On my profile page on Fetlife, I specify that I am going through a health crisis and I can’t play in any way. I meant this to indicate that I can’t date, go to parties, go to dinners, Skype, sext, or email, because to me, all of those forms of communicating leave the door open to “playing,” even if it’s just writing a few paragraphs. It still requires effort and imagination. I still have to please the other person and try to fulfill their expectations.

This morning I woke up to an email from a guy who had cancer for decades, acknowledging that he is aware that I’m experiencing major health issues right now and explaining his personal experience being sick. Then he says that while I’m sick, we could still sext and get to know each other, and when I’m well we could meet and play.

I’m not quite sure how to process this one. On one hand, it’s still the idea of, “Oh, look, you have a broken wing. I’ll just fuck the other wing, k?” But since this is coming from someone who has been sick for all of his life minus one year, I know that he will understand what I’m dealing with. I also understand that he’s eager to jump into the dating pool because this is the first time he’ll be able to screw around cancer-free. He probably has a lot of catching up to do – as opposed to me, as I seem to have experimented more than your average bird in the decades leading up to this illness, so I don’t feel like I have been missing out.

Another factor that needs to be considered when sexting or emailing someone without meeting them first is that when you finally do meet, sometimes it kills your boner for the other person. I’m thinking about one date in particular where we became very sexually intimate over messenger, but when we met for a date, I immediately wished that I could take it all back, there was so little attraction to him. I feel like such an old lady now when I tell someone that I’m not interested in sexting. It’s simply not true – I love it – but now I think it would be best to limit it to men I actually know and want to jump, and only then if they can hold a conversation with me above and beyond “Show me your boobs.”