In & Out

Q I’m a straight, single guy in his forties who has considerable sexual experience. Since college, though, I’ve been hearing about how homosexual men have anonymous sex in public bathrooms. Most recently, we have the Sen. Larry Craig incident in an international airport. I’m not interested in doing this, but curious about how they pull it off (no pun intended). I’ve asked friends, and they mostly just laugh it off, making me think that they don’t know, either. How does it work? They tap their feet; then they bump their legs; then one guy runs his hand under the stall wall; then what? They slip it under the bottom? They drape it over the top? They get in the same stall? Is it manual, oral and/or anal? How do they escape detection?
A A gay friend of mine likes to say that any straight man can be had, and sometimes I wonder if he’s right. Then again, many men and women are simply curious—as you are—as to how these guys pull off public sex without being caught. Being a girl who doesn’t have access to all-male spaces like men’s bathrooms, saunas and locker rooms, my information is from the scientific research on cruising and many conversations over the years with cruisy friends. Occasionally men use graffiti to communicate that a particular bathroom is cruisy (e.g., bj tues 4 might indicate opportunities for blow jobs on Tuesdays around 4pm). Okay, but when you show up, what do you do? It’s not like you can walk up to the guys who are peeing and ask who’s up for oral. With or without graffiti (and most cruising occurs without graffiti communication), men typically depend on nonverbal means of communication (which probably doesn’t surprise any female readers). In fact, talking is usually considered taboo. Foot tapping, sliding a hand or finger under the stall, standing up in your stall and casting a shadow that shows that you are masturbating—all of these could be signs. But as a friend pointed out, the key is that whatever you are doing, it is reciprocated by similar moves from another guy. If reciprocated, then one or both guys might squat down and put their penis through the space between the stall partition and the floor which, yes, does favor men with longer penises. As a result, most cruisy bathroom sex is hand jobs and blow jobs. Very rarely will two guys get in the same stall for anal sex, which is probably a good thing given the general lack of conversation (e.g., if you’re going to have anal sex, I’d recommend communicating about sexually transmissible infection testing, condoms, lubricant, etc.). Some guys drop to their knees in the urinal area of bathrooms and suck or jack off another guy, or may watch each other jack themselves off. The trick about this area of the restroom is you have to be able to stop quickly if someone enters the bathroom. Same with saunas, showers, locker rooms, parks and other public spaces. Viewing rooms in adult bookstores are also often cruisy. The viewing stalls sometimes have glory holes that guys have made over the years (or that are built into the stalls) so that men can stick their fingers through to communicate the wish to cruise. If reciprocated, a penis through the glory hole could be next. Sex clubs—where sex is more open—are a yummy story for another day.

Q I have a comment about the reader who wrote in to say that he is no longer attracted to his fiancée (“In & Out,” TOC 135). I am surprised that in his discussion of whether he should break it off and in your answer to him, neither of you ever mentioned this: love. Whether his fiancée has the qualities he wants in a wife is completely irrelevant if he is not in love with her. He seemed only concerned with whether he was still attracted to her the way he is attracted to other women. Different qualities attract us to different people in our lives and what makes us attracted to them is hard to define. He may be attracted to these other ambitious women, but if he doesn’t love his fiancée, the answer is simple: Break off the engagement.
A The answer seems simple to you, perhaps because that is what you would do. I would agree that most people want to feel like their fiancée loves them and I would guess that he tells his fiancée that he does, in fact, love her. However, in my experience talking with men and women, it is rarely as simple as that. Not to get too philosophical, but what does it mean to love someone? If you ask around, you get many different answers—especially if people feel they can be honest. In past columns I have said that many times relationships don’t end because people stop loving each other, but because the life that the relationship offers them doesn’t work for one or both partners. You can love someone but have the relationship fall apart because one person wants kids and the other doesn’t; because one person has a substance addiction and the other is sick of it; because one person wants to live where its rainy and the other craves sunshine. Similarly, many times when relationships work, it has little to do with love—people often come together in the first place because of love or lust, but may stay partnered because they have kids together, have a good family life, respect each other, like doing the same things together, and so on, and the life that the relationship brings them works. I am not minimizing the importance of love—I think it is central to many relationships, but it isn’t the only key issue for everyone all of the time. And as many couples who have been together for a while find out, often there’s an ebb and flow; you fall in and out of love with each other. Sometimes one partner is more invested in the relationship than the other, and it’s in those fragile times that some people talk about love—and other people talk about their life together.

Q Can you tell me how fetishes originate? Most information available on them just talks about what people are interested in. Is it possible to figure out why I have fetishes?
A We don’t understand why it is that a small percentage of the population develops fetishes for things that range from smoking cigarettes to women’s lingerie, high heels, very long hair, panties and even trash. People acquire strong sexual preferences (and sometimes outright fetishes, meaning they can’t get aroused without the object) for all kinds of things—and we truly don’t know why. Some researchers believe that these preferences are formed very early in life (that might explain the stuffed-animal and diaper fetishes) while others think they are cemented in adolescence during an odd coincidence of having very high sex hormone levels (thanks to puberty) paired with something as seemingly normal as trying on a pair of high heels, seeing a classmate’s bare feet or smoking a cigarette for the first time. Other researchers are looking into neuroscience for explanations. Some sex educators think that—at least for some people—developing a strong sexual preference may occur after having a partner they’re really into introduce something new ( e.g., dressing up in each other’s clothes). A person’s arousal over the partner and the experience of trying something new can get melded together in one big heap of fun feelings about sex, and you began to prefer that particular thing.

Send letters to Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., c/o Time Out Chicago, 247 South State Street, 17th floor, Chicago, IL 60604, or send e-mail to inandout@timeoutchicago.com.