’t hurt as much.

It wasn’t all easy though; writing a profile was a total minefield. You had to write a profile that would portray you as fun and cool and sexy, to make sure that you didn’t get filtered out by the people you wanted to draw in. It had to say enough but not too much, keep the reader wanting to know more but without sounding forced or clichéd; it had to show you were sexual but not only looking for sex; you had to sound like a normal guy, but not boring, and ideally come across as smart and witty, but without sounding like you’re too pleased with yourself.

It took him a couple of weeks of regular redrafts to realise that if you just put a hot shirtless photo on, then none of the words mattered that much.

But this was linked to the next problem. Adam would go online with every good intention to check out the profiles of the nice, interesting sounding guys and strike up conversations, but then each time he got to a page of thumbnail profile pictures, he was broadsided by the profiles of the most ripped torsos on display and would start exploring those instead. Invariably these guys were arseholes, their profiles short, badly written, and saying things like if you got a small nob, don’t bother.

Adam was perusing the profile of Adonis24, who had invited him to a new chat window with the carefully considered opener How ru mate. In the last two weeks he had responded positively to so many opening lines like this, only to find these guys were not conversationalists. Nevertheless, this guys’ abs protruded like a cobbled street, and that alone warranted further investigation. The profile said little, but under profession he had written professional sex god. Adam clicked the cross in the top right corner of the chat window. Definitely an arsehole.

Further down the page of profiles he saw a familiar face and opened up a chat window with his flatmate’s fuck buddy, the IT guy he met on his first night in the city.

>Adam85: Hey Steve, how’s it going?

A few minutes passed before he received a Hi back. Adam waited a second to see if he was going to write anything more, but nothing came. He wasn’t sure if Steve had taken a dislike to him at the dinner party, but he decided to persevere.

>Adam85: Did you have a good night after the party the other week then?

>SteveyIT: Yeah, fun.

Wow, this was going to be hard work.

>Adam85: Cool. So you got plans for the weekend?

>SteveyIT: Flying out to Barcelona with mates tonight

>Adam85: Oh wow, amazing. Late summer sun. I’m so jealous!

>SteveyIT: Yeah

And with that, Steve abruptly logged out and was gone. It definitely felt like Steve didn’t like him that much. Adam carried on scrolling down.

He opened another profile showing a guy sitting at a café on a beach. His head was in the shade so you couldn’t properly make it out, but you could see his well-defined arms and chest clearly under a tight white t-shirt. The second image on his profile was a superman logo. What was it with gays and comic book heroes? The profile description was one of the better ones though. He liked music and travelling and seemed cutely self-deprecating. He was showing as offline though so Adam moved on.

He tried a filter he hadn’t used before, that allowed you to view the profiles of guys closest to you. There were several that seemed to be in the same building. The first profile he opened was another familiar face, Ali’s flatmate Daniel. They’d met again since that night at the pub and had agreed to forget everything about what happened. With less drink inside him, Adam was happy with that decision. Daniel seemed nice enough, but there wasn’t a huge spark between them. It turned out from his profile that he was a teacher though, and apparently one that didn’t hold back on details. He listed himself as 100% bottom, and had ticked a lot of the boxes in the special interests section.

A few images down the page he came across another familiar face. A photograph of Paul looked out at him from an idyllic countryside setting. Maybe this was taken in his parents’ grounds in Shropshire. He didn’t confess to being a Tory, and he listed his age as 24 instead of the 28 that Adam knew he was. Out of the suit though you could easily believe he was a few years younger. He was open about the recreational drug taking, but didn’t mention Adam when he said he lived in a fancy city centre flat. It was well written though, screaming out rich, successful, interesting. He could imagine a lot of guys being drawn to that.

While snooping at his flatmate’s profile, another chat window opened up on screen. It was from a guy he had looked at earlier, Aidan, who claimed he had starred in one of the earlier series’ of Big Brother.

>BBAid: Yo man, saw that you checked out my profile earlier. Looking to hook-up?

Adam heard a key turning in the front door, indicating his flatmate was back.

>Adam85: Not sure, maybe. So you were in Big Brother?

>BBAid: Yeah, like you don’t remember.

He heard Paul’s footsteps in the hall, and a familiar ‘hi-yaah’ ring through the flat. He knew his peace was about to be unsettled. Paul’s usual routine was to grab his laptop, come and sit on the sofa and check his Gayzer messages. He usually kept his laptop screen faced away from Adam, but the pings of messages received gave him away.

A terrible thought suddenly crossed Adam’s mind.

