Twenty-eight.

It's lonely to be gay.

I met Jim on Grindr. I don't think either of us was looking for anything more than a casual encounter but, at the same time, I also don't think we weren't not looking for something more.

Sometimes, I think it's a very lonely time to be gay. The disappearance of third spaces, typically public outdoors that don't require a purchase to be made, and the digital shift have irrefutably resulted in a more isolated existence because community has become harder to locate. Couple that with the persistent anxiety underlying every new encounter—how would this stranger react if they discovered my homosexuality, and would that put me in immediate danger?—and it's not difficult to understand why so many hesitate to put themselves out there.

Then again, it feels like there's always been an element of loneliness inherent to being gay. Save for a possible dip in the 2010s, homophobic hate crimes have persevered as a result of far right political extremists and a feckless center-left, and systemic discrimination has not meaningfully abated. Erin Reed reports that over eighty anti-LGBTQ bills were proposed across the United States this time last year; today, that number totals almost one hundred and twenty year-to-date, a fifty percent increase year-over-year. It's not just that we're under attack—our very existence is up for eradication.

More than just queer-friendly spaces, there continues to be a dearth of queer-focused places, especially for those who don't already know where to find them; I'm sad to report that we aren't given a how-to manual upon initiation by Big Gay. As it relates to us finding each other, then, I think it's quite logical to say that we're still having a bit of a rough time.

There's a train of thought somewhere out there that explains why gay people have, on average, a more protracted coming of age than our straight counterparts. Adolescence means high school is rife with emotions—who has a crush on who, who's dating who—but the added layers of uncertainty, self-discovery, and acceptance mean that we aren't able to start such intermingling until later, stereotypically during college.

My chief complaint throughout my twenties as I dated men my age was that they weren't mature enough and, as a consequence, didn't know how to behave. Anxieties and insecurities manifested in bad behavior and faulty logic that defied what I thought—hoped—was common sense. Case in point: "forgetting" to forgo dating apps when you're seeing someone.

I'm not without my own faults, too. When I dated Wayne, my second boyfriend, we had a stretch of months during which we were physically separated as he went on vacation. I was twenty-three and bored, so I downloaded Grindr, everyone's favorite app for hooking up. I knew it was verboten, but I had no intention of actually interacting with anyone, so I kept my account anonymous with generic photos of men I'd come across on Tumblr. I wanted to snoop around and see who else in my neighborhood was gay. Wayne caught me, of course, and he was justifiably upset. It took some time for me to earn back his trust, but I showed him the account I'd made and how I truthfully didn't talk to anyone. I was just being nosy. You learn from your mistakes, but you have to have the opportunity to make those mistakes in the first place.

As I spent more and more time with Jim, years after my relationship with Wayne, I noticed that Jim, whenever he'd scroll through his phone next to me, still had his dating apps installed. It didn't really bother me at first. In the early few months, Jim and I might have been friends with benefits, although we were hardly even friends—we didn't really know each other. Maybe it's more accurate to characterize us as having been acquaintances with benefits; we only hung out to hook up. That suited me fine: my demisexuality dictates my preference to partake in such activities with the same person, as opposed to spreading the love around, so to speak.

But, when he asked to date me more intentionally, it gave me pause. I'd already done away with my dating apps months before, but I knew he still retained his on his iPhone. If he was serious about wanting to be with me, why was he keeping the metaphorical door open?

I tried not to think about it too much. We hadn't had a conversation about exclusivity, a conversation that I was more than capable of initiating myself if I so wished, and I personally didn't want to jump headfirst into a committed relationship with him anyways because I barely knew him. I told him that I wasn't in a rush, that I was open to the possibility of something more, and that I would be willing to see what would happen between us.

So, I did. I let things take their natural course without proactively nudging them along too much. We attended Boiler Room sets, declared a shared favorite pizza spot, and watched a Nicole Kidman series (Expats, in which she fabulously acts out her part) together. His beloved childhood cat passed away and I held him through his grief. I booked a Valentine's Day dinner for us at Torishin and preserved for later the candle they presented us to mark the occasion, conveniently also the anniversary of the start of our commingling; I had grand plans to frame that candle, from our first Valentine's together, as a gift for him.

I found myself in a situationship of my own making. Neither of us brought up exclusivity and commitment, perhaps for different reasons. I guessed that he wasn't sure how to go about doing that, because he'd told me that he'd never really dated anyone before and only started doing so when he turned twenty-five; for my part, I didn't want to invest too much of myself into a relationship that I felt was doomed.

Through it all, I noticed that he never removed the apps. He also made no effort to conceal them from me, so I figured he either wasn't that serious about them or that serious about us. Regardless, I was annoyed. I thought he could've at least given the appearance of wanting to date more seriously, but I also wondered if he knew how. Despite his inexperience, it was also true that we were thirty years old—literal adults—and I didn't want to have to state the obvious; I thought he should've known better, at our age and supposed maturity. All the same, I knew that I didn't see us going all the way, and so I never mentioned it. There was no point.

Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but we fell apart and stopped seeing each other. I wanted more from someone who was supposed to be my partner, and I felt that I never got that from him. Equally, I never gave that much of myself to him. Maybe I was being unfair.

Afterwards, I re-downloaded and logged back into my accounts on Grindr, Hinge, etc., but I wasn't there for long. I was searching for something, but that something eluded me. I didn't think I could find it on the apps. I deleted my accounts, and then I deleted the apps.

In the end, I never gave him the candle. I cradled it in my palm, reminiscing about him blowing it out over our panna cotta dessert; it had been a sweet-but-not-too-sweet finish to a meal I'd anticipated for years, at a restaurant I'd finally had a reason to visit. I pressed the wax back into the napkin in which I'd secreted it away from our dinner, and I threw it into my trash can. With it, I let go of any regret or remorse. It was what it was.