LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
The Gospel According To Marc |
by Marc Acito |
Strangers in the NightLooking for Love in All the Wrong Places
"Why do gay men have sex in the bushes?" I love when people ask me questions like that, as if being gay suddenly makes me an expert on all things homosexual. But I gotta admit the question made me curious, as do most questions involving genitalia. "Do gay men have sex in the bushes?" I think to myself. Having been in a relationship since before I could legally buy a drink, I realize I have no idea. Now the best thing about being a writer is that you get to ask people the rudest questions in the name of investigative journalism, so I ask a couple of hundred guys whether they've ever had sex with a stranger in a public place. My survey, conducted at Gay Pride, is hardly scientific, skewed as it is towards men I think are cute, but still 54 percent say "yes," 41 percent in the last two years. This statistic is not the kind of thing we like our opponents to know about, but I can't ignore two glaring facts: 1) 54 percent means that this is an issue we need to examine as a community, and 2) A lot of people are having a lot more fun than I am. I convince one of those men to be my "cruise director"; I'll refer to him as Corey because, well, that's his name. Corey takes me to the wooded area of a city park after nightfall. On the one hand, I'm frightened for my safety; on the other hand, I'm deliberately not wearing any underwear. We turn onto a secluded footpath, where I can barely make out the faces of men just two feet away. I understand immediately why cruising is a guy thing. No sensible woman would go looking for sex on a dark pathway in a park unless she could kickbox. I'm bad at this. I talk too much and too loudly and scare everyone away. Corey's ticked. "Sorry," I say, "Emily Post doesn't have a chapter on Anonymous Sexual Encounters." So Corey takes me to the backroom of a porn video shop, which is lit entirely with black light. My choice of what I thought was my most flattering black t-shirt proves disastrous, as the black light magnifies lint so much I resemble something the cat coughed up. Needless to say, this is not a look that drives men mad with desire. Of course I run into someone I know. Once again, Emily Post is no help: "Oh, yeah, you're doing "research" for an "article, huh? Sure, yeah, me, too. Why don't you get on your knees and research this while you're at it?" My acquaintance tells me he prefers the arcades because they're less "in-your-face" than the bars. I want to say that they're more "on-your-face" actually, but I've said enough for one night. The next day I go to the public library to find some books on the subject. I ask a willowy young man at the reference desk how I might research public sex. "Try the men's room," he says. Everyone's a comedian. It seems that men have been having sex in public places since Fred and Barney first got it on in the rock quarry. Men in 18th century Amsterdam did it under bridges because the sound of wooden clogs clomping down the stairs gave them time to button their breeches, and one noted patron in the standing room section of the Metropolitan Opera in the 1940s apparently wore his pants backwards to aid in his own personal Ride of the Valkyries. Nowadays men who do it in the bushes tend to fall into two categories, what I like to call the "Hiders" and the "Seekers." The Seekers are the guys who simply get off on the thrill of the chase. "We're men," explains Mike, who regularly cruises with his boyfriend Lex, "we like to hunt." And perhaps there's something wrong with a society that allows men to hunt animals but doesn't allow them to feel up a decoy cop at a rest stop, but the fact remains that a public sex act is, shall we say, arresting behavior. The Hiders, on the other hand, are those guys living nominally straight lives who won't be seen at a gay bar or even a sex club. By all accounts they make up the vast majority of men seeking anonymous public sex, which means that the question is not really "Why do gay men have sex in the bushes?" but "Why do men have gay sex in the bushes?" The answer to the question is both simple and complicated: Men have gay sex in the bushes because we can. And because we can't. But the question we really need to answer is "should we?" And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. Marc Acito can be reached at MarcAcito@home.com. He wonders whether he and his partner are committed to fidelity for moral reasons or simply because nobody cute ever hits on them. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 10, July 27, 2001 |