Darkside Rainbow

“Sensitive TX man seeks like minds for friendship, more” the tagline reads. His profile says he’s 32 years old, 5′10″, brown hair and blue eyes, average build; his favorite movie is Alexander, his favorite book is blank, he has one or more dogs, no kids but wouldn’t mind them, he’s a versatile top, and to him sex is equally as important as romance. My gut instinct says tired pencil pusher, doormat, few hobbies, starting to sag, probably shorter than he says, wants more than I’m willing to put out on a first date, and has about as much in common with me as an orangutan has with a feather boa - and I click and move on. I hate dogs anyway. Not too fond of children, either. And Alexander was a crappy film.

I’ve never even met the guy and I’ve already rejected him, just as I rejected the half-dozen other profiles paraded past me in the past ten minutes. I’m browsing OutinHouston.com, my local installation of OutinAmerica.com, and the profile belongs to a man who’s just e-mailed me his general neighborhood and his phone number and told me to call him if I want to hook up tonight. That’s real internet safety for you, right there. Good thing I’ve got too much style to play the villain in a real-life slasher flick.

In recent years the internet has become more than a safe place to anonymously find the night’s latest stroke material; go to the right websites and you may end up bringing home the real thing in Mr. Right, Mr. Right Now, or Mr. You’ll Do Until I Can Find Something Better. The Hanky Code has been replaced by the Dot.com code, and sites like Gay.com, OutinAmerica.com, GLEE.com, and GayFriendFinder.com have created an online safe haven for members of the GBLTQ community to find friends, partners, or one-night stands behind the safety and anonymity of a screen name.

Whether you’re logging on for love or logging on for lust, within ten minutes you can create a profile that’s as much you as you want it to be, or as fictional as Britney’s sense of self-control. Browse, chat, click, contact - you’ll be viewed, reviewed, propositioned and rejected anywhere from one to one hundred times per night without ever hearing a single voice or seeing a single face beyond a photograph that looks like it was either culled from a high school yearbook or from the cast of beach-bum extras on Baywatch. You’ll know his endowment and his kinks before you even know his name; you’ll decide if you’re interested or not without ever feeling that first chemical spark of attraction. Within twenty minutes you could be chatting over coffee, asking who brought the condoms, or just staring at your screen wondering nervously how he’ll respond to your first inquisitive e-mail.

Digital dating has changed the way that we review potential mates; rather than responding to a glance, a smile, a whiff of pheromones, body language…instead we respond to a list of traits, often-misspelled words, answers chosen in a multiple-choice questionnaire, and a single photograph without life or personality. The fire of attraction has been reduced to an electrical spark transferring bytes across the distance, and beyond a gut reaction to an image, depends wholly on an intellectual response to what’s written.

This can be both a positive and a negative. Too many relationships crash and burn because they were based on the size of his assets or the cut of her figure, and by viewing profiles we’re forced to think of more than our libido’s instant reaction even if all we’re looking for is a quick hookup. The list of interest and favorites lets us know if we have anything in common; within five minutes we can know someone’s relationship goals rather than guessing, whether we’d be theoretically sexual compatible, and if they know how to use QWERTY with any degree of accuracy. If someone doesn’t meet our set criteria, we can cruise on by without the awkwardness of rejecting them face-to-face - often, they don’t even know we’ve looked.

But does this blithe and casual anonymity make it hard to make a real human connection? The digital dating pool in the pink triangle often feels more like the Bermuda Triangle, and it’s too easy to flounder and become lost without ever really finding your way. While it’s safer to browse for a potential mate online - no outing yourself if you’re closeted, no embarrassment of hitting on a hetero, no fear of homophobic reactions - that convenience may come at a price. A thousand profiles, a hundred e-mails, and yet how often do you feel that real sense of attraction - and when you do, how often does it translate to reality upon meeting? The guy who sent you steamy e-mails that left you panting turns out to be a nervous and fumbling thing who can barely articulate a single word, lives in his mother’s basement, and can’t even meet your eyes. The girl who spent long nights sharing intimate secrets with you over IM wants a long-term commitment on the first date, screams at the waiter in the restaurant for glancing at her for two seconds too long, and twitches with a nervous tic any time that you mention that you might need to…uh…go.

Do internet hook-ups really work out? I admit, I haven’t really delved into the idea much. I’ve met a few guys online, people with like interests who share my hesitations and would rather ask me out for coffee than ask me in for a one-night romp in the sheets. No matter how much I might have enjoyed e-mail communiques I find, on meeting them, that I feel absolutely nothing other than a rueful appreciation that I have, at least, made a new friend with whom I have something in common. Even if my mind said a dubious “yes”, my pheromones cry an emphatic “no!“, no matter how attractive he is. The spark just isn’t there; the body language doesn’t match the written word. Maybe I built him up too much in my mind, and the reality was a letdown. Maybe love really is just chemicals. Either way, we tend to part with a mutual agreement that we’d be great as friends, but nothing else. Sometimes I never hear from him again. Sometimes he’s right there with the rest of my friends when it’s Friday night and we’re out cruising for something to do. But he isn’t Mr. Right, even if I wouldn’t mind having a quick go at him just for right now.

I suppose I should consider my apathetic experiences to be rather fortunate when compared to the nightmare tales of others. One of my lesbian friends has a talent for finding calamity online - calamity, and pure insanity. She’s often met girls on MySpace who seemed sweet, funny, and everything that she’d love to date. When she meets them in reality, they turn out to be spastic psychos with serious mental problems, whose tamest “quirks” range from stabbing themselves with forks at the dinner table to breaking into tears at the sound of a car horn.

While I tease her and ask her what else she expects from MySpace, the sad reality is this: most people are nothing like the person that their profiles portray. In that five-minute summary you’re seeing not the person, but your subjective interpretation of them from a list of traits; you may end up ditching someone who could have been your potential lifemate without even knowing it, and instead choosing someone who turns out to be the next Norman Bates. Granted, that happens with real-life dating as well; until you really get to know someone, you can never be sure if they’re right for you or right for the curb. While it may seem easier to get to know someone online, where you can spill a dozen truths about yourself without ever revealing your real name, without having to duck your head and blush in embarrassment or worry about how they’re looking at you…

How often do you really meet the person that you thought you’d come to know?

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