12 Public Hookups

Hookup websites list lots of places to meet guys in public: restrooms in shopping malls and on college campuses, heavily-wooded parks, secluded beaches.  But I've never understood the attraction.  It's dangerous, illegal, and uncomfortable.  Why not just invite him back to your apartment?

I haven't had a lot of experience with public activity, but there have been a few times when I gave in to temptation.

High School

1. My second sexual experience, with Tyrone my workout buddy, took place in his car in the high school parking lot.

College

2. In Rock Island a lot of men went cruising at the levee, and did things right there in their parked cars.  I was too skittish to do it there, but I did go home with Professor Burton, who held the annual handcuff parties.



3. During my senior year in college, I hooked up with a student in my Photojournalism class.  We didn't have anyplace to go -- I lived at home, and he lived in the dorm -- so we went to the stacks in the library -- deserted on a Saturday night,  PK section.

4. Trapped at Lambert International Airport in St. Louis later that year, I learned about cruising in public restrooms.

5. When I was visiting India, just after getting my M.A. from Indiana University, Viju took me to Jahanpanah City Forest in Delhi.  I met Arshad the Zoroastrian, who took me out to dinner and then on a tour of the spiritual pilgrimage sites in Delhi.

6. Later that summer, on the way to my first teaching job in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I spent the night in Oxford. Mississippi, and met three country boys in the woods outside of the Faulkner mansion, including Elmer, a University of Minnesota undergrad who came back to my hotel to spend the night.

West Hollywood

7. At a conference at Notre Dame, I met a Catholic undergrad, who took me to a path that went around St. Joseph lake on the Notre Dame campus.

8. In the spring of 1989, during my semester teaching in Ankara, I found that Turkish men were cruising each other constantly, in the park, on the metro, in the hamams.  A lot of the college boys cruised in the wooded hills beyond Bilkent University, but I met an older guy there: Turkish moustache, furry chest, thick Bratwurst.


9.  During the Great Redneck Roundup of 1995, we stopped at a rest stop near Laramie, and I climbed into a truck cab.

San Francisco

10. One day my effervescent, outrageous friend David tried to get me to pick up a clerk at Macy's in a public restroom.  But I wimped out and made a date with him instead.
New York

11. During my summer in Paris, I went to Suam Thai for dinner almost every night, and got extensively cruised by the chef.  One night he invited me into the kitchen to discuss something, and one thing led to another.  We ended up making out in the supply room.

12.  When I was living in Manhattan and commuting to Long Island to work on my Ph.D., I I had three choices: take guys home on a two-hour train ride; borrow Yuri's apartment; or entertain them in my office -- in a secluded corridor in the Social Science Building.

I shared with three other graduate students.  But I knew their schedules, so it was safe.

Still, every time I brought someone in, I listened carefully for the sound of a key in that lock.

Nothing in public since 2001 -- I have an apartment with a nice soft bed, only about ten minutes from here, so....

The uncensored post, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.