44 newyork| march30–april12, 2020
23
Reinstall Tinder,or, If ThatDoesn’t Work,Join a VirtualSext BunkerBY ALLISON P. DAVIS
some things about the human spirit
persist, even in crisis: namely, our hunger
for one another. Lauren, an editor in Aus-
tin, started seeing someone a month ago,
and by date three, they’d declared their
exclusivity—dating only each other and
hanging out in close quarters only with
each other—largely expedited by the desire
to keep their coronavirus-exposure pool
small. “My criteria has totally changed,”
Lauren explains of dating in the time of
covid-19. “All the bullshit you kind of go
for usually—none of that fuckboy stuff is
going to cut it.”
It’s a different sort of contract now. “It’slike, can he play cards (yes), can he bake
bread (yes), does he take social distancing
seriously?,” she explains. Already, they have
settled into the worn-in part of a relation-
ship. They go on walks and hikes and drive
to each other’s houses while they still can.
“I don’t know how it would work necessar-
ily in New York,” she tells me, sad for me
here in the city. “There’s this jokey but real
undertone now, like, ‘Oh yeah, better wash
your ha to cery
store. this But
I’m actually pretty serious, I guess. He sent
me a picture from the grocery store, and it
was clear he wasn’t six feet from someone.
And I actually felt, like, momentarily
betrayed. I was like, Hmm, if he’s doing
that, like, what else isn’t he doing?”
covid-19 is like the trip-to-Ikea litmus
test for relationships: Some fizzle at the
prospect; some, like Lauren’s, are success-
fully put on a fast track; and some just
cement their digital-fuck-buddy status.
The dating app Hinge found that 70 per-
cent of its members would be happy to start
digitally dating, while Tinder is making its
Passport function free—now you can swipe
all around the world, because, if we’re all
stuck at home, it doesn’t matter where the
digi-dick is coming from. And if it’s just
about sex from a distance, an exclusive
strip club, Die Happy Tonight (the name
doesn’t quite hold up), started offering
virtual-reality lap dances. The cam site
Imlive.com reports an uptick in both visi-
tors and model sign-ups. Sex-party orga-
nizers have started using Zoom to replicate
orgies. I’ve gotten more than one invitation
to Zoom-based masturbate-a-thons.
Friends have their own anecdotes about
Time sex while quaran-
ents’ house, about which
vibrators they’re buying (the Lelo Sona Cli-
toral Massager), and about how they’re
discovering new things their sex partnersare into. (One was surprised by her younger
boyfriend’s preference for butt play, a con-
versation that ended with him shaving his
asshole for her over FaceTime.)
Feeld, a nonmonogamous dating app,
created three virtual locations where self-
isolating members can meet virtually.
That was barely a week ago, and already
they are the app’s most popular loca-
tions—ahead of New York and London.
I’m now a Sext Bunker citizen. One recent
morning, I woke up to messages from a
man asking me to watch him blow his load
via FaceTime. I wasn’t opposed; I just pre-
fer some more finesse at 9 a.m. But at least
he was being safe.
You can’t fault anyone for trying. The
libido isn’t just persevering in quarantine;
it’s loudly insisting. Even our health offi-
cials know that in times of trouble people
stay horny, and the question “But can I still
have sex?” is top of mind. On March 21, the
New York Department of Health released
guidelines for sex during the covid-19 cri-
sis. Rimming and kissing are two ways the
disease could be transmitted, the pamphlet
instructs. It grants permission to have sex
with someone you live with but otherwise
suggests taking a break from in-person
dates and even launches a poster-worthy
slogan reminding us that “YOU are your
safest sex partner.” Following the guide-
lines, I considered a new dildo, but Ama-
zon deems it a nonessential item. It
wouldn’t arrive until May. I did download
the audio-erotica app Dipsea.
Like countless others, I’ve also taken to
FaceTime dating. I redownloaded all the
apps; I now have Hinge and Tinder and
Bumble and Feeld on my phone. I changed
my bio to indicate I was looking for dis-
tance connections and messaged a man I’d
once met via Tinder who had moved to
Paris before we could meet in real life. We
started sharing photos of our lives in our
apartments, and I’m certain I know where
this is headed—his photos have become
increasingly shirtless. When San Francisco
announced a citywide shutdown, I took the
opportunity to DM an ex-boyfriend. What
else was he doing? Maybe now we’d recon-
nect and, when everything was over, get
back together and—“Girl, it’s been like
three days,” a concerned friend said. “Are
we really at the DM-your-ex stage?”
The apps aren’t as fruitful as you’d think,
though. Rarely do conversations get past a
few “What should we sync-watch on our
date?” jokes before one or both parties
wonder what the point is. And yet, it feels
like a strangely fertile time to explore new
ways of having relationships. Maybe, in
this period of darkness, we’ll stumble upon
an improvement on the way we dated
before. Maybe the way we communicate