Personal

or There are years for fucking and years for loving

Photo by Merch HÜSEY on Unsplash

Incredibly Responsive Femme Bottom

Androgynous/femme 40’s seeking a very tall, husky butch top over 35 in pacific NW or willing to travel. 1328

-personal ad from On our Backs

Bring Me To My Knees

Denver-experienced butch top is a secretly arrogant, mouthy, ill-behaved submissive needing serious discipline from mature, power-hungry dominant. Pain, bondage, whips, humiliation. Black womyn encouraged. Travel or bring you here. Come show me your stuff. She Devil. Box 415.

-personal ad from On our Backs

I have always been fascinated by Personal ads. Especially these queer ones from old queer magazines. I love thinking of those years, before dating apps and social media, before filtered pictures and AI-generated bios, when all that was available was a paragraph in a magazine, paid per word, and the fervent hope that someone would write back to you.

I love the specificity that a word limit and paying per word brought. People knew what they wanted and they wasted no time in getting that across. Personal ads seem to have required a clarity of self that I am still struggling to attain.

To me, it feels like there was no room for shame. No room for hiding your needs and desires and only bringing them out in a certain light, past a certain time, with hands trembling. Poring through these ads, there seems to be an urgency, a brazenness, an impetus. A ‘this is who I am, this is what I want, do you want it too’?

I envy such bold declarations. Such knowing. Such honesty.

What strikes me the most, though, is how much personality, wit and humor people were able to infuse into their ads.

Hot Nights and Rowdy Romps

Seeking very uninhibited and nasty lesbians. Women of color especially encouraged. I prefer fems who can take it as well as give it. You must be clean and sober. I am a very attractive chicana dyke. I am fat and you are not fat-phobic. I am hot and passionate - so are you. You prefer women who are independent and worship only themselves. Assume your position and write me immediately! Drawer #105.

-personal ad from On our Backs

Desperate Dyke

I am on my knees. Surely there are women of power and trust in Tidewater, VA. I want a relationship complete with hot sex. Willing to explore and expand limits. Drawer #62.

-personal ad from On our Backs

It’s hard to read these and not wonder what my own personal ad would look like. Sometimes, I can see so clearly what it would be. At some point, I actually wrote one and had that as my bio on Bumble.

✨ 30 year old, femme lover girl seeks a playful lover to yearn for and dream with. Call me if you are kind, considerate, romantic, witty, and stylish. We’ll get along great if you love travel, music and poetry, and if you are as comfortable staying in as you are going out to try different restaurants or for a wild night out. Bonus points if you are taller than 5’2. Extra points for dreadlocks ✨

I liked this because it was a starting point. I loved it because it distilled years of wanting into a simple paragraph. Naturally, I tweaked it, removed certain sections when I met people I liked who didn’t tick all the boxes. The witty one who wasn’t romantic. The dreadlocked one who wasn’t kind. The witty, stylish one who didn’t like poetry.

Re-reading this brings a smile to my face but it doesn’t feel true anymore. For starters, I am 31 now, one month away from 32. And then there’s the bigger issue: that I am no longer looking for anyone anymore. I’ll explain, but first:

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Sex and The City 2

Or All the ways I’m failing at finding love.

Maybe it’s my fault for trying to find love in a city that glorifies the transient. A place that celebrates its smuttiness. A city that tells you, your person is your person when they’re with you, and even then there’s limits. There are tweets someone sent me before we went out on a date:

A Sharon asked, “what’s that urge to touch an electric fence to see if it’s working called?”

Owuorson said, “dating in Nairobi”.

Maybe it’s the women on Bumble’s fault. The ones that like you, and despite you having an array of opening questions they could answer to start a conversation, they go with the trusty favorite, ‘hey’. No ‘how are you?’ No ‘how was your day?’ Not even ‘Hey, wassup?’ Just ‘hey’. If you had told me I’d develop a distaste for the word hey, I’d have probably laughed your head off but here we are.

What happened to the art of conversation? Isn’t a good conversation a back and forth?

One of my opening questions used to be “what’s your favourite ice cream flavour?” Simple. Cute. Straightforward. I had this grand dream that someone would tell me theirs, and ask me about mine. Or better yet, ask me why I want to know, and I’d say, “if this goes well, I can take you out for some.” I thought it was brilliant. My hopes came crashing down when one after the other, women would match with me and then promptly send me their answers, “blueberry”, “vanilla”, “mint chocolate”. And they would say nothing else. My Bumble messages were starting to look like I was conducting ice cream research.

Apparently, no one cared what my favorite ice cream flavor is, leave alone why I was asking.

Strawberry Cheesecake by the way! That’s what it is. Since no one will ask.

If we’re being honest, it’s mostly my fault because despite knowing with a great deal of specificity the kind of love I want, the kind of person I want, I settle for anyone with a good smile that gives great head. It’s my fault for knowing that for me love is all consuming, an ocean I drown in willingly, but I still continue to insist that, “oh yes, I’m also not looking for anything serious, we can take it a day at a time, we can certainly go with the flow, I can do casual, of course”.

Let me ask you: Would you rather, have guaranteed great sex for 3 months or be alone?

I know, I know..that if I can see so clearly what I want, I shouldn’t settle for anything less. I shouldn’t send mixed messages to the universe about what I desire. And maybe that’s something else to explore, whether I think I am deserving of the kind of love I seek. But right now, I’ll take the toe-curling, earth-shattering orgasms. A nice pitt stop on the path to love. Plus who knows, maybe love is waiting for me in a dimly lit bar on a street in Sandton, Johannesburg, and hasn’t been here all along.

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I wrote this and read it for an Open Mic night. I’d wanted to write about some of the mistakes I was knowingly making while dating. The dissonance of knowing what I want and choosing something different. Of reckoning with not feeling worthy of what I desire. But like in a cute, fun, flash non-fiction way.

I have finally realized what my greatest mistake has been. You know how Zora Neale Hurston said, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” I offer you, “there are years for fucking and years for loving.” My mistake has been trying to force loving during a time of fucking.

I came to this realization when during lunch with W, we talked about all the people I have been involved with this year, and what was wrong or right with each of them. It occurred to me that while love was impossible with all of them, sex, and great sex at that, had been possible. And maybe, instead of trying to chase the ghost of a love that wasn’t there, I could accept the real and present sex on offer.

There’s a peace that comes with this realization. A sharpened clarity. It’s not denial of what I want, it’s acceptance of where I am. There will be a season of love, I am certain. But 2025 has been a season of fucking, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

So maybe my personal ad right now looks like:

Hot Nights and Rowdy Romps

✨ Almost 32 year old femme seeks a nasty lover to play with. Call me if you can take it as well as give it. You are curious, passionate and thoughtful. Come show me your stuff. I am on my knees, but you could be too.