Not all is as it seems

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Traverse City, the nearest "large" relatively cool town; I wanted to look at some plants for the landscaping project I'm in the midst of, visit a brewery that I love going to & had told a friend that I could give him a ride back to our hometown after he'd dropped his car at the dealer for service. My friend was not going to need to zip back until relatively late in the evening--he had to work the bulk of the afternoon--so I had plenty of time to run my errands and enjoy a leisurely dinner. After dinner, finding that the brewery was closed due to graduation ceremonies or some such thing, I decided a few shots in the dark would be the next best thing, besides, the coffee shop has wi-fi, so I can catch up on my mail and catch up with friends. Coffee in hand, I logged onto a few social sites and began the work of emptying my mailboxes. Most messages were assorted Hellos or Have a great weekend from friends, little notes to let me know that they were still alive or bits about how their previous week had gone. Second coffee in hand, I logged onto the three gay social sites that I routinely use. I should mention here that my profile on any given site tends to be pretty vanilla: while I do have the odd nude picture, all are tasteful; I'm a stickler for filling out my profile and providing an accurate age, physical description & spelling out what (and what not) I'm looking for and just generally trying to be truthful. I get all sorts of messages, ranging from the standard Nice Profile or John Doe has sent you a wink to S'up stud, I'd really like to f@#k you hard (I don't do censoring as a general rule--my 8 and 10 year old cousins are following this blog on FB so I'm going to make an exception for the word f@#k only; at some point I'm sure I'll forget, but we'll cross that bridge when I get to it...); some I respond to in kind, others I take the time to write a bit more and some I just ignore all together. I've made a few new friends from connections on these sites, some that I have met in the flesh, some that exist only in cyberland. Over my second coffee I caught up with a couple of my new friends, and hammered out a few notes to men that had sent me emails; as is often the case, I clicked on these guys' profile pictures to see where they were at or what they were looking for or to maximize their profile shots. Most guys that mailed me seemed pretty decent, men from around Northern Michigan or men that were going to be visiting the area over the summer. One guy, however, sent me an email that was more than stock openers and talk about the weather, he'd taken the time to ask me a few pointed questions and told me a bit about himself. These are the types of emails that I enjoy sending and the type that I enjoy receiving, guys that take the time to introduce themselves and read your profile I find immensely attractive. This guy hit all the marks, had a great profile and seemed like a genuinely nice person. I zipped a note back, answered his questions and asked a few of my own. 20 minutes or so later, I received another note from him, with a few more questions and some replies. I'd begun to type a reply, when I received an addended email that my new friend had unlocked his pictures for me. On this particular site, most pictures that are locked tend to be adult in nature. Being a gay male, I of course set aside what I was doing and clicked the link to have a look. Most of the pictures were pretty standard stuff, torso shot, butt shot, cock shot, leading up to a full body shot from both front and back--like a composite 360. There was one last shot in the series--a very explicit shot. The last shot made me pause, I went back to the profile and reread it, looked at the key word listing that is included in the briefing with every profile and read the short profile that appears next to every man's picture. All written information reiterated the same thing: safe sex, safe sex and safer sex. The last shot in the series is a photo of bareback sex; I'm not sure if the writer is the top or the bottom, but it left me wondering how much of the profile is truth and how much is fiction?