Gay Sex in the Philly City: When a One-Night Stand Is Just That

Via Shutterstock

We met on Grindr. His profile picture had something to do with shoes (although he wasn’t a foot fetishist or anything like that). I could tell when we sat down to have a drink that there was absolutely nothing mentally that was going to connect us: We just weren’t alike, at all. I was into opera while he was into drag shows. I was a staunch vegetarian and he bragged about eating anything that was a part of a chicken.

Yet he came over and we had mind-blowing sex and he left.

It was my first one-night stand in a while, and I felt really bad afterwards, not because of the sex, but because I knew there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that was going to perpetuate us from seeing each other again. Except, maybe, to screw around.

And, alas, we never did see each other again: We pass each other on the street like we don’t know each other. It’s not like we hate each other, or that we wish ill upon one another. We just, well, realized pretty quickly that there is nothing there.

I get easily depressed about the sense that I’ve made a physical connection with someone, and then, suddenly, like smoke, it’s gone. Vanished. I still feel awful about people who I’ve emotionally let down after a quick romp or a sexual rendezvous. I don’t think any amount of growth or realization will ever change that for me, and that’s why, out of sheer self-preservation, I’ve generally outgrown “the hook up” (that’s not to say I won’t still have a random sexual encounter, but I’ve cut down on them).

But there is something to be said about those one-night stands. In short, they’re meant to be that way. It is how we’re meant to interact with that person, that individual. And we shouldn’t think into them too much.

To quote one of my favorite motivational writers, Danielle LaPorte, “One night stands — sexual, spiritual, emotional — can serve a divine purpose. Healing happens in protected space. Sometimes that protection comes from fleeting encounters. So let it be fleeting — it takes a kind of courage to pass in the night, exchange sorrows and float away. Bless it instead of anchoring it to obligation. Something sacred just happened, allow it to be just that.”