If Slumbr marked the beginning of my life in New York, it also marked the end of something: six months earlier, Simkhai had sold a 60 percent stake in his company to Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese gaming firm. It wasn’t the first time I had run from a Grindr hookup, and it wouldn’t be the last. As Joel went to fix us drinks at the bar, I bolted out the door. I looked to the boy for help, but he had already begun to undress. I sat down on the couch and someone’s tongue shot into my mouth. A pretty boy found me wandering in the hall and invited me to his room for a drink with Joel Simkhai, Grindr’s founder.
I was at Slumbr, a party hosted by the gay sex-and-dating app Grindr, which boasted themed suites designed by artists such as Juliana Huxtable, Jacolby Satterwhite and Stewart Uoo, their bathtubs brimming with booze.īy the end of the night, the party had mostly emptied out. It was June 2016, I was 24, and it was my first Pride in New York City. Outside, fireworks burst across the Manhattan skyline. Tiny bottles of artisanal poppers on silver platters, held aloft by shirtless models, cut a gleaming path through the crowd of B-list gay celebrities on the top floor of the Standard Hotel. Courtesy: © Hal Fischer and Project Native Informant, London Hal Fischer, Handkerchiefs, 1977, carbon pigment print.
