July 2023
It’s late and I’m sitting on my front porch after dark.
The porch is my warm weather retreat. A massive blue spruce obscures the left side of the house; a dogwood and liberal plantings of shrubbery block the other. A dining table where I eat all my warm weather meals occupies one end; the rest is covered with comfortable chairs and loungers. Mornings, the cats bask in what sunlight streams in from the east. Summer afternoons, I’ll sprawl across one of the cushioned recliners, Kindle in hand and cool drink on a coaster, to read for long, lazy hours. Hot nights like this, long after the sun has set and the street’s traffic dwindled to only the occasional car, the nearest streetlight is over a block away, and the neighbors have long gone to sleep. Darkness covers me like a blanket. It’s one of those rare nights I’m a bachelor, and I’m looking to connect.
You look real close, says the guy on Grindr. Only 800 feet.
That’s close all right. He’s probably up the street, past the intersection a couple of blocks away and up past the wooded area to the north. There’s a city park near my home where men cruise sometimes. Late at night, they sit in the parking lot and blink their headlights at each other, hoping someone will join them in their cars. I’m sitting on my front porch, stroking. You should stop by.
The guy’s Grindr photos are pretty attractive, actually. He seems to be in his mid-thirties and sports the build of a former college athlete; his handsome face beams in a welcoming way. He looks like one of those married, closeted dads that litter my stretch of suburbia. What’d you have in mind? he asks. Would love to suck that big dick.
I live on a very dark street, I tap out, cock swelling beneath my terrycloth shorts. Drive on down, park in front of my house, then join me on the front porch. It’s a sexy scenario, right? No one can see on my front porch during the day, much less when darkness enshrouds the neighborhood. It’s better than the park. Fewer mosquitos on a screened porch, for one thing.
It’s real dark huh. I like the sound of that. Is your wife/bf/family home and are they gonna interrupt us?
I assure him, No one’s home. I just want to keep it to the porch. You coming by?
Yeah, he says. Especially with you so close. I need to suck. Address? I give it to him. Street number, street name, zip code even. All right then.
I figure I’ve got about five minutes before he’ll pull up. A man can get a lot done in five minutes. I rush inside to rinse and spit with mouthwash, then grab a cock ring and a towel. I turn off all the lights. I shut and lock the front door behind me as I step onto the porch again—no sense in not taking precautions—and I hide my keys in a lantern on the table. Then, heart pounding with excitement, I settle down on a chair and wait.
And I wait.
And wait.
Okay, so I’m being ghosted, I guess. I check back at the time stamps of our conversation. His all right then had arrived at 11:15. It’s now 11:42. Not quite a half hour, but almost. To walk from my house to the park only takes a brisk ten minutes. I mean, if he’d found someone to blink their headlights at him immediately after we’d exchanged messages and he’d decided to climb in to that guy’s Toyota instead, fine, whatever. At least he could’ve told me. At the same time, I’m unwilling simply to hang it up: the guy’s got my address. If I go indoors and to bed and he decides to come banging at the door, it’ll cause a ruckus I’d rather avoid. So I stare at my phone a little longer, feeling tired and vexed.
It’s 11:50 when he messages. I’m at the address you gave me but it’s an apartment building and it doesn’t have a porch and all the lights are on and I don’t know what apartment you’re in.
What the actual fuck, dude.
You are not at the address I gave you, I tell him. It never occurs to me to cut my losses, to be grateful that this stranger thinks I live in some strange apartment building, But I’m angry now, and I don’t think straight when my dander is up.
He replies back with an address that’s similar to mine, but isn’t mine. The street number is correct. The one-word street name is correct. Instead of an avenue, however, he’s on a lane. I live on the avenue. And the address on the lane to which he’s navigated, I see when I quickly map it on my phone, is fourteen miles away.
Now I’m fuming. Did you not notice, I ask him with what I think is commendable restraint, that instead of driving 800 feet from the park that you were driving 14 miles?
I just kind of plugged it in to the gps and drove. I feel kind of stupid now I guess.
Kind of stupid? Kind of? I mean, sure, it’s easy to type a partial address into your phone and get the wrong location. But how obtuse does one have to be not to a difference between 800 feet and 14 miles? How dense does one have to be not to question the disparity? Do I really want to get a blow job from anyone that witless? Hey, let’s just call it a night then. No hard feelings, I say, lying about the ‘no hard feelings’ part.
It’s cool. I’m already on the way. Be there in 20.
Fuck.
