I Did Not Find a Covid Boyfriend
People tell me how the pandemic changed them: they got depressed, made bread, gained weight, relocated. They found new hobbies, new friends, lost others, and reconnected with even more people from long past. They got lonely, and in that loneliness, adopted dogs, bought kittens, discovered Zoom happy hours, drag performances, and new hiking groups.
They also dated.
In San Francisco — and from my lens, gay men in particular — this was a faux pas activity, but not because of the all-engulfing pandemic. Most gay men I meet come here from a small-town life, and this city represents for them the very apex of LGBTQ freedom. With that comes plentiful sex, drinking, merriment; It’s all in excess, and no one questions it because many of us come from super repressed if not bigoted or homophobic pasts. Dating happens, but it’s really second or third priority to a hedonistic life that captures all the moments you might have missed growing up in podunk America.
That was my experience, at least, and even though I’ve often wanted a boyfriend, I remember several years suspending that search in favor of just enjoying the presence of other queer people. It is a relief to feel so welcome in a community when the world outside always seems to shoot judgmental glances toward something I’m wearing or saying on any given day.
The pandemic came and everything changed: No more circuit parties, street festivals or gay brunch, bye bye sipping martinis and chattering between Madonna music videos, and so long ogling each other at the gay gym. Now we were all just home and told not to touch each other. This is something I was surprised to learn even my most promiscuous friends abstained from; Some of them did, at least. Sex party invitations still found me. I still hooked up, and even on occasion had threesomes. I wound up briefly at a Pride party last year, and I know others took place. To me, the world never stopped, it just transformed; Now it wasn’t socially acceptable to do these things, so fewer people did, and we didn’t share it on social media.
For me, it was either choose to make calculated risks or instead enter a really, really dark emotional place. At home, my one roommate was a huge ball of anxiety. He’d moved in just before the pandemic hit, and he spent subsequent months silently hating me as more social distance protocols came out. In that time, I still wrote columns for the SF Examiner, and my one on Pride prompted him to leave a passive-aggressive Facebook comment, “Please stop putting my life in danger,” which he quickly deleted. Likewise, another column I wrote about a winery trip prompted a friend who came with me to let me know we couldn’t see each other anymore. You see, he said, his social bubble read the article and gave him gruff for acting so irresponsibly.
Meantime, my social life continued to tailspin. Some friends moved away and others found comfort in routines with their roommates. One friend carried on life as normal, but since our relationship so often focused on event planning that I no longer did during the pandemic, he just kept going on without me. At first I didn’t think about these things because anxiety consumed me: Quarantining with parents left its scars, life with my roommate was what it was, and work oddly enough exploded with apparel and especially mask production. In that time, we also collectively witnessed the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests. We also lived through the childishness of that moron Donald Trump running the country into the ground, his subsequent exit, and ensuing attempted insurrection on the Capitol.
The loneliness wasn’t the first thing on my mind amid all that, even though it had been quietly reaching critical mass while life happened. Around November, I stopped cleaning up after myself as a passive aggressive way to tell my roommate to get lost. With rent prices teetering off a cliff, he happily obliged and left. Now alone in the apartment for the first time in a decade, it hit me that no one was calling. No holiday parties to go to; No one to hug. This isn’t the most novel situation, I think, for many of us in the pandemic, which is why maybe more men I know found relationships.
I only recently met Joe Wadlington when he came to my place for a craft session and told me about his COVID boyfriend. Seeing his story in Bold Italic prompted me to submit one of my own. My experience in life has nearly never been how he described it, “We were easy — the world was not.”
The gist of this has been expressed to me by countless hookups and dates who insisted I never get my hopes up: “I’ll have sex with you and we can see a movie, but I’m keeping my heart open for whatever comes.” In other words, don’t force it. Have a good time. Let him come to you. When it works, it works. All that nonsense. And yes, I do call it nonsense insofar that men can be so intimidated by someone’s raw desire for a relationship that they have to constantly establish these boundaries. Saying aloud that you want a boyfriend is pretty much like putting up a huge red sign that says you’re clingy and have codependency issues.
And I won’t lie, maybe there’s some truth to that when you go a year without hugs.
The sheer calamity of 2020 reminded me of a married gay man I met many years earlier. I asked how he had fallen for his husband, and he said they were together when his father had died. “Experiencing that with someone near you can endear you toward them and spark strong feelings,” he said, or so I remember. This is something else Wadlington touched on.
“Besides, people were dying every. single. day. We couldn’t even gather to mourn them. We just had to donate or march or tweet or decide to stop reading and try to sleep. Yet, Fernando was always so happy to see me.”
I remember that sense of relief from the men I met last year. In May, right after quarantining with parents, I spent what felt like forever hugging my friend in the street, gripping each other like a toddler attached to their parent’s leg. Other men likewise shared with me how they felt abandoned by others in their lives. Men in general felt more chatty than they did pre-pandemic; It’s as though the isolation pulled the curtain back on how important connection was for them. I rode that wave for awhile, grateful for attention that felt in several ways lacking before our COVID lives.
