My Sunday Feeling

There are many things in this life that I freely confess passeth all my understanding. I do not get NASCAR. I wonder why we Americans confer the mantle of fame on such utterly frivolous and useless people such as Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. I don't understand how the Chicago White Sox could win the World Series two years ago and be last in the division today. And one other thing that for the life of me I do not understand is the allure of sex in public places. This sort of low commerce is hardly news but it is in the forefront now with the recent disclosure that soon-to-be-former United States Senator Larry Craig was arrested after allegedly propositioning a vice squad cop in a restroom at the airport in Minneapolis.

I am hardly a prude. I think that whatever two, or ten for that matter, consenting adults do behind closed doors is not only none of my concern, it is pretty much none of the government's concern. Hotel rooms are ubiquitous in nature. To my way of thinking, there is just no need to exchange fluids anywhere that John Q. Public can happen to walk in on you.

Obviously, not everybody shares my opinion in this regard. Sex in public facilities is a itch that some gay guys-and it is pretty much limited to gay men-need to scratch. Apart from that incident a couple of years ago with those cheerleaders with the Carolina Panthers, I don't think I've ever heard of women getting busy in a restroom. Or trolling for hookups in the park. While it's not unheard of in this country, indeed, the State Highway and Transportation Department closed down the rest area between Maumelle and Little Rock because things had gotten completely out of hand over there, it is practically a cottage industry in Great Britain. In fact, the practice is referred to as "cottaging" over there.

It is the thesis of Brit turned naturalized American Christopher Hitchens that these guys engage in such indiscreet, risky behavior in order to experience the thrill of potentially being caught, a need that may be imperfectly understood, especially in the case of an otherwise right wing conservative like soon-to-be-former Senator Craig.

That was certainly part of the reason my friend, check that, my late friend Bill, used to fool around in public privies. It was also the reason that he went out trolling for men in bars in Oklahoma City where he worked as an instructor in the Opera Department at Oklahoma City University. His penchant for going home with strangers 3 or 4 times a week put him physically in danger. Indeed, one guy damn near beat him to death one night. His indiscreet lifestyle in public places exposed to him to the potential of criminal liability and public ridicule. It mattered not to him.

I was asked to intervene with him by a mutual friend who thought I could talk some sense into him. She was wrong. When I told him that I couldn't understand his taste for anonymous impersonal sex on a sustained basis with virtual strangers, he basically told me that "it was a gay thing and that I wouldn't understand."

I do not speak ill of the dead. Bill was one of the smartest and funniest persons I ever knew. He was much beloved by his students. For someone who was as gay as a lilly he loved basketball. Indeed, he used to go to the OCU games and sit with the legendary basketball coach Abe Lemons. No lie. I miss Bill to this day. But Bill had an insane lifestyle and it eventually got him killed. He died of AIDS around 1987, just a few scant years before the advent of the drugs that have pretty much rendered the disease survivable nowadays.

God knows straight people do crazy things with their pants off. I don't suggest otherwise. But gay people seek acceptance and long for equality. And I think that so long as a minority of gay men need to scratch that public sex itch it will be a hard sale with straight America.
I would like to think that I am a man with a reputation for fairness and tolerance in this here town. And I if a guy like me cannot fathom "cottaging" I guarantee you those less inclined to charity toward gay people cannot fathom it either.