There's a book review from Slate last week which gay cruisers will want to see. I posted a link to Searching in the Shadows on the CFS Home Page Friday but didn't have time then to mention it and add it here.

Anyhow, there's a whole bunch of interesting things here. It's a review and comparison of two photography books. One is Alvin Baltrop’s "The Piers" which has images of gay cruising on the Hudson River piers in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. The other is Thomas Roma’s "In the Vale of Cashmere" which has images of cruising in Brooklyn's Prospect Park these days. Of course there's some photos; unfortunately I had to resize the two of "then" and "now" I uploaded here.

More than that, there's a mention of an unidentified "cruising website, a sort of Yelp.com for gay cruising spots around the world." What could that be?

I don't have time to write at length, and you should read it for yourself and form your own opinions. After discussing the books, his reaction, and the current state of cruising, the author, a drag queen, talks about his own mixed feelings about cruising, why he does it, and ends with a quote from a "gorgeous" man he encountered going to a park:

“I have to work early tomorrow. This is easy.”

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“I have to work early tomorrow. This is easy.”

When sharing their views and opinions with the rest us, most people tend to assume a somewhat idealized, polished, and palatable version of themselves. This makes the views expressed more acceptable, easier to understand, and more universally applicable.

An average dude is supposed to be working Mo-Fri, 9-5, having a decent middle class income that would allow him to spend a few dollars on patronizing popular and shiny gay bars, spas, clubs and other establishments where he supposedly enjoys all the hard fought for achievements of the nearly universal gay lib. Or at least, so goes the narrative...

The actual living conditions of many people do not fit into such stereotyped narratives at all.

The 'old' reasonably well paid industrial jobs allowing vast segments of the population to live relatively good lives while hardly facing any educational or professional challenges are now mostly the stuff of the urban legends we use to describe the lives of previous generations.

Many first world countries have greatly divided workforce. The relatively few on the top being generously paid while facing numerous challenges, long working days, full job insecurity, and many, many more on the bottom struggling to make the ends meet with an ever diminishing, somewhat mythical 'middle class' caught somewhere in-between and increasingly losing its practical relevance while feeling unwanted, not needed and generally superfluous.

Even a very well paid professional dude has to catch a 6 or 7am flight now and then, and cannot afford to hang in in his usual gay bar until the wee hours to hook up (or not?) with an available, willing and qualified guy. A 2-4 hour night sleep may not be a practical option for most guys.

A $7-$10 cover charge at the entrance is a small amount of money for a guy who is comfortable with his income. But burning a total of $20-$30 per night on drinks, cover, travel, etc., several times a week for a college dude who may be pretty tight with his funds actually makes frequent cruising the commercial venues a less attractive option for a number of guys out there living on tight budgets.

Yet, first and foremost, we live in a very connected world. Many people are being constantly flooded with all sorts of information about their friends, family, co-workers, people they know, via both social media and numerous apps. Starting a small talk, getting to know someone even very superficially in a bar or club before you move on to the business at hand often feels like adding yet another nail to your coffin. You simply and solely want to get your rocks off (and most likely, so does the other guy, too). You do not want to know what he opines on the refugees, Charlie Sheen's sex life or whatever else the contentious issue of the day may be. You do not want to go to his/your home, have drinks, shoot breeze, and hope that it'll work out just fine.

True, cruising for sex is very much about the instant, inexpensive, NSA if relatively risky gratification. Few people will ever completely and unreservedly subscribe to it only. But, in all honesty, relatively few men are really ready to rule it out completely, despite their frequent rhetoric claiming otherwise.

Men have been doing it for thousands of years this way with other men. And they will continue to do so for many more years to come.

Simply because we can.

KD

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When people start to go off on "the gay agenda" or the growth of gay acceptance that is one thing they seem to forget -

It has been going on since time began.

Guys are sexual by nature and even back in the days when society said you should do nothing but hold hands and share a malt before marriage guys got horny, and acted on it.

Sometimes society makes it sound like suddenly in the 70's gay sex was invented, when in fact it was always there just deeper in the closet. I have read some things from men much older who talk about how as kids even back in the 30's and 40's they fooled around - A LOT - but back then no one talked about being gay and most of them went on to get married and have kids and no one ever knew -

But they were horny and they did it "Simply because we can" -

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The 70's and much more so the 80's and the 90's brought about a landslide change in social mores for a set of many complex reasons. The most significant of them all was the discovery of a significant marketing potential that a nascent gay community was offering to the businesses. Soon enough the notion of two possibly, well-educated men living together in atmosphere of tolerance if not outward acceptance with significant disposable income, looked
very attractive to a number of marketing folks who wasted no time to promote an agenda which did not stop short of being openly pro-gay.

It is only reasonable to assume that most of the supporters of the gay agenda from the iconic Coors over to the Jaguar cars had little natural or even ideological affinity towards the world of gay lib. But money matters, and sales are a very good way to make sure that the bottom line looks rosy, and that a big bonus check lands on your desk.

KD

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