Went out last night for the first time in a long time. Saturday night and the town was dead.
Where were all the boys?
Online.
My new gig is executive director of our local HIV/AIDS service organization. I know very well how much hooking up happens in cyber spaces. In fact, I've got profiles on most of the major sites. I try to be a sane resource for accurate information, but I do love my voyeuristic thrills...
At any rate, the barren scene last night got me thinking about cruising, bars, and 'gay' culture.
Bars, of course, have been the epicenters of gay culture since long before being 'gay' was an option. Now gay culture has moved beyond the realm of homosexuality and has taken on a highly branded, high-sheen consumerist life of its own. Think Atlantis Cruise lines, Bravo, Kathy Griffin... Men, who likely suffered under the term gay growing up, have now turned the tables and demonstrated themselves to be an economic and political force to be reckoned with.
By demanding equal rights and public recognition, 'gay' culture has been conscribed to a demographic. It has assimilist aspirations and thus must have a plucked and polished public face to counteract all those right wing accusations.
This brings me to the online underground. A big aspect of 'gay' culture, or rather homosexual culture, has long been one of sexual outlaw. ManHunt, Adam4Adam, Bear411, and others have that seedy atmosphere of a Times Square bar before Disney arrived. Men go to these sites to hook up, to have sex, to hold court...much like gay bars in the old days. With one big difference. It's online that you find those men who don't want to be identified with the new 'gay' culture, or men who believe that having sex with men doesn't make you gay, or men who are married or bi with girlfriends and wives who just 'don't do the things I like.' On top of that, these underground dens are major facilitators of drug use, especially that monster meth. For those of you old enough to remember Damron Guides, the online world definitely falls under the category A.Y.O.R.
What I find most telling about this roiling, sex-fueled, wild west frontier, is the collective awareness and denial that any of it is going on. As out gay men, we see each other on Manhunt or Adam4Adam with cocks splayed and assholes gaping, with every fetish and predilection categorized in neat drop down boxes. Yet we commune and socialize in the waking world as if we've never seen those pictures or are completely unaware that the other has a passion for being double fisted while wearing lace panties.
Is this the height of acceptance or denial? I'm not really sure.
Homosexual men have always seemed to mix risk and desire. It's a game, a gamble, and the stakes are high.
There is a fine line in this political, economic, sexual, social experiment between liberation and self-destruction. But isn't that always the way?
Here's to everyone's safe passage.
Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...
image: Raymond Carrance
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