ON LOVING WHAT YOU CLAIM TO HATE

I joined Tinder some few days ago, a friend had suggested that I join there to widen my network in Osogbo and make the acquaintanceship of more people in this town/ city that I have lived in, on and off since 2017 and never truly interacted with, beyond the basics.

One can hardly call Osogbo a city, although it is the state capital but its attainment of City status is a long time coming. My Sailor Friend jokingly call it, the Capital Village. It is our favourite inside joke and I miss him, with all of his self-disparaging and unruly desire not to respect my home. May the tide bring you back safely home, Friend.

So I joined Tinder and one of the first things that I noticed was that 90% of the guys had no hookups on their profile and in my inexperienced mind when it comes to dating apps, I thought that those guys didn’t want to do casual sex, wanted to make friends and expand their social circles like I did. (Laugh at my naivety).

During the course of interactions, I soon realized that hookups on this platform was synonymous to transactional sex and what the guys were saying by that statement was that they were unwilling to pay for sex.

Now this is a valid positioning, “I don’t subscribe to transactional sex”, ” I wouldn’t pay for sex” for so, so and so reasons. I personally have never been a subscriber to the idea of transactional sex, because the dynamics of power and who pays, makes it less than ideal situation in my opinion.
The entitlement mindset that the average Nigerian guy has to a woman’s body is already unsettling for me. Add paying for, and the dimensions of “he who pays the piper dictates the tune” and I doubt whether the women in those situations have any agency.

Let me be quick to say that transactional sex or sex for money is however a creation of the imbalance in male and female socialization to sex and sexuality and it would always be with us. In fact, I have always believed that we must thank God for women of “easy virtue”. I use easy virtue lightly here and I do not mean any offense, no judgment.

Because the way boys are socialized, if more and more women go the way of chastity, purity and what have you. Then we would have a real problem; not that we don’t already have a rape, defilement, sexual assault and all that on our hands though. Men wouldn’t sleep with goats or cows after all. Oh, my bad! Some are already. Yeah, you have an idea where I am leading.

You want to pick up an absolute stranger, meet up with them and hopefully hit that. But you would be damned if you would pay for services rendered, because you can’t pay for sex.
Yet you want no bonds, you don’t want to get to know them, you don’t want to know their interest, hobbies, interact with their personality or anything. You want your sex and you want it now but you wouldn’t consider it as a service rendered. No, it isn’t a service rendered! It is mutual.

So Tinder guys have no hookups on their profile but they want to know in the first few minutes of conversation where you live and if you would like to meet up with them.
Now this my friend is an interesting tack, I presuppose that we know at this point that those visits are not as unassuming and harmless as they are presented but follow my process.

I wonder how people ration these things to themselves. In the past few days, guys have heralded me with lamentation stories of how all of the girls on Tinder are there for hookups, how I am a breath of fresh air… Bulah, bulah, bulah but in the next breath, they are trying to pick me up. Albeit, it is free this time. They aren’t paying for shit.

They are frustrated with my decree of conversations, my need for banter, telling of their stories and experiences. They want to cut to the chase but they hate hookups. One of them called me a dictator because I had affirmed that I have agency, I pick and choose who worships in this temple.

I had in fact shared a bit of one of my favourite quote and said “every person that I have ever been with was afforded a rare opportunity, it is a privilege to worship in this temple, not every young fool can approach the throne” and he had gone bonkers.

Man was very mad, how dare you have agency? How dare you not consider yourself as my toy, your body as my plaything were the words he was trying to find as he literally removed fumes from his ears.
Man, did I have so much fun, goading and pressing it home. The conversation and sporadic fire responses were so lit for me. I am sure that he would tell his friend last night, after I unmatched him that he meet a witch. Lol.

You cannot love what you hate, you cannot hate the idea of picking up a stranger for sex and paying, while loving the idea of picking up the same stranger but you don’t have to pay. What you hate isn’t casual sex, it is paying for services rendered.

Don’t brandish it like some mark of honour. It doesn’t speak well of you, in fact it tells me that you are a shitty human being. You are the kind that owe service providers their wage and still have the temerity to mock them.

You are the worst scum of the world. Don’t go looking for services that you can’t afford, put your mouth only where your money is.
If you can’t afford to pay in cash, pay in kind. Pay in kindness, pay in listening ears, pay in patience, pay in taking time to build a bond, pay in easing your way into intimacy, pay in taking time to make the other person comfortable with the idea, pay in reaching a consensus- a meeting of minds.

There is a doctrine in Equity that I love so much, it is called the doctrine of Election. The doctrine of Election says that “you cannot elect to enjoy benefits, where trying to evade the corresponding burdens”
The burdens come with the benefits, that is the only true balance but somehow, y’all only learnt how to enjoy benefits. Any sort of encumbrances and you are out. You want it all but never the burdens.

Man, you can’t hate what you love and love what you hate. Confused much? Get a grip.
Kindness begat kindness, openness begat openness, honesty begat honesty.
Stop going around to lay claims to what you haven’t earned. In the final analysis, sex like most things in life is largely and highly transactional.

The payment more times than not is just not cash, but there is always a price. Oso free kie you there, you free loafer that has audacity to judge good diggers and opportunists. At least they have the honesty to be true to self.
Look into the mirror you hypocritical scum bag, look at the monster staring back at you.

Tinder has become my social experiment in the behaviour, thinking patterns and complex of the Pack and man, am I taking lessons daily. It is a wild, wild jungle around here. Animals would be envious.

Yours in Deep Introspection
Fumsymoon