The Slutty Phase

I have quite a few regrets in my life - missed opportunities, saying things I wish I had kept to myself, and most pertinent to this post - things I have done.

The image I may have portrayed on this blog since I began it back during my junior year of high school might be one of me being "the good boy" for the most part. Indeed, I have tried my best to be studious, socially active, and to take care of myself. Well, defying the point of this blog as a means of me to talk about things I hide from the public, I have held out on you guys, but hopefully this will be a first step to eventually precede many more. I'm going to try and open up, at least a little, and get some things of my chest that recently have been weighing on me, especially now that I'm home and have time to think about things other than school work. Call it my guilty conscious getting the better of me once again (it's a side of me that has plagued me since I was little), but maybe this is my cue to start talking about it a little.

My slutty phase lasted for a rather long time. You know how some people are habitually always on the prowl and some just have that one week where all they want to do is get with anyone that happens to walk by? For me, my slutty phase lasted from the end of freshman year of college through winter break of sophomore year - a solid seven months of horniness that now haunts me with the potential consequences of what I have done.

After entering college and actually getting with a guy for the first time instead of just dreaming about it while I was alone, it felt like a whole new world opened for me. It was a drug- the roughness of holding a guy and getting hot and heavy in the back corner of a room. It only took one hit and I was hooked. As many of of you guys might know, years of holding back feelings that you knew you could not actually recognize or act on suddenly being released is something that is hard to control, and by the end of freshman year, things were bad. As the summer between freshman and sophomore year began, I was stuck back at home, but my craving still continued. Still partially reeling from Mark and the few other guys I hooked up with my freshman year of college, I realized I wanted more, and I wouldn't let be being stuck at home alone stop me. Thus began my slutty phase.

The internet is a dangerous place for many reasons. As people know, anonymity makes you both powerful yet weak. Nobody cares who you are if you don't want to reveal your name, yet that same can be applied right back to you. There is not nearly as much need for trust, disclosure, or socializing to a meaningful extent like there is meeting people in real life. Only a few weeks into my summer break did I start turning to online resources to get with guys. Grindr happened first but that was lacklustre and my need for physical contact quickly outgrew the frequently 40+ y/o guys that would try to chat me up and that I continuously denied. Yes, I did actually hook up with one guy via Grindr, it was a sloppy, uncomfortable experience at his apartment in Virginia which made me question if I wanted to continue with what I was doing; that view lasted all of a few days. Soon after I ended up back on the web searching for the next guy, this time using a site that has a less than stellar reputation, (I think you can figure it out), but nevertheless, it worked.

Looking back, I regret letting myself stoop to such a low level as I did for sex. Grindr was bad enough, but this was even worse. Why did I keeping going back to it? I think it was the excitement. It was the raw, no-string-attached type of stuff I was after at the time. It was so accessible and so easy; all it took was saying what we were looking for, some pictures, and we were off to the races. I didn't let myself stoop to the level of sending anything X-rated (something I would never do) though it was something many others readily did. Once school started again, first semester sophomore year let me get a break from this online circus which only started back up come winter break 2011-2012. That winter I ended up messing around with a guy at a local university. Awkwardly, I've seen him around since then because he works at Tysons Corner Mall. Whoops.

I between summer and winter got with 6 guys via my online escapades. Ages ranged from 19 to mid-20s. There were students, a department of defence employee, a store manager, and some who I had no idea of what they did. I'm not going to lie and say those hookups weren't hot - they were, but the means I used to get them is something I am not even close to being proud of. If I had the chance, I would go back and stop myself from going as far as I did. It was a mistake, a huge one. It's one that could come back to haunt me and damage my reputation and career later in life if it came to light- something I'll just have to deal with. In addition, while I didn't engage in any unsafe acts, I knew there were health risks that I could have put myself in. Even before my slutty phase began, I had already gotten into the habit of getting tested for STDs periodically which I continue to do. All is clear thankfully, but that is yet another needlessly risky thing I did.

My slutty phase is something I'm glad is over, however, just because my slutty phase is over doesn't mean I've gone celibate, quite far from it actually, but I've definitely slowed things down and am not jumping guy to guy every week now. What brought about an end to it? I think it was because the novelty of it finally wore off. When I was seeing a new guy so frequently, part of what kept me going was because it was exciting. It was the fact that (presumably) I wouldn't have to see that person again and that things could be full throttle from the start. By the end of it, I didn't get that rush anymore. It got, well, boring, and my slutty phase died out. It wasn't until later did my logical side catch up and remind me of the consequences of my actions.

Have I been tempted by the lure of the anonymous hookup since? Yes. Have I acted on it? No. It was a once time thing, albeit a very long one time thing in my life. It's not something I'm proud of, though I will always remember the rush of trying to escape the consequences, jumping from one dude to the next. My slutty phase was another chapter in my life. It was hot, it was fun, it was dangerous, and I'm happy I got it out of my system.

Lessons learned, memories made, stories one day to be told.

-JP