Step 1: Download Grindr (or one of its lesser variants). Your horny-self will thank you later.
Step 2: Scroll through the interface of blank profiles and headless torsos. Find a Face. It must be a Face! You may just wind up messaging the Headless Horseman. You don’t want to be the guy who gives head to the Headless Horseman. Your friends will never let you live that one down.
Step 3: Message The Face. A simple “hey” will suffice.
Addendum: For good housekeeping, message a few Faces. Better yet, message every Face. Cast the net wide. Let’s face it, your tiny pond doesn’t have that many gay fish.
Step 4: Wait for a response from The Face. This is a good moment to check your Twitter feed. Maybe read some of that Liane Moriarty novel you were hoping to get around to.
Step 5: Get sucked into the twists and turns of suburban motherhood. Forget all about The Face.
Step 6: Remember, you’re a living, breathing man with a penis who has needs. (I’m not sure if you as the man has needs or your penis has a set of needs all its own, but let’s just go with it.)
Step 7: Check for messages from The Face.
Step 8: Strike up casual conversation with The Face. This may be a good time to ask what Netflix shows they are currently binging. If they say The Office, shut it down immediately. I don’t care what anyone says about making it past the first season–if I’m not laughing from the opening line, I’m not hauling it out for nine seasons.
Step 9: Subtly suggest you’re horny.
Example:
Him: What are you doing?
You: Nothing much, but my right hand is pretty busy 😉
He will think you're either left-handed or a magician. Both are exotic and arousing to him.
Step 10: Send a nude. It should be a tasteful one that is well-lit and doesn’t make you look as oily as you truly are. That’s for you to know and for him to find out when he touches your Stromboli-face for the first time.
Step 11: Subtly hint at the fact that you want to meet up.
Example:
Him: Hot pic 😉
You: Let’s meet up.
Step 12: Tell him your place is free even though your parents are clearly watching Wheel of Fortune in the living room. Let him deeply consider your offer of coitus.
Step 13: When you get the green light, ask him what he likes in bed. Not that you really care. Sex is all about you anyway.
Step 14: Ignore his messages. Fantasize about what it would be like to be a rich, white suburban mom with a hot, lawyer husband and a smoldering sidepiece who directs community theater musicals.
Step 15: Go back to reading your Liane Moriarty. Fiction is a hell of a lot better than your shitty life.
Step 16: Make a cup of herbal passion tea. Stare longingly out onto your backyard. Plot the downfall of your best friend’s abuser.
Step 17: Ignore the whistle of the tea kettle. Contemplate if you should go corkscrew to the neck a la Girl on the Train or, better yet, fake your best friend’s murder and frame her husband a la Gone Girl. Either way, he deserves it!
Step 18: Forget about your tea entirely. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Hell, pour yourself two. You’re about launch a devious plan. You deserve it.
Step 19: Post cryptically about your plans on social media. A good tweet goes a long way. Everybody loves murderous buzz. Say you’re “about to do a thing.”
Step 20: See you have more than a dozen Grindr notifications. Sigh because you’re too popular for your own good.
Step 21: Realize you have a splitting headache.
Step 22: Quiet that goddamn whistling kettle. Can’t anyone get any peace and quiet around here?
Step 23: Notice The Face has sent a barrage of dick pics and messages reading “???”.
Step 24: Experience a crippling bout of anxiety that no man may ever touch you or love you again.
Step 25: Drink another glass of wine. If the bottle is near empty, finish it off. What is one bottle of Barefoot in the scheme of life?
Step 26: Tell The Face what you like in bed. Hope he has not read this list and is taking copious notes on how to please you.
Step 27: Almost share your location with The Face, but never actually hit send.
Step 28: Block the face and anyone within a one mile radius of the face for good measure.
Step 29: Delete your account. Repent for your sins.
Step 30: Repeat steps 1-29.