This story originally appeared in The Stranger’s 2026 Queer Issue.
Illustrations by Lisa Czech
We hate our phones. We hate your phone. We want all phones, along with the internet, to be destroyed in some illegal, fiery fashion. We’re losing the ability to talk to one another, and it’s hurting our love lives.
Phones and technology are cucking us into gameless, anxious slugs who are having less quality gay sex than actual slugs, which mate by entwining their massive head penises. A frottage beyond imagination. Straight people are probably having less sex as well, but this isn’t the Straight Issue, and they are of no concern to this team, which is on a mission from God to glaze this town with gay cum and snail trails. That’s praxis, or something.
Except, the apps. People born after 1992, spayed by loin-ossifying pandemic captivity, know only the apps. Subjected to the intense clarity of in-person rejection, cyborgs accustomed to sexual pursuits ending in cold, sudden silence are liable to self-destruct.
But life, our dear dykes and fags, is rejection. What are we afraid of? Feeling like a creep? A disparaging up-and-down from a fading twink? A big-titty goth girl squashing our hearts with her oversized, spiked platform boots? Well, yes, that sounds awful, but you miss 100 percent of the backshots you don’t take.
Cruising Lessons From the Jerk-Off Jedi
By Vivian McCall
Paul Rosenberg is the owner and founder of Rain City Jacks, a fun, relaxed club where men check their politics at the door to connect by jerking it normal style.
The rules of jacking off are simple. All guys are welcome to sit down and go to town, as long as “no lips [go] below the hips” and “nothing goes inside anybody’s anything.” It’s not the first J-O club, but it is the only nonprofit J-O club. I asked Rosenberg about cruising. He was flattered and happy to offer his thoughts as “a wizened slut.” This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Cruising intimidates younger gay people who are used to the apps. Was it intimidating for you?
Not for me! I was a very horny and very precocious young guy back in the 1970s, which is when I came out. I’m a member of “Generation Jones,” too young to get drafted, but I benefited from Stonewall. And I also got to play first for a good long period of time before AIDS showed up.
Do you remember your first experience?
I don’t [chuckles]. I just remember that before I came out, I was a big reader. I know that I read somewhere that the the bottom line of cruising is eye contact; I remember reading a scenario where you see somebody on the street, you make eye contact, one might touch their crotch, and then you go past each other. Then the payoff is when you look back and you’re both looking back at each other. That’s the follow-up that locks it in.
Walk me through a night of cruising: What are we wearing, where are we going, what are we doing, and what time is it?
In my experience, guys who cruise are always ready to cruise. It’s not so much a night of cruising, so much as a life of cruising. Once you acknowledge that you’ve got an availability for this kind of random contact, then suddenly you begin to see opportunities around you, and it changes how you interact in public.
How do you know when you’re barking up the right, or wrong, tree?
It’s the look back. So, for street cruising, there are basically three elements. The first is initial contact, that eye contact. The second part is the follow-up, which is looking back. And the third step is actually going off together and doing something. Or having coffee. Making any kind of contact that leads you into a relationship that’s either five minutes long or five decades long.
There’s always the possibility of misread signals—how can someone keep themselves safe?
Gosh, how do I put this? I don’t think you can entirely eliminate the element of danger, but you can prepare yourself by not not being in a dangerous place. It’s like going to a protest, you need an escape route, you need an alternative, you need plausible deniability, and you need to not be so dick drunk—I mean, just to be completely male centric—so dick drunk that you make stupid mistakes that can get you in trouble either with the law or with a homophobe.
If a lot of cruising is eye contact and vibes, how do we make sure we’re getting someone’s consent?
I always think the best way to foster a culture of consent is to practice it. Consent is simple at Rain City Jacks. Basically, we train people to say the words, “May I?” With public sex cruising, it’s more likely going to be a silent signal. You do something to indicate “I am interested in this or that,” and then the other one has to respond by, you know, whipping their dick out, or smiling, or doing something in response to that request, even though it may be silent.
Should younger gay men try cruising if they haven’t tried?
What I think they should try is just take a chance of mixing it up socially with people without phones. That’s the bottom line. No matter what kind of interaction you want to have with somebody, you need to recognize when you’re being distracted from just socializing, just being with other people. If you can do that, then you’re going to have opportunities to notice that somebody is into you, to let somebody else know you’re into them in whatever subtle or overt way that happens. And yes, cruising will happen, and it’s fun, it’s so fun.
Lex Is My Ex
We had our hopes. “Grindr” for lesbians! “Grindr” for trans people*! The wise did not believe the hype. But even the most pessimistic oracles did not foresee that Lex, an app for love and sex, would become the worst poetry journal on earth. Lex was better as an Instagram. Money ruins everything. (*For a lot of us trans people, Grindr for trans people is Grindr.) VIVIAN MCCALL
The Sniffies Report
By Hunter Pauli
Bad news, gay guys. Beloved cruising app Sniffies just got a $100 million investment from dating app tycoons Match Group. Starting off as simply Match.com, over the years Match Group has consolidated their hold on the online dating marketplace by snatching up any rival that rises to the challenge, such as mainstream titans Tinder and Hinge, as well as more boutique queer dating apps like LDSPlanet (defunct) and RepublicanPeopleMeet (also defunct).
