Boyfriend K

It's 10 days into the holiday with my friend K and we're drinking champagne in our hotel suite before going out to dinner. We'd bought some champagne duty free at Heathrow airport, on the basis that wine is quite expensive to buy in the country where we were going. However, we hadn't got round to drinking it, so with the holiday nearing its end we decided to open a bottle.

"How do you think it's going between us?" I ask casually, looking K in the eye and smiling.

"Do we need to discuss this now?" asks K, nervously.

"I think we should," I answer, "because very soon it'll be the end of the holiday. I think we should start thinking about what, if anything, is going to happen when we get back to London."

"Well, sometimes you laugh far too loudly in public," says K grinning at me, "and then people look at us and I feel embarrassed!"

"But your heart is in the right place :-)," he continues, tapping his hand briefly on my upper chest where my heart is.

"For my part," I say, "sometimes you seem quite critical of me, but then a little while later you'll be very loving and even apologise for your critical comments."

"I always say exactly what I'm thinking," says K, "and it's sometimes not properly thought through. It's been quite a while since I've been in a relationship, with someone else to consider all the time."

"Overall I think we've got on very well together on this holiday :-)," I answer, "so I'm still very keen on you. I guess the next step would be to try living together when we get back to London?"

"OK," says K, thinking hard, "perhaps I should try moving my stuff into your house. Although for now, I think I should keep paying my rent in case things don't work out and I need to move back. Actually, there's at least one guy I know that might be interested in sub-letting from me."

"Yes, of course you should keep your place for now," I reply. "I can't think of any reason why it won't work between us, but there's still a lot that could go wrong!"

"Anyway," I continue, "if we're going to do this, let's try and get the move done over the next week or two. Now that we've got this far, I don't see any advantage in waiting."

The next morning we're on a train platform with some commuters, chatting about what we're going to be doing later in the day, when I decide to ask K a question.

"So when can we stop calling each other 'potential boyfriends' and just call each other 'boyfriends'?" I ask, smiling at him.

"Whenever you like :-)," answers K, very casually.

I think about his answer briefly, before asking him another question.

"So will you be my boyfriend?" I say, looking him directly in the eyes and with a big smile on my face.

"Aren't you going to get down on one knee and hold my hand to ask that?" answers K instantaneously, with a cheeky grin on his face.

One of the things that I adore about K is his quick wit. As soon as I realise what he's said, I burst out laughing loudly, and a few other people on the platform start looking at us. Slowly K starts moving away from me, in a comic attempt to put some distance between us.

"What a tragedy!" I say to K catching up with him, still with a smile on my face, "you'll be telling everyone 'I would have been GB's boyfriend, but it was impossible because he laughs too loudly in public!'"

"Things aren't going to be easy!" replies boyfriend K, "but hopefully it's going to be fun :-)."

Some questionable behaviour

A couple of weeks ago, I'm in a taxi on my way to the airport for a holiday with my friend K, and he's showing me various stuff on his iPad.

"That's interesting," I laugh, noticing a familiar icon, "I thought that you didn't use the cruising apps!"

"I don't :-)," replies K with a big smile on his face, "well, not for cruising anyway!"

I have no idea what he means by that, after all, cruising is what web-sites like gaydar and apps like grindr are designed for. But since I've spotted grindr, he brings up the app to let me have a look.

"Actually I wasn't going to show you this," continues K, "but if we're going to become boyfriends it's much easier if we're completely honest with each other."

I certainly agree with that. But as soon as I see his grindr profile I burst out laughing again.

"That's not you," I say looking at his profile pic, "it's not even close! The guy in your profile is clearly Caucasian, but you're Asian!!"

"I know," replies K with a cheeky tone in his voice, "but I don't use grindr to meet anyone, I've never done that. For me it just for fun, just to talk to people and see how far they'll go to try and have sex with the guy in my profile :-)."

"But that means that you're wasting the time of all the guys that you talk to," I say, protesting at his behaviour.

"All these apps are so full of time wasters anyway that one more makes no difference."

"Hmmmm, perhaps, but it still doesn't help! Anyway, I'm glad to see that you made me one of your favourites :-)," I say, spotting my profile.

"Yeah, I found you," he says grinning, "and I've found some other friends here too. Actually, I don't think your profile pic is very good!"

"Some guys like it," I answer, unperturbed.

Soon he starts showing me some of his victims that he's been chatting with.

"Look at what some of these guys do," he says, bringing up one of his chats from a few days ago, "this guy sent me pic of his erect cock covered in cum when he's got no idea who I really am. This kind of behaviour is so wrong! That's one reason why I don't use the apps for cruising. I want to get to know someone very well before they get to see my cum covered cock."

"Just for the record," I say slightly defensively, "I never send rude pics of me like that when I use the apps. If guys want to see my naughty bits then they have to meet me in person! Anyway, where did you get the pics that you use for this fake profile?"

"They're just pics from other profiles, or pics that guys sent me," he answers in a matter of fact way, "If someone sends me a pic, then I reckon that it's a present to me, so I can do whatever I want with it."

As he shows me a few more chats I notice some inconsistencies in his replies.

"In one of the previous chats that you showed me you said you were a bottom," I say, "but there you say that you're a top."

"I just tell them what they want to hear," replies K, "so if they're a bottom I'll say I'm a top and so on. I was out for the evening with a friend a few months ago, and he kept checking grindr. I thought it was all a bit unnecessary and impolite when he was out for the evening with me, especially when he disappeared for more than half an hour to hook-up! That was when I wondered whether I could use grindr for fun too, but as I said, just as a game to see how far guys will go to try and get me into bed."

"Not you," I say, correcting him, "the guy in your profile!"

"Yeah, whatever! Once or twice I've been contacted by guys that I know, and that can be quite funny :-)."

I find this behaviour quite questionable. Just because there are a lot of guys who waste people's time on the cruising apps and web-sites, I don't think that justifies what K is doing. In any case, I guess that it's just a reminder of something everyone needs to remember. When you contact and chat to people online, you can never be sure who's really on the other end until you've met them face to face!