HAVE YOU STOPPED TO THINK THAT YOU'VE BEEN SWIPING YOUR FINGER ACROSS THE SAME SCREEN FOR HALF AN HOUR AND HAVEN'T FOUND ANYONE? I

The question reaches me from some corner of my conscience while I’m lying on the sofa, with my phone in my hand, the blue glow of Grindr lighting up my face. It’s eleven at night on a Thursday in October in Barcelona. I got back from the gym two hours ago, showered, had salmon with vegetables for dinner, and now I’m here, doing the same thing I do almost every night: searching. Swiping. Blocking. Repeating.

My profile is simple. Four well-lit photos I took with a tripod one Sunday afternoon: one of my torso in the gym mirror, with my white T-shirt rolled up, outlining my chest; another from behind, turned, showing my shoulder and the curve of my lower back; another sitting on the edge of the bed in tight black jeans, my ass pressed against the mattress, the fabric stretched to the limit; and the last one, the only one with my face, half profile, three-day beard, serious look. The bio says: Discreet. Gym. Looking for mature. No mind games.

I’m not lying, but I’m not telling the whole truth either. I don’t write that I like being spanked until my ass burns. I don’t write that sometimes, when I’m alone at home and can’t sleep, I get on all fours in front of the mirror and imagine an older man bending me over, splitting me open, talking to me as if I were a dog. I don’t write that at twenty-nine, with a job as an analyst at a consulting firm on Passeig de Gràcia, an apartment in El Born that I pay for on my own, and a body I maintain through protein and discipline, I’m still looking for someone who makes me feel small.

My finger moves on its own. Square profiles on the app’s grid. A headless, hairless torso photo. An erect cock against a background of white tiles. A guy in his forties with sunglasses and his tongue out. Another who says “Top, looking now” and has blurry photos. Block. Block. Block.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m really looking for. If I were completely honest, I’d put in my bio: Looking for an older guy to split me in two, put me on all fours, and give it to me until I can’t sit down the next day. Looking for someone who doesn’t ask for conversation, who doesn’t send me photos of his cock at nine in the morning, who knows what he’s doing and does it without asking.

But you don’t write that. You filter it. You hint at it. You smell it.

I swipe again and a profile appears with no face photo, just an image of a toned torso, gray-haired, brown skin. The distance says 1.2 km. The bio only says: 51. Top. Experienced. No rush. The age is in the username: ANTUCO51.

I stop. My thumbs stop moving. Something about that combination—the exact age, the word “experienced,” the absence of posing—halts me. I open the profile. There are no more photos in the gallery, only that one of the gray-haired torso, but the quality of the image, the natural light, the way the pec is defined, everything says this guy doesn’t need to show more...