Now, seated at his desk and surrounded by giant photographs of body builders' glutes, Crutchley says the company brings in at least $2.4 million per month - almost $30 million a year - not counting ad revenues, and prospects for growth are strong. (Among many other properties, Basile owned a hotel and gay bar in the former gay enclave of Boston's South End today, he lives outside the city in a Frank Lloyd Wright house on a 17-acre farm.)Ĭrutchley, a liberal Republican with a tight white beard, admits that he felt anxious during Manhunt's first years, before his and Basile's initial investment of $800,000 bore fruit. Separately, both men, now in their 60s, had also made fortunes in real estate. Manhunt was founded in Boston in 2001 by Larry Basile and Jonathan Crutchley, who came into the business via phone chat rooms (they still have that business, but it's dwindling). The headline of one man's ad, next to a big close-up of his butt, asks, 'Are you The One?' Thus, even many of the most overbearingly erotic profiles also haltingly express a dream of emotional connection. If it's true - and everybody says it's true - that sex is the gay handshake, then one of these days maybe you'll hit the jackpot. Who knows? You might even find a boyfriend there.
If you are among its target customers - younger, hotter, and richer than average gay men in big cities - Manhunt is the club that the proverbial everyone (meaning, the guys you've always fantasized about) belongs to. In the United States, Manhunt now has nearly 1 million members, and the site receives more than 400,000 unique visitors per month. The site's other advertising tag line, 'If he's out there, he is on here,' is only a slight exaggeration. Manhunt's apparent efficiency owes even more to its staggering number of members.
This wealth of information makes Manhunt seem the most efficient place for its target customers to find sex, because the site's comprehensive search function can produce in seconds a list of, say, brown-eyed bottoms within one mile of your zip code wanting to get it on 'Right Now!' To that last category will soon be added penis length and girth - 'a controversial issue within the company,' says Manhunt's recently resigned director of marketing Phil Henricks, 'because men lie.'
Beneath these entries lie a series of boxes that can be checked to signal 'What I'm Into' (27 options, including 'JO', 'Exhibition,' 'Pig Play,' 'LTR' - long-term relationship - 'Feet/Socks'), 'When I Want It' (the box most frequently checked is 'Right Now!'), 'How I Like It' (top, bottom, etc.), 'Where It Happens' ('Your Place,' 'My Place,' and the popular 'Anywhere'), and 'What I Got' (age, build, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, HIV status, and height). Profile names, which tend to be histrionically masculine or graphically sexual, appear next to pictures, usually of a beefcake or X-rated variety, often with heads cropped out, accompanied by brief, blunt descriptions of sexual tastes ('I need oral and anal sex all the time').
To partake, men market themselves in a style shaped by the site's profile template. The phrase evokes the product Manhunt sells: a fix of quick sex - easy in, easy out.
Here the guys who delight in your weaknesses oversee, the world's fastest-growing gay website, which is quietly abetting a revolution in social and sexual mores, under the slogan 'get on, get off.' They work in Cambridge, Mass., in a historic building topped by a golden statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in an oak-paneled office suite where a grandfather clock marks the passing of the hours. There are in fact at least a few dozen guys out there who cherish your flaws. If you have been wondering whether to believe this, wonder no more. If you are a single gay man in search of a mate, and if you are at times prone to discouragement, you probably have friends who reassure you that someday you will find a man who'll cherish every part of you - even your weaknesses, even your flaws.