Tinder is great for two things: 1) finding people to hook up with, and 2) finding people to not hook up with, because they live in Queens, and you are shortsighted/hate amazing pizza. Also: learning fascinating things about the masses of humanity desperately thumbing their way through it. I went on a hunt for right swipes last week, asked 100 dudes where they would take me on our first date, and came away with these kind-of-totally-shocking/but also not-shocking-at-all realizations:

About 30% of the guys were actually dateable, and seemed into it

Aside from the long list of sexual euphemisms spelled out in text speak, every once in a while you’ll check your inbox and see a legitimate message from a nice guy with a crew cut wearing a scarf. He will have an actual place he wants to take you to and have a real reason for it, and will be into you because of your profile, not because your shirt is kind of see-through in your last picture (okay, so not ONLY because of that). These men put real effort into where we would go and what we would do while we were there. It’s the little things that count, apparently, and the crew cut didn’t hurt either.

One out of every 10 guys immediately treated it like a perverted job interview

You’d think those awkward first date questions would be reserved for the actual first date, and that the conversation would be a little more fluid than just shooting out questions in the dark. Sadly, you would think wrong, one in 10 times. Between asking what my astrological sign was to what size bra I wear, these guys got straight down to business and made things awkward enough for me to skip out on the rest of the conversation.

Jokes are the new pick-up lines, and they’re awesome

A scruffy jawline and piercing eyes can only get you so far — okay, pretty far actually — but 20% of guys who messaged back coupled that with jokes, almost all of which made me laugh. If you can make me laugh, imagine what else you have the capability of doing [mysterious wink face emoji].

Turns out, Tinder guys like themselves a good wine bar

Why yes Ian, I am interested. A cozy wine bar was the single most frequent response I got (roughly 11% mentioned a date including wine), and there’s a reason for that: they’re fool-proof. In the words of millennial memes and sorority sisters everywhere, bitches love wine. Always go for the wine.

Roughly 10% of dudes just want to skip dating and go right to “Pound Town”

And they actually used the term “Pound Town.” Turns out, it’s a more popular destination than that quaint little bar down the street from your apartment. As is “snuggling naked while watching Netflix” and an offer to “play you like a guitar.”

Weirdly it seemed that the smoother your intro is, the more likely you live Uptown

Out of all the Uptown guys I met — there were nine of them — each of them came back with a cheeky, smooth response that made them more appealing than those before them. Who knows whether it’s those historic high-rises or the charm of bros having their lives together that gives them their edge, but either way, they had it.

The 32 guys I met who resided in the hipster lap of luxury had the most diverse set of answers

Every single one of them was soooo Brooklyn. Grabbing a slice at Tony’s in Bushwick, checking out an artsy dance performance, devouring tacos from a food truck, and playing a game of mini golf at the Bushwick Country Club, provided you have a nice callipygian physique. Which for those of you about to hit Google means nice ass.

For some reason, six guys were into dates that they may have to wait a few months for

Two actually specifically mentioned hanging out in the summer time. Does anyone own a calendar/a window?

Pure, unadulterated laziness was not as rare as it should be

You know how many guys responded to my initial question with, “Whatever you want to do!” or some variation of that? Seven too many. Dude, I asked you where you would take me. No woman wants to do all the work, so have an idea off-hand.

Your best chance at a fancy dinner is to Tinder Downtown

Okay, okay fine, there was only one guy from the Financial District who I talked to, and he needed a little coaching, but he was also the only one who offered me a nice seafood dinner. Frankly Jared, you had me at lobster.

Read the original article on Thrillist. 

Animal print sheets, stains, and bare bodies cover the mattresses spread out across the concrete floor of the warehouse. The 1060-square-foot space smells of sex for a reason. People are fucking on every free surface – not just California Kings, but the arms of couches, each others’ backs, and the floor itself. Several dozen hips push upward into several dozen probing tongues. In the center of the room, a group of six couples kneel boy-girl in a circle, sending pleasure around and around a closed circuit.

In the corner, 36-year-old Apple, petite with dark hair and glasses, and her 39-year-old husband Ezra, same description, scan the room and try to make themselves comfortable. Group sex is a nervy thing for beginners and this is their first orgy. It’s also their tenth anniversary. They don’t want to be wallflowers, but it’s hard to be forward when introductions can be so easily mistaken for indecent proposals. It takes a while before they strike up a conversation with an attractive couple – the average age hovers in the low 30s, but there are several 50-year-olds – and the evening’s entertainment begins.

