Feeld Notes is a column about a middle-aged woman who suddenly realizes she wants to have sex again—and the beguiling app she uses to do it.
I know that women aren’t supposed to like dick pics. They’re a crude byproduct of the younger generation’s fascination with—what, porn? Themselves? (Guys my age never seem to send them.) I’m know I’m supposed to get upset about them. Take them as an affront. But honestly, I really don’t.
And I’ve seen a lot of them recently. At this point in my Feeld journey, I’ve probably seen two dozen pictures of penises. Big ones, little ones, little ones that turn into big ones. (That particular guy, a twentysomething living outside my city, sent me a “before” and “after” image. And, Christ, was the difference between the two impressive.)
I’m perhaps weirdly appreciative of these pictures. There’s an element of vulnerability embedded within them. Even pathos. If one could say that there is a power play going on between two heterosexual strangers on an app focused on sex, I’d argue that the dominant dynamic of the dick pic is in the woman’s favor. In cases where the sharing of dick pics is consented to, I’m the one looking to be entertained by the performance; I’m the one who can rise to my feet and applaud what I’ve just seen, and the one who can just as easily boo and throw rotten tomatoes.
[Read: The Startling, Intriguing Fantasy Young Men Keep Confiding in Me]
Sometimes, guys ask me if I want to see, and I say no because, I explain, I like to use my imagination. And also, the thing I’ve found is that once a guy sends you a dick pic, he’s unlikely to actually meet up with you in real life. Maybe it’s sheepishness. Maybe the entire point is to flash their dicks and then run. And with some guys, that’s fine for me. With others, it isn’t.
There was one guy who didn’t send me any dick pic at all. The most revealing images he shared were of him standing in front of his bathroom mirror in his underwear, the outline of his penis visible. Toward the end of our digital interaction (they always end, for some reason or another), he told me that he’d have sent me one if I’d asked.
I never did. (I never do.) And to be honest, I sort of regret it.
As suggested above: Most dick pics aren’t sent to me without permission. For the most part, the dick pics I see are, well, if not quite solicited, negotiated. (Usually. The other day I matched with a guy on Feeld, and, like some sort of subway flasher, his opening line WAS a dick pic. I unmatched him immediately.) And there’s an exhibitionist quality to them that I find, if not amusing, intriguing.
Am I trying too hard to justify dick pics? Honestly, I don’t think I am. Besides, it’s not like I’m alone in all this. My friend Adam, a gay man in his late 40s, says that dick pics are simply acknowledged currency within the gay male online dating community. Everyone has them; everyone sends them.
“Even you?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“Aren’t you ever worried about them getting distributed widely?”
“No, because I never put my face in the photos.”
Smart.
Perhaps less smart, but no less exciting: dick videos. They are what they sound like: videos recorded, or livestreamed, in which a man displays it all and, often, masturbates. I don’t know whether these guys do it for me or for themselves—I suspect it’s a bit of both—but I’m fascinated by the fact that so many guys seem ready and willing to jerk off on camera in front of me. (I never ask for this, by the way; it’s always after an offer I’ve assented to.)
The first day—maybe the second—I was on Feeld, I matched with a young man with thinning hair and bright blue eyes. We exchanged a few messages and he confessed—or maybe asked me outright, I don’t remember—that he wanted to be watched masturbating. Would I let him FaceTime me? Sure, I said. I mean … why not? At least I’d have a good story to tell my friends. And a surprising experience for myself. A new sort of notch on my belt, as it were.
The guy—we’ll call him Peter—called me within a few minutes. It was a weekend morning, and we said shy hellos, then he began fooling around with placing his iPhone or iPad in different places in his bedroom so that he (and I) would get the best angle. He tried it one way, then another. Eventually he stripped down naked and knelt on his bed facing me and began to stroke himself.
I watched, my face obscured by the darkness of my own bedroom, for about five minutes. Maybe 10. He looked at the camera sometimes, then down at himself. He’d stop stroking to fondle his balls, then start stroking again. I found the experience simultaneously absurd and sexy.
I don’t remember how he finished. But for me, at least, the orgasm wasn’t the point. The point was that I was willingly witnessing a guy I did not know put himself on display for a woman he did not know, and to do so in one of the most intimate ways possible. I was, if not impressed, intrigued. I could never imagine doing such a thing. I mean … what if I took screengrabs or made video clips and put them on the internet? (I didn’t, and wouldn’t, but I could have!) Instead of seeing it as a provocation toward a woman, an assertion of power, I regarded it as an example of a woman’s dominance over a man, and I was a willing audience. I was here for it.
I suppose you may be thinking: ew. And also: What’s so special about a penis? Why look, or watch, in the first place? The answer to that first question is: nothing much, I guess. But my tolerance for dick pics has helped to underscore, for me, just how many different types of dicks there are. Long ones, short ones, thick ones, narrow ones, large ones, small ones, light ones, dark ones. (I can say more, but won’t.) In the 10 years I was celibate after my divorce, I didn’t see but one of them. I’m making up for lost time.
As for that second question, I say: Why not? Obviously I, too, get something out of it. Since Peter, I’ve watched about half a dozen other men masturbate in front of me (over my computer screen, that is), live and in living color. There was the guy who bragged about the volume of semen that he produces and then went on to prove himself right. (He turned up another time and masturbated in front of me while in the passenger seat of his parked car with tinted windows. I worried about the police showing up.)
Another guy, from near my hometown, “interacted” with me two or three times when his girlfriend was out of the house. (He claimed that they were in an ethically non-monogamous relationship.) One time he was on the couch, another on the bed. The intensity of his stare at the camera and the visuals of what he was doing were, I admit, big turn-ons.
There was another guy, quite young, who played with himself and then, perhaps thinking better of it, abruptly severed the video connection. Another, this one from Ireland, stood in front of a full-length mirror, his phone in one hand, his penis in the other. It was late there, maybe 3 or 4 a.m. Eventually, I told him to go to bed. And then there was the European man—there are a lot of Europeans, particularly French ones, on Feeld—who would make videos of himself for me and send them via Snapchat, where, after a few hours, they would disappear, never to be seen again. (I never met him in real life.)
There’s another European guy I’m also counting on meeting, at least for a drink. This one recently sent me a dick pic that I became quite enamored of—I mean, it was beautiful, though I couldn’t confirm that it was really his. No matter, because the dick pic is the least of it: We’ve been having an entertaining, weeks-long exchange involving the idea of my toes in his mouth. He has a foot fetish, you see, and he likes the look of what I’ve shown him so far. (He about died after I sent him a photo of my bright red pedicure.) I don’t care about the fetish, nor judge it. In fact, I’m totally fascinated. More on that later.
