Incognito Internet Intercourse or III…
By Rory Lapointe

I’m a sexual guy. I admit it freely with the openness of a Jerry Springer guest. I like sex, have fun with sex and have considered sex pretty much each time it has been brought to my attention. I make no apologizes for my behavior and will even discuss it at length after a few dirty martinis and the prerequisite smoke break. I have had fuck buddies, threesomes and even an open relationship which isn’t never really as open or relationship sounding as it might seem. But there is one thing that I don’t openly discuss, something that I keep out of conversation for fear of sounding like I have gone too far. Craigslist sexual partners. There seems to be some type of taboo about this stuff—kind of like how you don’t own up to internet dating till someone catches your profile and tells all your friends. The only reason that I’m even owning up to this secret behavior is because of my friend Merry. She is a sexy, curvy, sexual Mountie type of girl—she always gets her man. We were rehashing recent boy developments and were complaining about the lack of good catches in our group of friends and friends of friends. The conversation—as always—turned to sex talk and we both realized it had been a bit since we had done anything that involved a second party. Of course, I was lying, I had just hooked up with a guy I met via Craigslist who had a girlfriend but really enjoyed hot boy sex when he was back in the army. My hair was still wet from the shower I had taken before joining Merry for drinks. But it’s not like something I was likely to cop to. We sat in silence for a beat, getting fresh drinks and flipping through magazines when I caught Merry staring off into the distance. This happens from time to time with us and is always a sign of a big secret. Something we are eager to spill but aren’t sure how to bring it to the table. I went and had a smoke so Merry could work up to her big announcement. “I met up with a guy from Craigslist.” The sentence was clear but I didn’t want to take the bait to easily. I congratulated Merry on having a date and she shot me a death stare. “You know what I mean…” I confessed I did and got details. Turns out she was bored and just playing around the internet one night and found herself reading some funny cute personal ads and just dived in. Of course I confessed myself and we both had a laugh about the entire scenario and our reluctance to talk about it. As I thought about it later that night I wondered why we, two sexually liberated under thirtysomethings, were so embarrassed. I mean, we both have always been open books about our conquests and experiences and here we were like two high sophomores talking about getting to three base with a boy. What was it about the Craigslist experience that had us biting our lips and holding back? So I thought back to all the times that I had done the incognito internet intercourse thing. What I realized was that each of the guys I had met had their own reasons for the secrecy of the internet. There was the one whose boyfriend was out of town, the aspiring actor who couldn’t ever go to a gay bar for fear of being seen and the married guy who just believed men gave better head. What these guys all had in common was a fear of going public with their secret desire. Places like Craigslist allow us to fulfill our freakiest behavior without any work—just write an ad of explicit nature and post it with having to leave home. There’s no drinks to buy, no cover to pay, no danger of being outed for whatever it is your heart desires. Just a stranger who is in the mood and doesn’t really care what you want outside of an orgasm and vise versa. And even for the handful of us who do like casual sex, even we know how odd and dirty this trend is. You barely see a picture, talk maybe once or twice but only to exchange addresses or contact numbers and that’s about it. Sex at your door in under an hour. You can even fit it between loads of laundry or have it waiting after work. And no one has to know. Some people might say this has always been apart of the internet—that it is part of what makes the information superhighway so popular. That you can meet anyone and swap some info easily and meet lots of new people to play with. But the difference is that these new places are very in your face—they tell you what they want and nothing else. There is little connection of any type. Just sex for sex’s sake. And while this behavior has been around, it has never been so easy, so incognito, so fast. Someone you know is probably doing this right now, at work or at home or the cyber café down the street. The temptation is so overwhelming because it so easy to not be caught, to not have to face these partners ever again that even the most shy can just go out there and get some. I know people who have separate e-mail accounts for type of stuff, aliases and other ways to cover their tracks. I guess the real question is, how right is this? I mean, I may not be the most conventional of people but even I know when it has gone too far. Should we be proud of how much further we have come sexually as a society when we use faceless, emotionless avenues to pursue our desires? Have we become so jaded and disconnected from true human interaction that it is okay to just have sex delivered by a random stranger to your door? I’m not really sure what it means. But is something to think about the next time that Merry and I head off to happy hour at some random bar where really men have to work to get our attention. At least if we do decide to go home with them, we’ll know that it is us that they really want—not just somebody with a computer and desire.