But for many reasons, that never led to something more. After the roommate left, my mind initially dwelled on other things like making enough money to keep my apartment. But when I did see men again, I think my biggest mistake was that I only had Grindr and Scruff installed. In addition to never saying aloud that I wanted a boyfriend, I had forgotten the other unspoken rule of the gay community:
“I would never think to meet a boyfriend on Grindr; that was just for sex,” Sam Lansky, the west coast editor for TIME said in a 2017 story on dating.
Sex apps are only for sex, and dating apps are only mostly for dating, but sometimes sex, too.
I could only guess at why I didn’t reinstall Hinge, Tinder, or OKCupid. In part because I stopped going out on so-called “blind dates,” or meeting up with actual strangers whose profile images were totally new to me. As a semi public or community figure, I’d grown accustomed to striking up conversations with men who knew me or knew of me, and that took away a lot of the tedium that came with “hi,” “how are you,” “how’s your weekend,” or “those are cute pics, can I see more?” It also generally meant they knew how flamboyant I was and probably that I was a bottom, all important elements to discuss before committing to an hourlong dinner — in my opinion — that ends with a discovery of obvious incompatibility.
I think also I was afraid. As much as I blame others for not reading my profiles and not taking initiative for planning dates, I just hate — I hate — going out with someone and not feeling that connection. Putting that energy into making the evening pleasant, trying to be vulnerable, and leaving that experience feeling bored or worse, judged. Spending all the money commuting and on the date, setting aside plans with others to go out with the person, and then nothing happens, or at least nothing especially productive.
But I knew I had to do it if it meant ever finding another boyfriend or connection. As summer approached, vaccinations rolled out, and life began to reopen, I sought dates again. I began with Grindr, and that didn’t go swimmingly, to say the least. One guy who had known me for years told me he saved weekends for dating; Ergo, I should contact him on a weekday since the rest of his schedule was already booked with more meaningful activities. (He actually said this.)
I pointed out to a different man he had been bread-crumbing me forever, sort of showing only the minimal amount of attention. He was profusely apologetic and immediately invited me over that night, but added:
“I just want to stipulate again that I am definitely not ready to get seriously involved with someone right now. The world is just starting to open back up, and I want to get back in shape and go travel the world and fuck 100 guys.”
This is a sentiment I sense is building right now. Many times I chat up a guy who tells me he had a rough night drinking or that he’s made social plans, so he can’t do anything too soon. The hedonist San Francisco life is beginning to resume and with it, dating will return to the backseat, I think. And I’d like to pretend all recent experiences were similar horror stories just to prove a point, but I’ve had mild success, too.
I began dating a man much younger than me in April, and he was probably the nicest among my recent encounters. We began with a movie and lasted four or five dates. I asked him near the end of it how he felt about us, and he essentially said lukewarm; I felt it, too, and we parted pretty amicably. Another Scruff connection invited me on a group sailing trip and at first I was hesitant. I didn’t want to be his flavor of the week for his friends to greet with suspicion. “It’s okay, we know each other,” he said. Wait, we do? This was one of those semi public life moments: He was an ex of a bar owner I used to run events for, and I hadn’t placed him in my mind.
The sailing trip was nice, and I even recognized one or two people from my social life. At the end of it he drove me home, pecked me on the lips and said he’d call. After some time, it was me who messaged. “Yes we can have a date, was that a date? I think it might have been,” he replied. “It’s been so long I don’t know what that is.” I didn’t hear from him after that.
This week a man found me on Grindr while I was out to lunch with an editor. “And he’s got brown eyes, dark hair, and beautiful lips?! Well I might as well be putty in his hands,” he told me. I asked him out, and we spent the night being dirty during Cruella, then talking over milkshakes at Mel’s, and finally making out at Ocean Beach in his car. He told me we should do this again, and he abstained taking it further because sex on the first date often killed more lasting potential. I left the experience feeling pretty euphoric, and he texted that he enjoyed it too. But then I didn’t hear from him again. I messaged days later sort of to say hi, and he replied with a photo of him holding my cover story in SF Weekly. Nothing else after that.
Sometimes I feel like there are these playground rules to dating that everyone must follow: don’t text him after a certain time. Don’t force something to happen. Be emotionally available, smile, have fun. Don’t expect romance from certain apps, parties, bars, or social outings. Develop interesting hobbies, be adventurous, look cute. Everywhere I look though, the rulebook I’m trying to learn is different than the one everyone plays by. Lately I want a guardian I can run to and say someone is cheating. Instead I’ll continue to put myself out there, kiss more frogs, and hope for brighter days sans my very own COVID boyfriend.
This story originally appeared in The Bold Italic, which de-published the essay once the editor discovered I’d cross posted it on my website.
The editor’s line edit remains active on Medium here.
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