>Adam85: Aidan, people can see if you’ve checked their profiles can’t they?

>BBAid: Yeah man, how fresh are you?

>Adam85: Shit

Online-stalking your flatmate probably wasn’t that cool. Paul walked through to the lounge with his laptop under his arm.

>Adam85: Aidan, you have to help me. How can you stop people from knowing you’ve checked their profile?

Paul had switched the power on to his laptop on and was checking through the text messages on his Blackberry. The sound of Windows starting-up played and Paul typed in his password.

>BBAid: Dude, I already saw that you checked my page, you don’t have to be shy

Adam gritted his teeth.

>Adam85: Haha, obviously. No, it’s for someone else. Kind of urgent

Judging by the clicking of Paul’s mouse, he was starting to open up internet windows.

>BBAid: Sure man, go onto his profile - click the button with a footprint and a cross through it.

Adam opened up the profile again, found the button and clicked it three times for good measure. He turned to Paul who looked up at him innocently.

“Tea?” Adam asked.

“Lurrve one” Paul replied.

Adam put the kettle on, just as he heard the first sound of a new Gayzer message emerging from Paul’s laptop. He breathed a silent sigh of relief and returned to the table.

>Adam85: Thanks man. Saved my life. Got to run though, catch you later

Before he clicked the chat window closed, he saw a reply flash up.

>BBAid: Think about it dude, you might not get another chance to shag a celebrity. You sure you want to turn that down?

Adam smiled as he clicked the alleged reality star out of his day. He briefly thought back to the question about the tree falling in the forest from philosophy class. Could a reality TV star be called a celebrity if nobody remembered watching them?

The kettle boiled and Adam made tea. As he took the mug over to Paul, he heard the ping of a Gayzer message sound from his own laptop. He returned to it quickly, opened the new message, and sat back in shock.

“Oh my god”

“What?” Paul asked, looking up.

“Matt responded.”

“Who the fuck’s Matt?”

“The swimmer guy, Matt.”

“Ohh” Paul said, lighting up, “the guy you were stalking?”

“Yes!”

“Wow. I thought after you sent that second message you’d be dead to him. You never send two messages without response”.

“Did you see his six pack though?”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’ve studied those profile pictures closely. Several times.”

“He wants to go for a drink with me tonight. That six pack will be sipping gin and tonic with me this evening.”

“Well if you end up dating, I’m not going to be held responsible for loitering in the hallway as he emerges from the shower in only a small towel.”

“I’ve got quite big towels actually”

“I’m cutting them in half.”

Adam smiled. “Fair enough. God, I can’t believe he replied.”

“So have you got plans for the evening then?” he asked Paul, after composing a breezy sounding reply to Matt.

“None involving wet dream swimmers” Paul replied without looking up.

Adam laughed.

“I have to go into work”.

“Rubbish”

“Yeah, there’s this multi-million pound case the Sydney office is trying to sort and I’ve been brought in to guide them. Nothing mega urgent, but they want to do it during their office hours. Never mind if it fucks up my plans”. He looked up for a sympathy smile.

“I’m probably going to be there til about midnight sorting it out. Then I’ll meet up with Steve, we’ll go clubbing and, you know”, he sighed, “I’ll probably get catastrophically fucked off my head.”

“Sounds a fun plan.”

It took a couple of seconds for Adam to fully register what he’d said.

“Wait, Steve? I thought Steve was off to Barcelona tonight?”

Paul looked up. “No. I’m meeting him later”. Paul looked in no doubt.

Adam paused, making sure in his mind exactly what Steve had said earlier. He had a strange feeling in his stomach. He was sure he remembered the conversation correctly.

“I was chatting to him on Gayzer earlier. He definitely said he was flying out tonight”.

Paul rolled his eyes. “That’s just Steve trying to sound impressive. It’s a bit fucking tedious”

“What, so he pretended he was going on holiday?” Adam asked, struggling to believe this.

“Yeah, he’s done it before. It’s a bit embarrassing”. Paul sounded genuinely annoyed. “You know, I might just get rid of him tonight. If he tries to talk to you again, it’s probably best to ignore him. He can get pretty fucking clingy if you let him get close.”

Paul’s phone started to ring.

“This’ll be Sydney. I’d better take it” he said, and disappeared off to his room.

Adam shook his head. That was odd.

His phone buzzed and he was quickly distracted by a highly flirtatious text from Matt.

Now was not the time to think about Barcelona and Sydney and Paul he decided. He headed through to his room and opened his wardrobe. Now was the time to make sure he looked as alluring as possible for his sexy swimmer date.