Contest Speech

Here is the rough text of my contest speech.  I don’t have a recording or notes, so I’ve rewritten it from memory:

(enter stage with an iPhone in hand)

You know, these things have really allowed us to re-invent cruising.

It used to be that we would go to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer at guys across the room, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Then came the Internet, and we could stay at home in our pajamas and peer at pictures of guys online, hoping one of them would want to talk to us.  Now, though, we can go back to the bar, hang out in a dark corner, and peer peer at pictures of guys online…

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Still, for all the advances these things have given us, sometimes we run into problems.  A few months ago, Grindr deleted my profile text for being too naughty or something.  So I’ve done an end-run on them and now I list my hanky colors in my profile instead.

Flagging a hanky has always been an invitation to conversation, and I get more responses than I expected:

• “Does anyone still use the hanky code” — well, obviously I do!
• “What do all those colors mean?” — I send them to Google to learn more
• “I know red and gray, but what is peach?  Or mustard?” — these are the guys I can educate a little
• And then I get “I flag red, too!  Mine’s on the left.” — and well, you know how things go from there

In other words, sometimes the oldest, tried-and-true cruising methods are still ones which can work just fine today.

Photo © 2011 Malixe Photo, used by permission.