Back to The Road: Birmingham, AL & Radcliff, KY

Meanwhile, back on the road, I spent my first night enjoying a spring night in Birmingham. A friend of a friend had agreed to meet me at Highland Market, a little coffeehouse/sandwich shop overlooking one of Birmingham's cruisy parks, Highland Park. The park was definitely active with men socializing and cruising, mostly from their cars or hanging around the outer perimeters of the park. It didn't appear to me to be the kind of park where sex was likely to happen in the bushes. Surrounded on all sides by residences, it hardly affords the privacy one needs to fuck in the bushes. I was told by the locals that the police have taken to hounding men who hang out past eleven at night. Another local joked that the one hustler in all of Birmingham could still be found in the park at all hours! Must be a very busy fellow!

The next morning I was up early and driving through Tennessee enroute to Kentucky. If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would drive to Radcliff, Kentucky for pleasure I would have looked at you as if you were a fool. But these days, a cruiser has to look increasingly at small towns and mid-sized cities for some good old fashioned cock-sucking. Whether it is the 'can't mind their own business' do-gooder Christians who have taken over local city governments and are enforcing their own version of morality, or the arrival of an organized 'gay community' that all too often becomes the spokes-group against sexual expression, it is getting harder to find places as yet untouched by the anti-sex forces sweeping the USA. In no small way, this Road Trip is all about locating those untouched oases of sexual pleasure. Radcliff was my first oasis.

Radcliff is home to 19,411 people according to the handy 2000 Kentucky Travel Guide. The local economy for this otherwise dreary town is totally dependent on the adjoining military installation, Fort Knox, certainly one of the more well-known military bases in the world. Fort Knox, as you will recall, is where the gold is kept. 34,224 people reside at Fort Knox. On a hill overlooking Fort Knox, there it sits: the United States Gold Depository, a two-story granite, steel, and concrete fortress built to withstand both Goldfinger and Austin Powers. At least at the time of this writing, other than the Depository, Fort Knox is open to one and all. This includes Keyes Park, very near the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor, where one can find a public toilet sitting in the midst of the park complete with gloryholes. Now before you get yourself all hot and bothered about the possibilities, unless your military fantasies involve servicing those brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, you might wish to look elsewhere. This toilet is simply to out in the open to expect active duty types to show up for relief.

This is where 1744 Dixie Video (1744 Dixie Highway, Radcliff) steps in. An adult bookstore with arcade and small movie room, it deserves all the praise men have written to me over the last several months. It appears to be relatively new and was thrown together to serve a loyal client base: horny locals including a huge Army population. This it does really well.

There must be about 15 booths and some of them have nicely drilled gloryholes. I was especially impressed with the doors to the booths, constructed using sturdy doors that are more often used for apartment entrances -- hopefully these doors will live long and prosper. I arrived at the wrong time during both visits. I never noticed until leaving town that I had entered eastern time zone and when I thought it was high noon, it was actually 1pm. By then, the lunch crowd had been spent. There must have been 5 men left over by the time I arrived. Nevertheless, one of them was a mighty hot find: glasses, sort of nerdy if you can look that way in Radcliff, and maybe 23 years old.

My other visit was supposed to coincide with the after work crowd, but it turned out to be 7pm, not 6pm when I arrived. I stayed around perhaps 2 hours and saw roughly 10 men come and go including a couple of very handsome specimens who clearly were guarding the gold for their day jobs. Alas, these two managed to connect via adjoining gloryholes and the rest of us could only listen and wish.

The small theatre seats probably 20 customers, but only one man was in it the night I visited. You can come and go between the theatre and the booths if you don't abuse this privilege too much (the clerk must buzz you into the theatre).

There were different clerks on duty during my two visits and both were friendly, smiling and for the most part, didn't care what you did behind those closed doors. I did get admonished once about standing between booths, but apparently it was OK to stand around at the entrance to the booth area, just not inside it. The clerk was pleasant enough when he asked me to move.

If you like Army dick, this is definitely worth a visit. You'll need to plan on finding the right time (maybe a local can write in to suggest the better times?) to meet guys. Even though I failed to blow anyone here, I am convinced it was because I forgot to set my watch correctly.

[Cruisemaster note: These journal entries are normally placed online weekends. I make no promises, however, about getting them posted regularly. This is a real road trip and sometimes my 'field research' gets in the way of writing down what I discover along the road.]

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Cruisemaster
cruisingforsex.com

[This message has been edited by Keith (edited June 11, 2000).]