Working into the early hours of the morning trying to think of something to blog about, I left my gaydargirls.com account open and logged in. The little chimes sounded to tell me I had a message and I opened it to find a rather pleasing near naked profile pic of SexyGirrl22, announcing “Hey there gorgeous, what you doing up so late?” There was an attached picture file. I opened the picture with no hesitation, but with a distinct sense of trepidation. The window sprawled across my screen to reveal a larger than life-size close-up photo of a very pink, very bald and very wet fanny.
Honestly, all this because I recently decided to make the somewhat controversial move of joining internet lesbianism at its sordid pinnacle, and placed a profile on gaydargirls.com. Now before you class me into 'desperate internet singles', let me explain the concept a bit.
In case you don't know, Gaydargirls, as the name implies, is a dating site for lesbians. It's free to join and you get basic features, and a few more features if you pay a subscription. You put up some photos, describe yourself and what you’re looking for, interests, hobbies, do you like pina collada and getting caught in the rain and so on and so on.
It's not all well lit vaginas splashing accross computer screens, it's mostly pretty mundane. I first discovered gaydargirls when I was young and half in the closet, desperately heart broken, and didn’t know what another lesbian looked like, never mind where to find one.
Gaydar provided a safe place where I could identify other girls like me in a comfortable shroud of anonymity; it was a glimmer of homo hope in my extremely hetero surroundings. Just knowing there were lesbians looking to the internet to find some sort of company was a comfort in itself, and for that I will always be grateful. For the results that followed, however, I will not.
Admittedly, the pickings were slim, but at that stage of my life I felt like Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain when he travels over the border to Mexico looking for man-loving to fill his lonely void (no pun intended). So after searching through the twenty-odd profiles in my area and a few miserable chat attempts, I finally found a girl who seemed half decent, and we decided to meet. She did turn out to be actually decent, and we proceeded to get horrendously drunk, I believe there was making out in a car, and eventually, we slept together. The sex was AWFUL, and as it turns out, I was the first woman she slept with, so if you’re reading this, I sincerely apologise! Luckily, the girl turned out to be lovely and, with a long lapse of time to remove the cringe factor, we’re now friends.
Big shock, it didn’t sooth the emptiness in my metaphorical soul. The allure of internet dating is what it promises: being able to browse for someone you like online untill you find exactly what you're looking for, almost as if you were shopping. Add a certain sense of mystery, an embelished profile description and an over active imagination, and you have a recipe for a disasterous let down. After two more attempts and one broken heart that wasn't my own, I realised that this was never going to solve my problems, and I'd have to mend my heart the old fashioned way. Drinking.
I gave up on the internet as a way to actually meet people, it just felt a bit synthetic.
So why did I decide to enter that electronic meat market again you may ask? Well, for one my outlook has totally changed, mainly because I’m no longer confused and desperate. Yay me. Another reason is that there are just so many lesbians in London, hundreds of whom are on gaydar, it just seems it would be a waste if I didn’t investigate. The last time I joined I was looking to buy the meat (or at least sample), this time I’m just window shopping. Take a brief moment to visualise this mixed metaphor, who window shops for meat??
Rather: placing a profile on gaydargirls is the internet equivalent of showing your face at a party where you don’t know anyone, just staying for a few minutes to have a look around and to be looked at. If the party sucks, you leave with no regrets because you weren’t expecting much anyway, but you had to see for yourself that you weren’t missing out on anything. If it turns out to be great, then it’s a pleasant surprise that hopefully ends in sex.
On the less shallow side, I really think there’s also something to be said regarding this lesbian visibility I keep talking about. Sites like gaydar have a double role to play in this: providing a haven for those lesbians who aren’t visible to general society to make themselves visible to other lesbians. And yet, the very existence of the site is recognition that there are enough of us out there to make up a sizeable community. The fact that it’s a global website means that lesbians all over the world, even those dying of sexual starvation in remote areas, can access and participate in this sense of community. I joined up to be electronically counted as a lesbian, and to associate myself with lesbian visibility. (Either way, that is DEFINITELY what I’m telling people from now on!)
And to SexyGirrl22, thanks, but no thanks. I burst out laughing, closed my laptop and ran away. I am really not a meat shopper, even the window scares me!
Kathryn Schneider (a.k.a Katka-Kapenaar) is a Cape Town Lesbian abroad, immersing herself in the ups and downs of lesbian life in London and attempting to navigate the fabulous and treachourous gay scene to the soundtrack of electro-synth pop. See how she copes with more gay girls than she can count on her two hands at www.katka-k.blogspot.com
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But it's good to know what's out there.
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