Last night an old friend sent me a link to this 2012 story from Salon,
Rest stop confidential. I don't remember seeing it back then, but it seems germane:
Quote:
I was 15 the first time I found out that men have sex in public. On the way to Maine with my mom and stepfather, we pulled off the highway and into a rest area. At the urinal, there was a man next to me. He was tall and homely, and holding himself. He stared at me. I was electrified, but held to that spot; he shook himself at me and I couldn’t move. We would have stayed there forever, but another man came in and saw what was happening and scowled. Time started again and I ran out of the bathroom.
If you’ve ever pulled over to a rest area, you’ve been near men having sex. I’m one of those men, I’ve done it a hundred times; we go into the woods or a truck with tinted windows, in a stall under cold light. It never stops, not for season or time. In the winter, men trudge through snow to be with each other, in the summer, men leave the woods with ticks clinging to their legs. Have you ever stopped at a rest area and found it completely empty? There’s always one man there, in his car, waiting to meet someone new.
This has been going on for a long, long time. The new ways that men meet — endlessly staring into phones, searching on hookup apps like Grindr or sites like Manhunt — haven’t changed the fact that we’re still having sex at rest areas, because they offer something different. For the man who is unsure of his sexuality, or unsure of how to tell others about it, for the man who has a family but feels new desires (or old, hidden ones) unfolding inside of him, the website and the phone apps are just too certain of themselves. They’re for gay men who want to have gay sex. Sex at the rest area, instead, abolishes identity; there’s a sort of freedom there to not be anything – instead, men just meet other men there; men who want the same sort of freedom.
|
I remember having that first "electrifying moment" at a rest stop somewhere near San Angelo decades ago. The little place had short partial dividers between the urinal and the toilet. Teenage Bob was at the urinal and a maybe 20-ish guy at the toilet was jerking off. I didn't know what to do, but the family was waiting in the car so I left.
Anyhow, for a lot of guys, the Apps or Craigslist or whatever just don't do the trick. You need the place, the men, the challenge of discovery, the freedom of the unknown and anonymous, the excitement of the forbidden - or at least, the socially unmentionable.