Ask the Former Restroom-Sex Afficionado (in light of the Sen. Craig scandal)

In My Humble Opinion
121

Sorry I’ve been absent, folks. We were traveling today. Ironically enough, we landed at MSP this morning. I avoided the restrooms, though. I heard they had a senator infestation.

I’d go probably once or twice a week. Yes, there were regular places. Both malls in my hometown had tearooms (and yes, that’s a common name for them). The library did, too. Several buildings at Penn State had them when I was going there. There was also open-air cruising at several of the buildings on campus. When I lived here in Minneapolis, there were several tearooms, some at the University of Minnesota (Willey Hall was one for that) as well as open-air park cruising (Loring Park was very close to my apartment).

Always anonymous, for me. Most of the time we never even saw each other’s faces.

I have to admit that I have no idea what this is…

It’s possible, but most straight guys (Tucker Carlson’s probably fabricated recollections notwithstanding) will just get up and leave rather than confront someone in that situation, so I don’t know if I did or not.

From my side, yeah. Can’t speak for the people on the other side of the wall, but I was pretty indiscriminate for reasons other than age. Yes, I was a shallow kid…

No. :smiley:

You don’t generally “go under the wall” unless you’re fairly certain that it’s desired by the other person. Believe me, we tend to be very careful in that situation. In reality, of course, it requires no more trust than any stranger-hookup does, and that happens every night in every gay bar in the country.

  1. The only time I’ve ever done anything out in the main room of the restroom was the one time I had anal sex, only because there was no room for that in the stall. That was a pay-toilet, though, so there was plenty of warning if someone came in.

  2. I don’t know. I’ve never tried to cruise internationally.

Park, yes. As I mentioned above, Loring Park in Minneapolis was very close to my apartment. I spent a LOT of dark time in that park…

Movie houses, no. The era of the porn theater was coming to a close by the time I started my “career”. Nights at the Adonis existed only in legend by then.

Someone asked if I ever saw kids when I was cruising. Yes, I did. It was a public restroom, after all. But if were careful with everybody, we were RELIGIOUSLY careful around kids. Children are the gay man’s white woman. In the same way that black men were required to tread with the greatest of care and agility around white women, so we are around children. There’s enough nonfactual slander about gay men and kids going around that we’re VERY careful not to add any possible fuel to that fire.

122

I’m old enough to have been to the Adonis many, many times. And everything you heard about the place was true. But it wasn’t by any means the most active place in to have sex. It was probably more well-known because of tourists and the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. But I never really saw anything hard-core go on there.

123

Doc Cathode, most legitimate gay businesses will try to curb it if it starts to happen there. They have every interest in remaining on the right side of the law and no matter what their political affiliation with the gay community, aren’t going to encourage things that ARE illegal.

124

You know I originally misread this as “Senator Craig entering or being entered in a gay disco”, right?

125

Can I ask you to elaborate on this part? I think most people can admit this is dysfunctional in many ways, so I am curious what leads people to behave in this way? I don’t mean to insult you, I am just curious what led you to become involved in this? And thanks for starting this thread. It’s been very informative thus far.

126

Well, I was underage, I was overweight (though not by that much), I went to Catholic schools, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I lived in a small city in the part of Pennsylvania which is often compared to Alabama. The opportunities for meaningful successful contact with other gay youth were vanishingly rare, even if I had been consciously and willingly gay. I suppose you could say that I was one of the people who thought of himself as straight, and just doing this for entertainment or to “get his rocks off”. I didn’t admit out loud to anyone (or myself, for that matter) that I was gay until after I’d turned 18. Even after that, anonymous restroom sex was easier to obtain for me than standard “meet in a gay bar and go home together” sex. I didn’t have sex in an actual house (other than masturbation) until I was 22.

Socially, I’ve always been shy. I didn’t pass the standards of physical perfection that gay men are traditionally supposed to look for. It was HARD for me to go up to someone in a bar or otherwise and start up a conversation. It was much easier for me to hit a tearoom.

At first, I stopped both because my size had become a physical liability insofar as actually performing in the limited space of a restroom stall and because I’d moved back to my hometown and opportunities were more limited. The mall tearooms had been cleaned up and were patrolled on a regular schedule, the library tearoom had been cleaned up…to tell the truth, to this day I couldn’t tell you if Altoona still has a tearoom in the entire city limits.

Then, in 2001 or so, I began to work through all of my self-image issues. Then I met supervenusfreak and began to work through my social issues as well. I’m still up for anonymous sex with people I don’t know and probably will never see again because I’m still painfully shy in normal social situations, but I don’t really feel the pull of risky places like tearooms anymore.

127

What effect do you think this has had on you in terms of your ability to form relationships? Also, broadly speaking, what effect does the existence of this subculture have on gay men in general? I would imagine that the normalizing of this type of behavior must have broader social implications.

Is this a common reason for people to engage in this sort of thing?

I’m glad you met someone that has helped you get though some of the issues you faced. Are you two dating? Judging by your timeline, I would guess you are at least in your thirties. I think most straight people at that age have moved past the desire for anonymous sex for the most part. Do you think your desire to do so is a product of your personal history, gay culture, or the constraints you face being a minority in a largely straight culture (or a combination)?

128

Sorry, I meant glory holes.

129

I have to point out that though this behavior still exists, it’s not nearly as widespread as it was, say, in the '70s. Back then, if you couldn’t find anyone to have sex with, you really weren’t trying very hard. Today, I’d say that most gay men, by far, have never had tearoom sex. It’s a very different world than it was 30 years ago.

As far as “broader social implications” are concerned, the '70s were the time of the “sexual revolution,” and we were experiencing a newfound freedom from the values of our parents (the '50s). Everything became politicized, and the baby boomers embraced casual sex by the millions. And this was NOT limited to gay people; young straight people also had a lot more anonymous sex than they do today.

130

Yeah, have been to a few gay bars and clubs where boyfriends got kicked out for, uh, lewd behavior. Then again, an after-hours club I used to frequent, not necessarily gay or straight, had a bathroom for gay guys screwing and a bathroom for girls and guys who didn’t want to fool around (no, neither had a symbol on the door. Come to think of it, neither had a door.)

131

Well, I have a very wide non-monogamous streak in me, but that’s hardly unique to me among the gay community. Any relationships I have will have to be open, though, and thank og I found someone who feels the same way. As far as broader social implications for the gay community, I think that centuries of not being ALLOWED to form committed relationships have more to do with the norm of non-monogamy (and the prevalence of tearoom sex, for that matter) than the tearoom sex has to do with the non-monogamy.

One of them. The other is just because they want to get their rocks off quickly and don’t want to bother with all the introduction conversation that usually fronts that, even among gay men.

I’m 36. Yes, supervenusfreak and I are a couple. Both of us have playmates and we go to events throughout the year the principal purpose of which is to provide a milieu for finding new playmates from other regions, but at the end of the day (or weekend) we both come home from that to each other. There are usually quite a few times where we both share a playmate as well. My occasional desire for anonymous sex is more because it’s fun than because of any underlying emotional damage or social restrictions now.

The reason most straight people have moved past the desire for anonymous sex by their mid-thirties is that they usually have a family by that time. Responsibility for children and the expectations of society have a lot to do with that. I’d guess that gay couples who have children (either adopted, surrogated, or from a previous marriage) have a much lower incidence of desire for anonymous sex.

I don’t see that desire as a bad thing. I do see the slaking of that desire through public sex as a bad thing, not morally in itself, but because of its interactions with the general public. I’ve always thought that in a less puritanical society, “privacy booths” in venues such as bars wouldn’t be that bad an idea.

132

Truth to tell, in over 12 years of stall-crawling, I think I’ve ever actually seen about two real glory-holes. Most of the time, there are peep holes, smaller ones through which you can see between stalls, but not bigger ones suitable for “pass-through” sex. I think the big ones were getting rarer before I ever started.

133

Although you acknowledge the answer in your last suggestion (and jj has partially answered), I’d like to add something.

You have it at least partially backwards.

With the historical societal and cultural (it’s has gotten much better) oppression of anything homosexual, it would hard to imagine gays not developing behaviours that are outside the norm. This applies to the absence of role models, no personal affirmation and lack of opportunities to develop as one comes of age, as well as an individual’s personal strength, capacity for introspection and growth, and opportunities for healthy connections in general.

As I alluded to in my previous posts, if everything I’m being told as I mature and come of age (as a Black, in Bible-belt MS) leads me to hate or at least be afraid of who I really am, then how can I develop normally?

I don’t feel I am loved and affirmed. I don’t get the opportunity to develop honest, natural and self-affirming relationships. These include romantic relationships. Heterosexual youth get to flirt, date, straightforwardly ask people out, and all those things that are part of the process learning who they are, how they relate to the world and how to connect and love.

Gay youth, in addition to not getting to do those things, also are told such things as they are unnatural, they should be (and have been) killed, and more importantly, they are not worthy of love and loving romantic relationships.

Hence, the seeking out connections in the dark – bathrooms, movie houses, parks.

I am reminded of the anecdote that compares racism and homophobia. When I, as a Black man, am discriminated against, at least I can go back to my family and my community, others like me, and be affirmed and have a “home” somewhere. However, when I am discriminated against as a gay man, where do I go for affirmation? This was exactly the case when I was growing up and and exactly the reason I tried to kill myself when I was younger and before I left MS.

Your insightful question also brings to the mind the perfect example of why people like Craig and other closeted homosexuals marry but indulge in clandestine gay practices and how people are surprised that this happens. The question in not “Why did they marry anyway when they knew they were gay?” but, instead, should be “Why wouldn’t they marry anyway (and repress the truth that they’re gay)?,” given societal pressures to do what everyone telling them should and how they’ll be thought of if the live life honestly, naturally and in a self-affirming way.

134

You say you were 14. Do you feel like you were sexually molested?

(Sorry if this was already asked, I barely had time to skim this thread.)

135

I’m not gay. . .but what kind of “assault” are you envisioning here?

A guy goes into a bathroom, manages a series of foot taps, sticks his dong underneath the wall, and some other dude punches him in the dick?

Here’s a silly question for the OP:

Assuming you didn’t walk in to someone waiting on you. . .what was the typical wait time? Would you sit in there on a toilet waiting for a guy to come in? Would you bring a magazine in case you had to wait? Maybe a Nintendo Game Boy?

Would you wait an hour, and then go “fuck it”?

136

I don’t. I was aggressively searching for sex. I was not imposed upon or taken advantage of. If anything, I kind of feel ashamed of myself because I LOOKED at least 17 when I was 14, and I could have really gotten some of the guys I was doing things with in trouble they didn’t mean to get into.

I don’t really generally get involved in age-of-consent threads on here because of my experiences. My equanimity about sexual involvement at that age is just as likely to be entirely idiosyncratic to me as it is to be nearly universal among all 14-year-olds.

Trunk asked about wait times. It really depended on a LOT of things: time of day, usual traffic in a particular restroom, whether or not it was a very busy shopping season or not (busier shopping seasons bring more visitors who are using the restroom for its actual intended purpose, thus delaying or interrupting illicit conduct). It’s a question that varies for each tearoom, also varying day by day and hour by hour.

137

rescinded

138

Well then, your experiences are WAY different than mine, probably due to the fact that I’m 25 years older than you, and lived in NYC for 25 years.

139

Can you give us some type of average and the chance that there is someone at say a typical highway rest stop or a library bathroom is there at any given time for such behavior? I don’t find the behavior as disturbing as the fact that I must have encountered it many times in my life just by numbers and never even knew it. I feel the same way about drug dealing.

I have seen the holes many times and even inviting notes written on the wall of the stalls but I naively assumed that they were all jokes.

I am interested in the sociology about how the coordination plays out. Even if a small city has a number of people interested in such a thing, it seems like finding one another in say, a 10 minute visit to a given bathroom would make the chances so small as to not be worth the time. However, you seem to report that the system is so common that anyone could potentially do it on demand.

As an extension to gaydar, how do you know that you have X chance of succeeding and it is worth your time? If things were that obvious, how come most of us have gone our whole lives without seeing it and the employees aren’t instantly aware of the problem themselves considering that they spend more time there (presumably) than anyone engaging in the activity and would come to know who comes and goes out of the bathrooms and when?

140

I’ve seen more, but I’m also older (and frequented some entertaining places like the Ramrod in my callow youth).