Apple has her first lesbian experience in public. Then she watches the woman who has undressed her moved toward her husband while that woman’s husband moves toward her.

Apple and Ezra are swingers but they’ve never gone full swap before. They’ve never seen each other enter or be entered, so this couple from Manhattan matters – not as individuals, but as an experience. Apple and Ezra, who work in higher education and Massachusetts government respectively, have moved past monogamy and this is the next step on the road to something exciting, even if it’s not entirely clear what. A babysitter is looking after their kids.

This is a date of sorts. Apple and Ezra are doing it apart (and to other people), but they’ve come to the orgy together. “As odd as it is to say, a sex party is a low pressure way to dip our toes into that kind of water,” Apple says. “We were interested in sharing it together.” They’d heard about Chemistry and decided, yes, that’s what they wanted to do for their anniversary.

Chemistry is an “erotic organization” popular with Burners, the seasonal citizens of Burning Man’s “Playa.” It is one of seven known public New York orgy organizers, an institution in a field that thrives on word of mouth. The sexual experiences the group offers are free of pressure and are playful; burlesque performers always put on themed shows outside of the playroom. That said, the inclusive, friendly vibe doesn’t mean that just anybody can walk into an event. First-timers have to fill out questionnaires and send in photos so that the organizer, Kenny Blunt, can keep his congregants happy.

“The choices were pretty slim,” Blunt says of the orgies he frequented before starting Chemistry. “The parties were scary, sketchy, and there was a lot of pressure. It wasn’t anything that’s considered a turn-on.”

Blunt is far from bold, his speech inflected with the hesitance of a man who is frequently misunderstood. He attends his own parties (occasionally fucking the very people he screens) with his co-organizer and girlfriend, a 31-year-old beauty named Oksana he sometimes walks around on a leash. Blunt is a failed actor, but he’s found sexual success by lending order to chaos.

“We have a definite distinction between men and women,” he says. “We allow women to attend without a date, but not men, and some think that’s not fair. But… no one has ever come up to us and complained that there was a creepy girl lurking around the playroom.”

That means that Chemistry is, in a sense, a little slice of matriarchy. A guy like Ryan, a 38-year-old comedian who describes himself as a poly-swinger and a 10-year vet of this sort of thing, says that “within the first five minutes, I realized that it was amazing,” however he is still dependent on his SO for entry. It’s a system designed to further commitment even while obliterating at least one of the bonds that has traditionally defined it.

One gets the sense that it is also a place where relationships that need to end do just that. But that’s the exception. The whole environment is overwhelmingly positive. Ryan’s girlfriend has herpes, which she thinks she picked up at an event, but she keeps bringing him back.

The experiences attendees have – and the difficulty of finding those experiences elsewhere – bring people back. And Apple and Ezra look like happy returns may be in the offing.

Apple is pushing herself onto the tongue of half of the Manhattan couple and toughing the nipples of the other half while Ezra does the same. Apple is anxious to get back to what she was doing before but hesitant to tear herself away from a warm mouth. No one is looking now – the party is winding down and things have gotten sloppier, less hydraulic – but Apple is keenly aware of the woman getting spanked on the couch behind her. It’s distracting, but not distracting enough to diminish her pleasure.

Ezra, for his part, is inside the wife, pushing hard. As Apple gets up to go to the bathroom, slipping her panties back on, she watches him pump away. It’s a bit like life in the third person. “That’s what that looks like,” she thinks. She’s turned on. That’s her man.

Then it’s over and Ezra and Apple are lying on the mattress with the couple from Manhattan. Neither of them climaxed, but they’re both spent and sweaty and happy. “Sometimes you see your partner anew when someone is really into them,” Ezra says later. “The experience of seeing each other be happy and wanted sent us back to one another.”

There is an awkward exchange of emails, then some even more awkward goodbyes, and a brief wait on line at the coat check where a woman is slovenly blowing a new friend. But, as the cab pulls away, there is just them and they’re happy together, amazed at this thing they have, for lack of better word, accomplished.

“We’ll go to the bed and breakfast in Vermont for our twentieth,” Apple jokes later.

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.

Read the original article on Maxim.

