Gay cruising toilette
Appropriately enough, the first thing you see when you walk into Fenster Zum Klo: Public Toilets, Private Affairs, an exhibit at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum about cruising for gay sex in general toilets, is a huge reproduction of a public toilet. The show also features hundreds of historical photos of cruising spots and a comprehensive overview of gay public sex throughout history—but little of that struck me in the way a series of original, staged photos of men caught in the execute of cruising taken by its curator, Marc Martin, did.
Martin’s photos recreate scenes of men congregating in old Berlin toilets that were once legitimately cruisey. You see flashes of a hard dick, an exposed ass, a man on his knees at a urinal, three men grabbing a guy’s ass and taking control. But it wasn’t the hyper-sexuality of the photos that grabbed me. It was the golden light that haloed the scenes, the tenderness on the men’s faces, the beauty and romance and desire they portrayed—how clearly these men wanted not just to be fucked, but to be loved.
I was there at the exhibition with my boyfriend, No
Of the places queer people have transformed into sites to cruise for sex—from parks like the Pivotal Park Ramble and Berlin’s Tiergarten, to sanctums love Provincetown’s Dick Dock and Fire Island’sMeat Rack—few contain impacted the queer psyche like the public restroom.
“Mischief in public toilets left more traces in vice squad logbooks than in high literature,” photographer Marc Martin writes in the introduction to his recent exhibition at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum, Fenster Zum Klo [Window to the Toilet]: Public Toilets, Confidential Affairs. (Full disclosure: I’m a Schwules* employee in the curation and exhibition department.) And while many modern queers would rather forget this chapter of their people&#;s sordid past, public restrooms are undeniably places where community and connection were kindled among us against unlikely odds. “These public toilets, whose history is intertwined with the lives and adventures of many gays, transsexual people, escorts, libertines, are also unlikely bastions of freedom,” Martin writes.
Martin has spent years collecting tens of thousands of historic objec
How did toilet cruising work?
February 17, PM Subscribe
Any info or stories about etiquette and uncertainty mitigation would be of interest.
Bonus points if you can elucidate how toilet cruising worked in an international context. After a strong warning about how risky cruising is in the Middle East, for example, the guide lists toilets in Syria and Kuwait. There are similar listings throughout the world. While cruising in the U.S.
Secret Signals: How Some Men Cruise for Sex
Aug. 28, &#; -- While many Americans may only be vaguely familiar with the idea of "cruising," there is a secret nature of sex between men that exists in widespread places across the country.
The police officer who arrested Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis airport for allegedly looking to engage in gay sex wrote in his June report that he "recognized a signal used by persons wishing to employ in lewd conduct."
Craig tapped his foot up and down and swiped his hand underneath the bathroom stall in which the undercover cop was sitting, according to the police report.
Those actions led to Craig's arrest by Detective Dave Karsnia and the senator's guilty plea to a disorderly conduct attack. Craig told reporters today that he did nothing inappropriate and said his guilty plea was a mistake.
Public places like men's restrooms, in airports and train stations, truck stops, university libraries and parks, have long been places where gay and pansexual men, particularly th