Once again I’m stuck sitting on a wicker divan, legs crossed at the knee, mouth in an angry moue, staring at my phone in the dark for long, silent minutes. At last, nearly a half-hour later, I see a car pull slowly in front of the house. The motor idles a moment more. My phone buzzes with a Grindr message. Should I park in front or what.
I’ve already told the fucker to park in front, over an hour ago. Just park where you are and get the fuck up here already, asshole, I type out. Before I send, however, I deleted everything but the first five words.
This is when I get the second shock of the night. The guy heaving himself up my front walk is not an athletic man in his thirties. No, he’s a guy in his fifties or sixties who’s approaching 300 pounds. Even in the dark I can tell he no longer looks a thing like whatever twenty-year-old photos he’s using.
I’m not one of those guys with hard and fast rules about the types of men I meet. I enjoy big guys. I enjoy older dudes. What I don’t like, though, are guys who misrepresent themselves so egregiously. This guy is wheezing like he’s about to have a coronary as he hauls himself up my front steps, “Whew!” he says loudly. “Sure is dark here!”
I shush him. It’s a dark street, yes. I’d like to keep it that way, without neighbors flipping on porch lamps at his braying. “You know,” I say, trying to sound reasonable. “It’s late…”
“Yeah, sorry about the mixup. Could happen to anyone, though.”
I don’t think that’s quite true, but I let it pass. “Maybe we should just…”
Now that he’s on the porch and the door’s shut behind him, he feels free to grab at my crotch. My dick’s only half-hard, but it stiffens under the pressure. “Here’s what I came for. Any chance we can turn on the lights?”
I feel nothing but contempt for the man. “If we turn on the lights,” I point out, “Everyone will be able to see us.”
“Oh. But you said you don’t have any neighbors.”
“I never said I don’t have neighbors.” It’s true that the lots on either side of mine are empty, but I gesture to the houses across the street. “It’s obvious I have neighbors.”
“All right, all right,” the man says in the placating tones of someone who recognizes a snarling dog when he sees it. “How about we go…” He nods towards the front door.
“No.” Absolutely not.
“Guess I’ll just have to do it here, then,” he says, as if that hadn’t been the deal from the start. He lowers my pants around my ankles and kneels.
I’m in a rotten mood by now and aware that I should have sent him home before he’d maneuvered his way onto the porch, but whatever. His mouth is on my cock and it seems that letting him go at it is probably the easiest way to get rid of him. I resent the fact he’ll take away the message that he can get away with catfishing guys like me, using decades-old photos of himself on his Grindr profile. But I don’t want him making a scene. Keeping him quiet with a mouthful of my dick seems the simplest answer to all my problems.
The blowjob, though, is substandard. C minus at best. There’s too much teeth. He tries to get away with wrapping his fist around the shaft and fellating only the top couple of inches, but I’m not having any of that. I sit on the divan, spread my legs, and try to enjoy the paltry amount of pleasure he’s meting out, but ugh. I hate the fact that I’m having sex with this man just to get rid of him. My anger at last takes over.
I stand up and pull my dick from his mouth, then beat it. He thinks he’s excited me. “Yeah baby,” he whispers. “I knew you’d like my wet mouth. You gonna cum for me?” I try to ignore his talk as he clings onto my thighs. “Load up my mouth.”
I consider faking it—dark as it is, I could probably get away with some grunts and groans and then pretending I’d shot all over the porch floor—but in the end I finally shoot a load. It doesn’t feel great, but it’s a release, I guess. The seed falls into my cupped hand. I wipe it off on the towel and with both hands haul the guy to his feet. His mouth dives for mine, but I jerk back and escort him to the screen door. “Thanks buddy.”
“But…that’s it? Don’t you want to fuck my ass?”
Ugh. No. “Hope you get home safe.” I steer him through the door and put his hand on the rail, so he can navigate the steps.
“I thought we could…”
Whatever he thinks, I no longer care. I shut the screen door. He turns and huffs and puffs his way down the walk. I wait until I see his lights move away, down the dark street, before I retrieve my keys and let myself into the house.
After a shower, I plop into bed. There’s a badge on my Grindr app. I open it up to see a message from the guy. Is that really all you wanted? I was hoping we could be fuckbuddies.
I allow the message to remain unanswered. I will never be fuckbuddies with this guy. Tomorrow, I’ll fire up the app once more and hit the block button. After that, I’ll think twice, on a bachelor night, before inviting anyone for a round of anonymous dark room sex on my front porch.
