I Spent a Snowbound Evening in New York Talking to Guys on Grindr

Grindr screencaps courtesy of the author's Instagram

If you're a gay, you know a way to find anonymous sex—even during a historic snowstorm. For decades, gay men have found ways to fuck strangers. In the 70s, they used handkerchiefs to let strangers on the street know they were DTF, and since the late 2000s, years before breeders started using Tinder, gays have cruised via sex apps.

When social media exploded with news about Winter Storm Juno, I knew my gay brethren would use their imminent snow day as an excuse to lick a stranger's poop hole. (After all, to quote VICE senior editor Jacob Gross, "Grindr is certainly more reliable than Uber if you're stranded. No surge pricing.") So I logged onto Grindr in our office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to check out who was looking (Grindr-speak for searching for sex now). Here's what I found:

Not everyone was simply looking for quick and dirty connections. One such gay emailed me and described how he was putting "the final touches on a snow storm snuggle" with a homo he hoped could become more than a fuckboy. He met the guy on Grindr and Scruff in the Catskills, where he lives, and was hoping their relationship would blossom soon.

"[sic] im going to meet someone who might be a possible ltr cuddle bud," he wrote. "the storm is just giving us an excuse to connect finally. lolz."

Most of the Grindr crowd, of course, only wanted brief blizzard encounters. Last night, for example, as I researched this article (and searched for my own blizzard boy), I received this message:

"Not sure I can be inspired to go out in this weather," one boy said when I said I was looking. "Ooh I'm not leaving my apt," another told me when I said I could host guys at my place. Yet another revealed he had no plans for sex during the blizzard and was watching Celebrity Big Brother instead.

When these boys woke up, they were probably disappointed when they saw a smattering of snow that was hardly the "historic" dusting we were forecasted. In this way, as many have pointed out on Twitter, the storm was a lot like a guy on Grindr: He was packing way less inches than he had promised.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter.