Cruising for gay sex
Brian Gerald Murphy
These days lots of gay guys are using Grindr for hooking up. But we didn’t always have sex available at our fingertips. For centuries (or longer!) gay and bi guys have start ways to connect with each other, even when doing so was illegal. Most of us don’t come from queer families and so we don’t learn our LGBTQ history at home. So, I set out to expose the ways that same-sex attracted and bisexual guys hold met each other for friendship and sex. Here’s a brief history of gay cruising
These days lots of gay guys are using Grindr for hooking up. But we didn’t always have sex present at our fingertips. From bathhouses to bars, sex parties to saunas, even to parks and bathrooms. Gay guys have create a way to discover each other, even before Grindr.
For the past 11 years, up until this past January, I lived in New York City. It’s one of the centers of same-sex attracted life in the Merged States. It’s a port city and after the sailors returned home from World War II, many of the guys who had found connec
CP Photo Illustration: Jared Wickerham
One night in the mid-1980s, Scott* tells me, his roommate went to the Fruit Loop — a secluded stretch of roadway in the southwest corner of Schenley Park — hoping to catch some dick. When the roommate returned, Scott, who had never gone cruising himself, despite spending many nights looking out the window of his apartment into the park, longing, or at least curious, asked how it went, expecting a raunchy story.
But the roommate, scowling, recounted a distasteful exchange that had turned him off: Making a slow turn about the Fruit Loop in his ride, watching and creature watched by the men at the edge of the woods, the roommate rolled his window down. One of the watchers approached, friendly and direct: “J’need blowed?”
This yinzer was too much for Scott’s fussy roommate, whose desire could not override his bourgeois, judgmental impulses. He’d rolled up the car window and high-tailed it home.
Many years later, Scott recoun
Cruising
This blog was written by our Sexual Health Outreach Worker, Chris Dunbar.
Sometimes, having sex in the safe confines of your bedroom just doesn’t cut it. You may be looking for somewhere new, seeking thrill or adventure, or just not be able to hold the sex you want within your four walls. You may have heard someone talk about cruising, or contain been asked if you want to go, but what does it actually mean?
Let’s have a look together at what it means, the laws, and general safety if you do settle to give it a go.
Definition
Cruising is walking or driving about certain areas, called cruising grounds, looking for a sexual partner. These meetings are usually one-off, anonymous encounters.
Cottaging is a phrase used to outline anonymous sex meetings in public toilets.
Where do the terms come from?
Cruising: The word originated as a gay slang term, sometime in the early 1960s, as a way for people who knew its interpretation to arrange sexual meetings. It was a way to plan sexual encounters without attracting the attention of people who may desire to report them to the authorities, or inflict injure. The term is used many countries including the UK, the U
Cruising for sex
I seriously doubt I’d be so heroic as to cruise IRL in public like that. It’d be nice, but that comes with too many of the poor images drilled into my chief as a child from the 1970s.
I have been spending a bit of time in Grindr with the mistaken idea of taking a “sink-or-swim” approach to topping: hooking up with a bunch of guys and allowing myself to fail to hopefully get over this ED. Hasn’t worked too well so far, but I’m not done trying yet.
I consider myself mostly a top–I just don’t find bottoming all that pleasurable. It doesn’t feel bad, it’s just that I don’t seem to life that prostate stimulation that seems to be the holy grail of gay sex.
Of course, entity a top with ED is frustrating as hell, almost as frustrating as being an inexperienced top. Bottoms seem to protest about all the preparation they need to do, but that’s easy, that just takes discipline. During the actual act itself, they can just lay support and eat crackers if they wish, and not have to worry about worrying, not be too much in their heads about being too much in their heads, let their minds and bodies disconnect if they wish.
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