Girl on the Net

As a general rule I don’t like people quoting me in guest blogs on my own site. It feels too recursive and narcissistic, even for me. BUT. Today’s guest – Oscar, big big thanks to him – has a really important point to make, and straight people (STRAIGHT MEN) need to hear it. It’s about a topic extremely close to my heart, and vitally important in my (and so many other people’s) dating lives. Actually fuck it, not just their dating lives, their lives in general. Today we’re gonna talk about jokes. Specifically, why it appears that straight men can’t joke with women who they might also be interested in boning…

Straight men can’t joke

A guy messaged me on Grindr recently. His opening gambit was “Big dick?” to which I replied “No, I’m actually quite charming.”

A post from Girl on the Net on Mastodon reminded me of a thing my wife and I talk about a lot since we decided to open up our decades-long marriage a year or so ago: dating site humour.

One of the most heartbreaking things about men is that, the more they want to bone you, the fewer of your jokes they laugh at. Absolutely guts me.

I see it so often in sexy spaces – funny women having their hilarious thoughts/witty turns of phrase stonewalled by horny men who fling compliments about their tits without acknowledging their wit at the same time. Devastating. Pearls before swine.

I’m bi and my wife is straight and so we’re both, broadly, talking to men on apps. One big, fat, throbbing truth has emerged: queer men are wittier and better at flirting than straight men.

There are exceptions, of course, like my Grindr charmer. Just as some straight guys really do want to seduce a woman’s mind before they fuck her brains out, so some queer guys need a gentle reminder that ‘abs’ is not a personality.

When my wife and I lie in bed and compare notes about the conversations we have, though, there’s pretty clearly something that unites men who want to tickle your funny bone first, versus those who just want you to grab their boner; and that ‘something’ is whether or not they they like cock.

That’s fine, so far as it goes. We’re getting down, not watching stand-up, and not everyone wants their horn with a side order of lols. Actually, that’s not even the right framing: the wit, smarts and facility with language, the playfulness and sizzle of being 100% funny while simultaneously being 100% horny, these things aren’t adjuncts to getting turned on, they’re necessary precursors to it, in part just because they show delicious wickedness and creativity, but also because sex is often inherently ridiculous. If you can’t laugh before sex, I worry you can’t laugh during it, and that’s a flag of deepest crimson.

Ultimately, I’m on hookup apps because I want to make out with and get silly and sweaty with some hot people. I want little cinema dates with some subtle, consensual but insistent groping. I want to taste that ill-advised second bottle of wine on his lips as one hand pushes him back against the alley wall. I want to wake up in a hotel room and trace my hands over the unfamiliar contours of last night’s partner’s body, waking them early for another round before I shower then show up, groomed and respectable, for work.

It’s just that you’re infinitely more likely to be in any of those situations with me if you can make me laugh at least as easily as you make me cum. Sure, ‘get you a guy who can do both’, but it seems that’s easier for me to do than my wife: straight men just can’t joke.

When I mentioned to someone on Grindr about changing my display name next week when I’ll be on an overnight train in the hope of scoring at least an illicit snog as we barrel through the countryside, they asked if I’d be changing it to ‘Want to get railed?’. When my wife sent a picture to someone of her wearing a t-shirt with two owls on it with the caption ‘Check out these hooters’, she got a leering comment back.

As if ‘Didn’t notice the owls; I was looking at the great tits’ wasn’t right there.

If I could say one thing to straight men, it would be… well, it would be ‘have you heard of this magic sex button called ‘the prostate’?’

But if we would say a second thing to them, it would be ‘be funnier’. It will get you more sex.