4
CHRIS
"Let me think about it." Chris kept his eyes focused on the image. He was thinking about it all right.
"I could meet him after I've finished work, but I won't contact him if you're going to." Tom swigged back his tea. "I've got to get going to my next job soon, but you have time to set up a profile, contact him, set up a meeting, and do the do. Do it all this afternoon while I'm cleaning houses."
"Before you go, let me check that I'm creating a profile on the right website to meet this guy." Chris dragged his iPad toward him and began a search for the site, keeping hold of Tom's phone as a reference source.
"I'm not going anywhere until I've overseen your new dating profile."
Chris sighed. "Tom, even if I contact this guy, probably, nothing will come of it. I really need to go to the studio and stick together some pieces of glass. After that, at some point, I'm committed to baking a batch of pastries or cakes to take to Colin and Greg's party on Sunday."
Tom pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. "If the food is the way to a man's heart, you should be a winner. You can put “great baker” in your profile if you like, but get to work on it now, Chris." He took his cup and placed it in the dishwasher.
"I'm registering immediately as we speak, Tom. I don't need you to hold my hand."
"All right. I'll leave you to it. I want to see your profile live when I log in to the site after my next job." He shut the dishwasher and leaned against it, showing no sign of leaving Chris to get on with it.
"I'm on it. I'll set up the profile, contact the tattooed headless guy, and then be off to the studio. I've got to work on my exhibition for the Far East."
"That's months away. You've got time to arrange a hookup; this is far more urgent."
"The exhibition is in February. I've really only got a few months to get everything ready."
"Months! if I didn't know better, I wouldn't believe it takes you that long to put together those piles of junk."
The men laughed. Tom was joking, of course. And Chris wouldn't take offense.
As a contemporary sculptor, Chris was used to people thinking of his work as piles of junk, which wasn't far from the truth. However, each piece within that pile of junk was carefully selected and placed in position, just so, and together as a whole his body of work conveyed a compelling story to those people who attended his exhibitions.
Having been one of Chris's close friends for more than a decade, Tom knew much about Chris's art. Along with their friend Lee, together they formed the terrible trio. They were all gay and single.
Each man was so different to the other two, and yet all three were good, close friends who'd supported each other through the low times as well as the high ones. Through the boyfriends, the break-ups, the tragedies, the ill health, and the bad news in their lives.
"I think when you set up your profile on that site, you should put in the studio's postcode so that the headless dude sees you as someone who is very close by. That's bound to get his attention and raise your chances of at least meeting him."
"I'm not sure I want to meet a headless hunk who is into casual hookups."
Tom walked to the door, shaking his head, and stopped before leaving the kitchen. "That is a blatant lie. Either that or you seriously need some treatment for your eyes, or your mental well-being. If nothing else, hooking up with this pinnacle of manliness is exactly what you need." With that, he left the kitchen and Chris heard him walk upstairs.
Having been gay all his life, of course, Chris had used gay hookup apps, plural. He dived in as soon as they were available, as did most of his friends. He'd installed Grindr, Jack'd, and Scruff to his phone, and deleted them. Many times over.
The improved features of gay hookup apps, just made them better, over the years. For example, Chris like the fact that men could be completely up front about drug use, safer sex practices, and HIV status, so men didn't have to wonder how to start awkward conversations when they met.
It couldn’t be just gay men who had those discussions.
This particular all-inclusive dating website for men and women of any sexuality was so different an experience. Like stepping back in time, as if he were trying to create a profile on an early beta version that hadn’t implemented the results of years of user feedback. There were no easy and obvious check boxes to raise safer-sex issues, for example. A list of "liked" sex activities wasn't quite the same thing.
He liked various sexual activities without condoms, but that didn't mean he'd do them all with anyone on this site. He liked bareback anal, but that didn't mean he'd only meet men who wanted the same. There wasn't a top, bottom, or vers option, just anal sex.
What boxes to tick? It was a minefield.
His cursor hovered over condoms, but he decided to leave it. He ticked the oral and anal and wondering if his lack of interest in spanking, BDSM, or uniform might be interpreted as incredibly boring or unadventurous.
Very different to the options he was used to: top, bottom, vers. With a choice of safer sex option: condoms, PrEP, TasP. And an optional declaration of status.
Seeking?
Again, he wasn’t sure of the answer.
He didn't want a casual one nighter, so if he met anyone, he'd hope for a relationship. He’d become so used to being perpetually single he didn’t know how well he’d adjust to having a boyfriend, even if that were possible. But if he were looking for casual sex, those other apps would’ve been easier to navigate.
If he were honest with himself, there was only one reason Chris was signing up to this dating website. To satisfy his curiosity about the enigmatic figure who called himself Free and resided so close to Chris's art studio.
With no reason not to, Chris uploaded a face photo and identified as gay — that was one easy box to check. Chris set his address as the studio, so he'd appear in that postal area for proximity. Anal, oral, bareback, condoms were all listed as possible sexual preferences. Chris couldn’t work out whether it was customary to tick everything or nothing. They were words, and Chris liked them all, but the implications of ticking them in this context were unclear. He didn't do everything he liked with a guy, just because he could. Whatever happened to leaving a little mystery and letting the relationship develop.
Chris could be just as unforthcoming as Free.
A face photo.
Description: An open-minded guy who doesn’t know what or who he’s looking for.
Approve.
With his profile activated, Chris could contact Free. Chris sent a simple message. He didn't expect an instant reply; this wasn't Grindr.
Before clearing up and heading out to work, Chris spent a long while looking at Free's photograph. He enlarged it on his screen and examined what he could see of the tattoos. If the dude lived so close to the studio, and they passed each other in the street, perhaps Chris might recognize him.
The tattoos looked interesting, but Chris couldn't specifically recall seeing a man with these. So many men had something similar.
At his studio, Chris had to make some progress toward his work for his exhibition next February and the London exhibition in the summer. Even though they seemed months away. Chris's carefully compiled sculptures of junk didn't just appear that way overnight.
He'd worked hard to make a full-time living as an artist.
When he began, many people ridiculed him. Even several of his boyfriends pissed on his dreams and told him he would never make a living as an artist. Some with more disdain than others, especially when they saw exactly what he'd been working on.
However, in recent years his vision and efforts were paying off.
Paying off enough that he could afford to buy the house he lived in. A house big enough to share with a lodger. Although Tom wasn't exactly a lodger — mostly he'd been a guest, staying rent free in his time of need.
Now Chris's reputation and career had reached such a level that he could live off the profit from selling just a few pieces of art each year. He just had to actually make those sales. So he had to make those pieces and exhibit them.
China was booked and beckoning. And the Chinese were spending big money on art. It was a fantastic opportunity, and Chris knew he needed it more than he needed a boyfriend. Both would be nice.