With so many hook up apps on our smartphones, younger guys and newbies to gay hooking don't even remember the hefty trade that went on in online chat rooms.
Living in Northern Virginia, but being deeply closeted, I didn't have a way to begin exploring my attraction to guys that might be more familiar to folks in the Big Apple, Chicago, San Francisco, and the like. I couldn't imagine being caught dead at one of DC's "gay bars." I hadn't located anything approaching a bathhouse. I saw messages written on bathroom walls but those always seemed sketchy.
Then along came the internet, and with it, the advent of online chat rooms.
There were chat rooms for every conceivable interest, including genealogy and ancestry research, gardening, politics. And then there were those mysterious "4" chat rooms. M4M, M4W, W4W, MW4M, MW4W, MW4MW, etc. Even better, there were geographically specific rooms.
Of particular interest to me were rooms with the monikers NoVAM4M and DCM4M.
I created an pseudonymous profile name and treaded lightly into my first chat room.
The rooms consisted of light banter about sex, some braggadocio, and constant feelers being sent to the group: "looking to get sucked," "looking to suck," and similar messages, often followed by a response such as "message me, I'm interested."
I spent a couple months visiting the chat rooms as I worked up the pluck to explore my attraction by finding another guy that would show me the ropes, or at least some of them.
As I mentioned, I lived in Northern Virginia. We were about 15 minutes away from the sprawling campus of George Mason University in Fairfax.
Early one Saturday, I was in one of the NoVAM4M rooms. While there, another profile, using the handle GMUFreshman asked me what I was up to.
We exchanged pleasantries for a while and then he asked if he could message me directly. I agreed. He told me his was a freshman at George Mason, and that he had a thing for dads. At the time, I was 42, and literally, a dad. We chatted for nearly an hour. I sported a boner the whole time, and was leaking pre-cum.
He wanted to meet up.
"I'm married, I can't host," I explained.
"Damn," he replied, "I can't either ... roommates."
"There is a park and some woods near the campus, we could go there," he suggested.
I suppose if I hadn't been boned up and leaking, and edging for the last hour, it would have seemed like a really sketchy idea. But I was horny, and I was desperate to experience, finally, something I had always dreamed about since puberty: sex with a guy.
"Well, is there someplace we could meet up, and then decide if we want to do it," I asked?
"University Plaza is located right across from the campus and not far from the spot I mentioned, how about we meet outside the McDonald's there," he quickly retorted.
This is when, honestly, I began experiencing something I still call a fugue state.
I could see myself typing on the keyboard, but it was like someone else was taking charge and doing the work.
"I can be there is 30 minutes," I responded.
"I'll see you then," came his quick reply.
I described my car so he would be able to find me. Then I got dressed and plotted my escape.
"Honey, I'm going to head to Ace Hardware to get that replacement glass for the backdoor," I told my wife, who was still in bad, but now awake. "Do you want to come?"
She wasn't having any of it. "No, I'm going to get up shortly, and I want to start organizing the winter clothes for storage." It was early April, and the weather had broken, so it was time to dig out the spring and summer clothes and put away the winter coats and boots and the heavier wear.
"Okay, dear," I answered, "maybe later we can hit the garden center? I need to get the mulch for the front yard."
She yawned an agreeable response as I slipped on my jacket and headed toward the door.
Everything was so strange. It was an out of the body experience. And I mean, really out of body. I could hear. I could see. But it was like I was watching myself drive.
"This is crazy," I muttered to myself as I drove.
