The hottest spot online: the explosively popular - and free - Craigslist attracts both gay men and lesbians by the thousands. But the guys and gals aren't generally looking for the same things

Self-policing aside, the advertising-free cyber space has the easygoing feel of a friendly neighborhood bar, the kind with a couple of back rooms and a few dealers hanging around outside.

When London's site got under way, the "casual encounters" area, an enclave of mostly straight pleasure seekers, had an unusually high ratio of women to men, roughly 50-50, as opposed to the typical 10 males per female. But just a day after an article in London's The Observer newspaper described the phenomenon, that ratio jumped to 100 men per woman, staying that way for weeks.

"The site was described as a place where the girl next door is looking to hook up with you on a casual basis," Buckmaster says. "Well, I don't know what else you could possibly write in an article that's going to draw more eager males. It was like throwing a chunk of raw meat into a shark tank."

The London example illustrates a fact of life that can be captured only by an all-embracing forum that transcends sexual orientation: Men and women have profoundly different attitudes toward sex, and in this domain, gay men probably have more in common with straight men than with gay women.

These discrepancies tend to conform to the stereotypes we've all heard about gay men and lesbians: Lesbians might not put out for you on the first date but will marry you on the second. As for gay men: A trip through almost any Craigslist city site suggests marriage takes a backseat to an endless series of, um, wedding nights.

Back in the Austin women's section a 30-something asks, "What makes you happy?" Ten women promptly answer with a litany that includes shopping, pedicures, music, and "watching a bird fly by." Over in the men's area, meanwhile, the language is less Martha Stewart and more Chi Chi LaRue.

It's not all flowers and dirty minds, however. Over in the site's "queer" discussion line, an area that unites like-minded users from all the Craigslist cities, the two sides of the GLBT populace are reunited. A man asks what he can get a 63-year-old single lesbian for her birthday. Among the suggestions: a power drill, a gardening kit, a dildo, and "another 60-ish single lesbian." In Atlanta a man seeks a gay roommate. In Shanghai a gay American tourist looks for a travel companion in a country where the guys, he says, "are living in the Stone Age days." In Boston a user hopes to assemble a men's discussion group. In northeast Denver someone plans a community picnic.

Craigslist's founder has resisted millions of dollars in advertising and investment offers. "Sometimes I've winced when I thought about how much money I've walked away from," Craig Newmark told the Associated Press in May. In exchange, however, he has taken a marketplace of jobs, love, homes, sex, and ideas and eventually made it breathe on its own and exhale the essence of a city.

Rostow is senior editor for Texas's TXT Newsmagazine.

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