Summer Story Contest 2011 Runner-Up: The Jungle Out There

Illustration by Greg Gossel

Ever been to the dog park? These buggers don't mess around, they get to the point.

Sniff. Good to meet'cha. I'll get on top.

We humans have really complicated matters with our questions of gender and predilection, of courting and selection.

When I was growing up, our dog humped everything. He nurtured a particular fondness for my little brother's stuffed animals -- and the family cat -- but he was generally indiscriminate; a basketball would suffice in a pinch. Incidentally, this provided utter comic porn, since his little legs weren't quite tall enough to truly straddle the ball.

If it smelled good, it needed to be humped. Shit -- even if it smelled like, well, shit -- yep. Still humped it.

There was no judgment.

He didn't concern himself with what the cat thought when he was pounding the teddy bear. And never once did I hear the cat ask if her ass looked too fat -- though she hissed sometimes. She probably had a headache.

I bring this up not because I have a weakness for bestiality, but because I've noticed that Internet dating sites have begun to smell suspiciously like a dog park. A whole lot of rampant hormones, gender and species be damned.

The Internet has certainly revolutionized dating, but I can't tell if we're evolving or devolving.

On the one hand, we have more options at our fingertips than ever before in history. Like it doggy-style? So does Bachelor No. 44. If fisting is your thing, open door number nine. You want an enormous black man? An Asian spinner? How about a fat frolic, with flour in the folds? Whatever you fancy, Google will give it to you in four seconds flat.

It's a dog park, all right, and it's scratch and sniff.

But the downsides terrify me. If the choices are endless, how does one ever make a choice? And how does anyone get to know someone anymore? We're becoming sexually greedy and socially retarded -- quite like the family dog.

I've become so desensitized from years of meeting people online that it doesn't offend or even surprise me if someone sends me a picture of his dick before we've met for a latte. It's just "Oh, yep -- he's got one -- check."

I'm so disillusioned that when heading off to meet someone face-to-face for the first time, it's no longer called a date. It's merely "a meeting." I tell my girlfriends we'll do dinner at 6:00 -- I have a quick 4:30 meeting first.

Sniff. Good to meet'cha. Wanna get on top?

I had a date on Sunday. I naturally assumed it was gonna be another meeting, but it turned out (cue harps) to be A Date. This astonished me. Here we were, boy and girl -- chatting, getting to know each other, flirting and laughing. Butterflies in the belly and stars in the eyes.

Suddenly he reached around behind me and I instinctively flinched.

Oh, not another one! You're trying for my ass already!?? It's been 22 minutes!

But you know what he did?

He put on my coat for me.

Now I kinda wanna hump him.