Boston’s Underground Black Market

Written by Finn Schram

Art By Izzy Maher

On the second night of college, some guy asked me to “shit on his face.” I, politely, declined his offer and was met with pictures of his body—every inch.

I was no stranger to Grindr’s abrasive nature. Two days after I turned 18, I downloaded it late one night—jittery in bed—out of morbid curiosity. I found, to my dismay, it was not filled with secret gay guys from my school or other desperate boys from neighboring towns. It was mostly just couples looking for thirds or the closeted dads of my New Jersey suburb. Frankly, it was boring.

However, an even greater disappointment was redownloading Grindr in Boston. It didn’t give me some magic key that unlocked hot liberal arts guys or law students at Suffolk University. Just creeps.

In retrospect, I derived a perverted amusement from the entire ordeal. No one had ever been that upfront with me, and I had never really had the opportunity for anyone to be that upfront with me. I had never been the object of anonymous sexual desire due to sheer lack of opportunity.

On the third night at school, having still failed to make any real friends, I lay in bed and opened the app, again. I scrolled through anonymous profiles, down a grid of faces, potbellies, abs, boxers, and briefs—until my phone buzzed.

“Interested in daddy?”

I ignored it, ready to close the app, until it buzzed again: “I’ll give you $50 to fuck me.”

Another: “I’ll leave my door unlocked, come in, I’ll be waiting, leave when you’re finished.”

I was no stranger to the app’s forward nature—it is a sex app, after all—but something about the phrasing opened a deep pit in my stomach. Maybe it was the fact it was being said to me and I was not reading screenshots secondhand. Maybe it was the fact that this man was putting so much trust into a stranger who had never responded. Maybe it was how desperate he was, how desperate he was to have sex with an eighteen year old—the only identifier on my account. He was 63 and 2000 ft away.

I have downloaded and deleted Grindr various times since, each time being driven off by similarly disturbing messages, the locations getting eerily closer until they reached double digits.

I am no prude. I did not download the app in search of a meet- cute. The marketing team does, frankly, a nice job at promoting a sexual safe-space of sorts through interactive and witty posts—they partnered with Uber Eats to make a “bottom-friendly” menu and frequently leave cheeky comments under posts referencing the app, gay dating, or sex culture. However, what the app’s kitschy social media presence fails to promote is the unsolicited drug pushing and rampant attempts at prostitution within its user base.

The last time I downloaded the app was at around four in the morning the night after my nineteenth birthday. I woke up to use the bathroom and couldn’t go back to sleep; perversely curious what hedonism this hour brought, I logged back in while I washed my hands.

I was greeted with familiar torsos and underwear-clad asses and the occasional visitor. I was talking to some guy from Northeastern University when my phone began to vibrate rapidly. Dazed, I waited for the call screen to show up or an alarm to go off, until I realized I was just being sent rapid fire messages.

“Hey.”

“Interested?”

“?”

“$$$?”

“ParTy?

“How much $?”

“?”

Despite being the spring semester and piles of snow stacking on my windowsill, it felt like September again: in bed, alone, and disgusted with both myself for having redownloaded the app, and the anonymous profiles’ aggressive conquest for an 18-year-old sex worker. I thought of how my friends and I would gasp and whisper about this the next morning as I sat on their bedroom floor, talking about how we don’t know how someone can reach that point.

“Can you at least give a response?”

Something about this actually evoked one: “Take a hint holy shit.”

It buzzed again: “Pussy.”

He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t know what about these messages made my stomach churn more than any others; maybe it was his aggression, maybe his abrasion, maybe that he was a little more than 500 feet away.

I had a hard time falling back asleep knowing that these peoplewere likely passing me on the street, that they weren’t these haggard creatures of the night, but civilians.