Match Group’s investment is only a minority stake, meaning the app’s original Seattle developers maintain control for now. Part of the deal, which Sniffies founder and CEO Blake Gallagher says will usher in “a new era of cruising,” is that Match can acquire the rest of the company at a later date.
Even as a former Seattle Parks and Recreation trail worker, I’m in no position to comment on the specifics of how an underdog like Sniffies provides a preferred user/cruiser experience compared to other apps. I am, however, qualified to complain about what the acquisition represents: another loss for consumers from corporate consolidation in the age of collapsing antitrust enforcement.
Whether it’s Standard Oil or Match Group, one company monopolizing a sector of the economy always results in enshittification for customers. Sniffies itself had a rocky path to market after being removed from Apple’s App Store, which itself has been sued by the US Department of Justice for alleged unfair monopoly practices.
Historically, monopolization has meant less gas for your dollar (glad we solved that!), while in the world of hookup apps it means less sex. Match Group’s products are not designed to get you laid or find you love—that is not the company’s goal. Rather, they are designed to make you pay money and give the company personal data from which they profit in your doomed quest for sex.
And the less sex you have, the more desperate and willing to pay for it you are. This is the Match Group business model at heart: funnel the world’s horny people onto an app that promises sex while delivering little of it, therefore keeping them on the app, increasingly horny, increasingly desperate and willing to pay. Perhaps this is why, despite the explosion of dating apps, people are fucking less than ever. It’s really an issue that the Federal Trade Commission should take up, but I wouldn’t expect them to ride to the rescue any time soon.
On the bright side, I find it hard to believe there aren’t enough software engineers in Seattle alone (where they’re increasingly unemployed) who could cobble together an open-source P2P alternative to Sniffies. Or even a more mainstream dating/sex app, for that matter. Sniffies may have been born in Seattle, but cruising will find a way to survive in Seattle long after it’s gone.
Call Me Definitely
Seattle seriously needs to get some goddamn game. You know what’s sexy and cool? Writing your name and phone number on a napkin or piece of paper, perhaps along with a note, walking up to someone you find compelling/hot/fuckable, and telling them to give you a call. EMILY NOKES
Tips From the Gay People in My Phone
By Nathalie Graham
It has been a while since I’ve fucked a stranger, or seriously flirted with one. Blame it on monogamy. These days, when charismatic men want to banter and eye-fuck, I worry I’m a step away from cheating. So I’m not equipped to discuss a subject I haven’t batted my eyes at in nearly a decade. I’m also not a gay guy. Fear not. I knew just whom to talk to. The gay people in my phone.
“Do you have any cruising tips?” I texted my friend out of the blue. To respect his unbridled honesty, let’s call him “A.” (He suggested “Anonymous Furtive Cruiser” but it was too many words.) A came out when we were in college and has spent many postgrad years in Seattle cruising, rimming, and railing.
“In my experience, it’s all about the eye contact,” he responded immediately. “But it’s pretty dependent on location.”
He asked me not to quote him on specific public, outdoor cruising locations—we don’t want to blow your blowing spot, gay people, but they’re common knowledge (if you’re not in the know, ask a gay). A, though, usually picks people up at the gym.
“Gym cruising for me has been a lot of eye contact,” he wrote. He looks for repeated, lingering glances. Sometimes guys shift their packages around in a “subtle, but meaningful way.”
A will sometimes do a certain move in the sauna to gauge if someone’s cruising or interested in him. “I always wear a towel around my waist (raised Catholic so need to at least feign being prudish) and I’ll use the edge of the towel to wipe sweat,” A wrote. “If I see them peeking, I take that as ‘perhaps interested.’ And vice versa pretty obvious if they’re not.”
(He’s pretty cautious, so he makes extra sure before he makes a move. Sometimes he’ll make casual, nonsexual conversation to gauge interest. If a guy is straight, they’ll usually bring up a wife or a girlfriend pretty quickly.) Another tactic A sees and uses himself is to “skew your workout to show off a bit (squat, bench, whatever ur glamour muscles may be).”
“What are your glamor muscles?”
“I’ve been told I have a beautiful butt.”
This made sense. His ass is juicy. I told him this.
“Thank you.”
A continued: “I like doing upper body tho. Love a bench.”
Other times, at the gym, you get lucky by catching a peek in the bathroom or at a urinal, he wrote.
“Locker rooms can be mild to wild depending on the facilities,” he wrote. One gym that I will not name “used to have a super cruise-y sauna + gang showers.”
Another text: “There were times I was even clutching my pearls lol but was glad it existed.”
He described the showers as columns with faucets on each side. So, someone cruising could take an adjacent faucet or one nearby to watch.
Those were a “moment,” he said. “Lots of people’s fantasies. Once I got to shower with a visiting rugby team.”
That one gym’s locker room was a scene, A said. He called it the “gayest space I would visit tbh. Instrumental in my coming out.”
“There was a daddy doctor that would show off for me,” he wrote. “*Sigh* I hope he’s well.”
