I’ve recently dangled my feet (again) in murky waters of the gay kink dating app Recon. With a leatherpup and a slaveboy of my own, my dance-card is full, so I’m not there cruising for action. It’s more like ethnographic research.

If my regular hangouts on FetLife are like kink university halls, Recon is more like the back room of a sleazy bar. It’s sweaty and primal, and no one is there to talk. When they do talk, the conversation tends to involve the fewest words possible and stay on a purposeful track towards carnal pleasure. Because, for 90-something percent of the users of Recon, kink is about carnal pleasure. On FetLife we can desexualise kink until it’s an almost academic study of tools, techniques, motivations and interpersonal dynamics, but on Recon it’s about dicks and holes and what can be sprinkled on top of that to spice it up.

Here’s a few observations:

Don’t get hung up on terms
Woe be the person on FetLife who uses the terms Dominant/submissive to describe a Top/bottom activity. On an average day, it should take less than a minute for some helpful community member to correct it with their definition… “Top/bottom are play terms, Dominance/submission is a relationship dynamic”. True in a way. They are. Yet whenever two people interact, that is a relationship, and they come in long forms and short forms. Academically you might like to argue that a spanking is T/b, but in reality it’s a little messier than that. There’s a play action, but there’s also nearly always a temporary power/authority exchange. Regardless, don’t expect narrowly defined terms to apply in the real world. There are “slaves looking for Masters” and “subs looking for Doms”, and they’re probably really “bottoms looking for Tops”, so you’ll need to just accept that people use language in different ways.

The world is full of “Do Me” bottoms
Recon is a dating app, and guys are looking for whatever it is that floats their boat. You will be faced with a lot of long laundry lists of what people want done to them. It’s an environment where decisions to click or move on will be made in a flash, so they’re just putting it out there for you to see. If you take a “what’s in it for me?” attitude then you’ll miss out on all the fun. It’s no place for the meek. You need to dump your laundry list on them and see where it takes you.

Everything you’ve learned about negotiation and safety is great… in theory
No strings attached hookups are a tricky thing, and there will be times when they will test your appetite for risk. It’s a bit like the difference between sitting down in a restaurant to enjoy a nice meal, and fast food. Everyone is horny, they want to get things going as quickly as possible, and corners tend to be cut. It’s great to know that you should check people’s references, or have a 50 point negotiation sheet you like to work through, or even that you should meet in a public place first for coffee to make sure everyone is who they say they are, but it often doesn’t happen.

Let’s talk about sex, baby
There are many people in the world who can draw a clear line between BDSM and sex. Not many of those people hang out on Recon. Not to say that you can’t make friends there, or find someone service oriented or a pure masochist to your pure Sadist. But it will be a long process that will test your patience. You don’t go into a meat market looking for a library book.

It’s harsh out there in the world of Recon, Grindr, Jack’d, Growler or whatever hookup app you use. You will be judged, and there is a great temptation to judge. You’re anonymous, your patience will sometimes be stretched thin, and you’ll come across far more “hell nos” than yeses. Take a deep breath. If I have one piece of advice to pass on, it’s to leave a trail of good karma behind you. Be nice, be polite, even when it’s difficult. It’s very likely that the person on the other end is also dealing with the savage superficiality of it all, so if you can be one little bright spot in their day then you may well have done a very nice thing. And, repeat after me, “I am not a piece of meat, I am a human being”.

Feature image by Mark Morrisroe, image in post by Philip-Lorca diCorcia