I grew up with a pretty intense North Jersey Italian mother who relayed two pieces of advice to me on a daily basis: 1) boys are led by their pointers (her disturbing euphemism for “penis,” not mine), and 2) no one is going to protect you but you when it comes to sex.

As I grew up, I learned the latter was undoubtedly true (as was the initial sentiment, minus my mother’s word choice). While I’ve worried about contracting STDs and getting pregnant after even the safest of sexual encounters, my male counterparts have never seemed really worried. No man has ever asked me if I was on the pill pre-coital mediocrity (college, amirite?) or if I had ever been tested; they just assumed my non-disclosure meant I had everything taken care of. And, in fairness, I did.

I have grown accustomed to this role. I am the responsible party in a sexual relationship. I make the decisions when it comes to condom use, abstinence, and whether I take birth control. But I may soon have the option to share that burden. That’s right, everyone: experts have revealed… male birth control is imminent.

How male birth control works: science!

While a surgical vasectomy, condoms, and the juvenile pull-out method have been age-old birth-control options for guys, the science is now there for several versions of pregnancy prevention. And while a legitimate birth control isn’t readily available, several different forms are in the works.

The most promising is the male birth control injection with the tongue-tying title of Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (RISUG). RISUG was first invented in the 1970s by Sujoy Guha, a biomedical engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Technology. The injection was studied for 30 years without any documented complications. It’s effective, it’s affordable… and it sounds a whole lot less invasive than a gynecological exam.

The process takes about 15 minutes and involves a doctor injecting a tiny amount of synthetic gel right outside of each testicle in the vas deferens (the tube through which sperm hitch a ride to the urethra). The procedure only needs to be “renewed” every 10 years. If a man doesn’t want it to last that long, RISUG can be undone. A simple injection of baking soda will help dissolve the gel and get the sperm swimming again in no time.

Another option comes from Japan, where scientists have rendered mice temporarily infertile by blocking calcineurin, a protein necessary to produce sperm.

And then there’s the possibility of an actual birth control pill for men.

“The reality is that there is no scientific reason why we don’t have a pill for men in 2015,” explains Aaron Grotas, a practicing urologist at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Beth Israel Hospital. “[Yet] the only male birth control pills I know of involve supplementation of the male hormone testosterone. Like female birth control pills, the same hormones that naturally drive the body can be manipulated to shut down sperm production.  While initial results look promising, a main fear is that additional testosterone will increase risk of prostate cancer, heart attacks and stroke.”

But regardless of whether or not one of these magical options is likely to become the new norm, would a woman ever trust a man who said he were on birth control? And would guys want to be on this stuff in the first place?

Actual men on male birth control

I turned to a few of my guy friends to get some insight:

Ray, 31: Uh, nothing is stabbing me in the balls. As for the pill, I can’t even remember to take my vitamins… I’m too lazy to remember to take pills every day.

Mike, 34: I’d probably make that commitment for as long as I was actually getting ass… once the well dries up, I would stop. And if it messed with my mental state even a little bit, I wouldn’t take it. I also wouldn’t try it unless it was completely painless… a needle anywhere near my balls is the last thing in the world I would ever do. I’d rather take a shotgun and blow one of my feet off.

Chris, 27: Isn’t that the girl’s job?

Ah Chris, you misogynistic scholar, you make a good point. For decades, birth control has been the girl’s job, and that’s where a major problem lies. How could women ever hand the reigns over to men and blindly trust them to do as good a job as they’ve been doing?

Actual women on male birth control

To prove my theory, I turned to my girlfriends:

Jess, 28: If a one night stand said he was on birth control, I would think he was just trying to not use a condom. But if he was really taking a pill, no I wouldn’t trust him; I couldn’t use the pill properly until I was in my late 20s.

Jillian, 25: No I wouldn’t trust that… cause it’s weird.

Clare, 29: HAHAHAHA

Conclusion

Even with the science, I’m sorry to say I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d relinquish my reproductive health to another person. I can’t even trust my boyfriend to pick up his underwear after taking a shower. How could I trust him to take a pill every day?

That said… male birth control is a smart backup to a woman’s pregnancy prevention plan. Used in tandem, partners on birth control would close the “error gap” that is responsible for so many unintended pregnancies. It will be a welcomed day when the responsibility of reproductive health falls to both partners — and to a culture  ready to accept that shift.

Read the original article on Thrillist.