Sixty seconds after his profile went live, his notifications started chiming.
Hey sexxxy, said Queers4Fears.
Hi daddy, wrote MarcosPolo, while TomTom83 just used the waving-hands emoji.
Haven’t seen you before, said someone called—oh, God—DadBodFanboi. Who was, according to the app, a terrifying 0.1 mile away from Sam, a piece of information that prompted Sam to jump up from his desk, racewalk across the room, and yank the blinds down, as if DadBodFanboi might have been crouching in the oleander right under the window.
Sam immediately disabled his geographical tag and changed the settings to show that he was offline. But he kept scrolling. Young men, older men; men who identified as gay and queer and bi and pan and poly; bearded men with bellies; clean-shaven men with eyeliner; a panoply of men, an endless buffet.
You can do this, Sam told himself. He found a man whose profile said he lived in the Valley and who was a few years older than Sam; a man who’d used a picture of his face and not a body part to introduce himself to the world. The man’s name was Tim. He was more pleasant-looking than handsome, in a baseball cap that could have been covering a bald spot and a plaid shirt that did not look like it was disguising a six-pack. After long moments of agonizing, Sam typed, Hi.
Hi yourself, Tim wrote back. Looking for company?
Well, thought Sam. At least “company” was less explicit than some of what had already been proposed. He typed, No. At least, not yet. I’m very new at this—it’s my first time using this app, actually. I’ve only ever been with women, but…
He paused, and Tim jumped into the silence.
You’re curious?
Yes, Sam typed gratefully. I don’t want to lead you on…
No worries, said Tim. If you need someone to hold your hand, I’ve been out since I was thirteen and could probably use the karma points. Want to jump on the phone?
Sam agreed. Ten seconds later, his phone lit up, and a warm male voice was on the other end.
“Sam?”
“Thank you for doing this,” he blurted. His palms and the small of his back were sweaty and he felt like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “This is probably ridiculous, someone just figuring out he’s maybe attracted to men at my age.”
“Sexuality’s complicated.” Tim sounded cheerful and perfectly unfazed. “Don’t feel ashamed. People figure out they’re into all kinds of things at every age. Some people never manage to figure out what they like at all.”
“That’s…” Sam tucked his phone under his chin to dry his hands on his jeans. “That’s sad.”
“It is,” Tim agreed.
“And I always thought that people who were gay—well, at least men who were gay,” Sam amended, “they figure it out early.”
“Some do. Maybe most do. But not everyone.”
Sam braced himself for questions about when he’d known, and what he’d known, and, inevitably, how he’d known. He was trying to figure out how to spin the Harry Potter piece of his gay origin story, but Tim seemed to sense his discomfort.
“So what do you do?” he asked.
Sam told him. He learned that Tim managed an upscale Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, that he was the middle of three children, that his older sister and younger brother were both fine with his sexuality, and that his parents, after some initial resistance, had come around. Tim had been with his partner for fifteen years, which comforted Sam, as did the news that their parting had been amicable. “And so here I am, back on Grindr,” Tim said, his voice good-natured. “Do you want to meet? Grab a drink? No pressure,” he added. “If you decide you don’t want this to be romantic, we can just talk.”
In the interest of full disclosure, Sam told Tim that he was widowed, that he had sole custody of a stepson, and that he also was on antidepressants, which could make orgasms elusive. “I’m really selling myself,” he concluded, and Tim laughed and said, “At least you’ve got your teeth.” He paused. “You do have your teeth, right?”
Sam assured him that he did, and they agreed to meet at a coffee shop that Saturday, when Connor would be at his cooking class.
For the next three days, Sam was anxious and distracted. He couldn’t decide if he was actually going to go through with this. When he decided that he was, he had no idea what to wear. He wanted to ask Sarah, but he knew he wasn’t ready for that conversation, so he finally settled on his newest jeans and a button-down that Julie had once told him brought out the green in his eyes. On Saturday morning, he made sure Connor got out of bed on time. He fed the boy breakfast and got him into the car a half hour before they normally left, just in case there was traffic.