The straight guys remain clueless. “They’re generally oblivious to stuff like that and just assume people are nice (which is true, sometimes, tho in Seattle? Idk),” A wrote.
The space has since been renovated, and A isn’t sure if the things that made it a cruising haven are still there.
I texted another friend if he had any cruising tips.
“Don’t get caught.”
“Helpful,” I replied.
“And have fun.”
(If getting caught is your kink, there are places for that, too, A, says. Like Steamworks Baths.)
Flirting Dos and Don’ts With Adé
By Amanda Manitach
Adé A Cônnére is a Seattle nightlife icon, both on stage—as disco-pop chanteuse in Bijoux (full disclosure: she performs with my husband) or the adorable goofball version of herself in Scott Shoemaker’s War on Christmas—and behind the bar. The first time I laid eyes on her, circa 2012, Cônnére was singing a number on top of the bar at Pony, the beloved, glory-holed institution where she went on to work. She’s spent the past decade slinging drinks at the bar, so she’s seen a thing or two go down in the flirt department:
Adé’s POV: I’ve been in the nightlife industry for so long, and it’s interesting to see how people have changed. Even in the past 10 years, people have changed, boundaries have changed. What used to be considered harmless flirting is now considered harassment, crossing lines. You can’t touch people without their consent, which is great—I’m all for that—but I think that people just don’t know how to flirt anymore because the entire idea of flirting is different. Also: People are just really, really hypersexual these days. It’s like one moment I look over and someone’s in the talking zone, the next minute they’re making out, hands down each other.
Adé’s DOs: Simple, sweet, direct. I like someone that gets to the point! Silly flirting. Not taking it too seriously. Not too aggressive. Complimenting what I’m wearing is always a nice icebreaker. But no over-complimenting. You can take it too far. My style is a teasing, goofball, dark sense of humor kind of flirt. But I also feel like I’m a bad flirter, which is why I’m bad at picking up when people are “serious” flirting.
Adé’s DON’Ts: Don’t gush. There are some people who just don’t stop, and there’s like a line where it becomes an annoyance. I get really uncomfortable when people are too flirtatious with me at work. It makes me feel like I’m on the spot.
Adé’s DREAM FLIRT: I would love for some stunning, impossibly handsome guy to come up and be like, “I think you’re gorgeous and I want to do bad things to you.” Be a little naughty, but also kind of silly. There has to be humor involved.
Adé’s WORST FLIRT: I was sitting at the bar at Donna’s and this guy comes in and sits down next to me and starts chatting, getting drunker and drunker. He’s like, “You have beautiful hair and eyes, and such beautiful hands and beautiful lips… they would look really great wrapped around my cock.” That could have been something, if he’d had a little humor in there, instead of just going for it. You can’t just go for it. You blew your chances there, buddy (no pun intended).
Is This a Compliment, or a Sex Thing?
I am a bi woman, so I can say this—women largely do not know how to talk to women they are interested in. Recently, I was sitting at a dimly lit wine bar in Columbia City with a woman I met on Feeld. She was dressed mysteriously in a black leather knee-length trench coat, with wild curls framing her heart-shaped face; I was into her, mystified, and hopeful. Until she asked the kind of question sapphics everywhere dread. “What’s your skin care routine?” I froze. Was she complimenting my skin, or did she want to know which brand of soap I use to wash that skin? I started to say “La Roche-Posay…” and then stopped. “Nothing special!” I said, giggling and changing the subject, likely to something as unsexy, panic-inducing, and confusing as “skin care.” I’ve only been on a handful of dates with women, and I’ve become aware of our epidemic-level inability to flirt. It’s almost like women are afraid to flirt with other women because they’re afraid of acting like men. No one makes the first move, and therefore nothing happens, and all we have are deeply chaste, safe compliments. Your date is not your sister or your bestie, so consider saying something more forward or creative, like “Wow, your skin looks so soft,” or “Your skin is glowing,” or simply “I’m really into you.” AUDREY VANN
Creep Theory
By Charles Mudede
The creep lives in a universe that is perfectly their own. There is no chance, no accident, no free will, no nothing but their singular will and reality—and the latter is always condemned to conform to the former. Anything else will not do. When the creep goes to a club, getting lucky is out of the question. No luck is involved when it comes to obtaining what their sexual desire demands. It must happen; it will happen. This certainty defines the creep.
But look at how desiccated this situation is. It lacks the haze of creativity. The creep can learn nothing new because the world outside them has no surprises. They only know their own predetermined goals. Discovery is absent from their nature. The creep refuses to eat anything but steak.
What must be taken at face value is “going out to get lucky.” Luck is not a matter of necessity, or chance and necessity: just chance. This is why the richness of any night out on the town requires the recognition and appreciation of the cloud of probabilities that surround chance encounters.
You enter a conversation not really knowing what the outcome might be. You could get lucky, or you may not. And both possibilities are in themselves not clear or evident. You could get lucky but end up with no magic in the bed. You might not get lucky but end up doing something else that totally blows your mind. No growth or novelty is possible without probabilities. If you are a creep, you don’t need to be told “Go fuck yourself” because, at the end of the day, you can only fuck yourself.
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