On Meeting Lovers Online

By the time we finally meet in person, we have shared intimacies deeper than many lovers. We have written to one another extensively: extravagant, detailed descriptions of our innermost fantasies, our masturbatory staples, the things which we have been too ashamed yet to try. We have compared lists of obscene acts. Discussed sexual histories. We have perused one another’s FetLife profiles, each examining pictures of the other in moments of intimacy with previous lovers. We have assessed bruises. Examined wounds.

We have found one another not through random chance, but through rigorous selection. Before we agreed to meet, each of us shrugged off a shower of ardent messages from other would-be lovers – those with whom we didn’t align. We are not eyes meeting across a room. We are not falling into one another’s arms by accident. We are meeting intentionally, having explored some of the most intimate parts of one another and found them pleasing, fitting, worthy of more examination.

So, by the time we do finally meet in the sunshine in a park in South East London, it barely feels as though we’re strangers. There is a sense of surprise. Ah. Here he is in person. Here she is in person. Strange to find ourselves this close, after weeks of speaking from a distance. But here we are. Meeting. A date, of sorts, although – as we sit down eye-to-eye, closer than we’ve even been before – it feels as though we’re already lovers.