Never mind coming out of the closet, come out of the bushes
Times have changed for gay men, but do the secretive and casual attitudes to sex still remain? asks Sam Claxton
I came out to my parents and friends nearly 2 years ago. It took 16 years of my life to feel comfortable in my own skin and around others, however my parents were quick to mention, during my coming out 'speech' that they had made an educated guess by the time I was about four years old that I was probably going to be a homosexual. I would also get the odd gay remark from my friends prior to me coming out; I often wonder if there was any need to make a big thing about coming out. After all this is the 21st century.
During the the same year I found and lost my first boyfriend, then joined the most popular app for homosexual men around the world: Grindr. My logic in joining this app was that I'd be able to talk to and get to know other gay guys, little did I know that Grindr was the most popular app for gay men looking for a 'good time'...
In most respects I have had a very easy life growing In most respects I have had a very easy life growing up as a homosexual compared to say gays fifty years ago, when homosexuality was a criminal activity, yet one thing that has remained a constant with the gay community is the NSA (No Strings Attached) way of life.
Cottaging began as a popular way for gay or curious men to have anonymous sex in public toilets and they would use their own jargon language of Polari to organise these meetings.
Polari has a mixture of Italian romance, back slang and rhyming slang. It was constantly shifting, with a small core lexicon of about 20 words, including bona, eek, cod and naff, some of which have transferred into common language use such as 'naff' to mean rubbish or disappointing.
This language was used amongst gay men in dark dangerous days, however there were entertainment shows that made light of the jargon such as the 1960s BBC radio comedy Round the Horne. The most popular sketch was Julian and Sandy, starring Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams as two flamboyantly camp actors, speaking in the gay slang Polari, with Horne as the comic foil.
Times have changed but intentions of gay men haven't, there are still coded signals for "cottaging" and it still takes place but on a larger and perhaps more public scale thanks to the app Grindr.
The best way to describe Grindr would be that it is a sex catalogue: you can filter the ages you're looking for, what 'genre' of gay you are looking for (twink, hunk, bear, etc.) and also what kind of thing you're both looking for. In Grindr the most common thing is NSA - sex without commitment, or Right Now, which is fairly self-explanatory.
No one would deny the fantasy appeal of instant sex, but this obsession with casual sex within the gay community is spoiling gay (especially young) men's ability to build meaningful, committed relationships. Even gay men within a relationship struggle to resist the catalogue of meaningless sex that is Grindr, so the most accepted thing to do is create an 'open relationship' which allows them to be together, supposedly happily, yet go and shag who ever they fancy, whenever they fancy.
Don't get me wrong, homosexuality in general has become more accepted since the mid twentieth century and that is wonderful thing. But gay people have lived for so long under the idea that what they do for pleasure is wrong, that going from living under that thinking for centuries to it being mostly accepted within three or four decades the pendulum has swung too far and produced a new kind of freedom without any boundaries.
This new 'freedom' can be addictive and essentially as enslaving as living under the old 'what you do is wrong' system.
It is to be hoped that in the next few decades is that gays calm down a bit and realises that there's more to people than their sex appeal. Monogamy ideally offers someone to care for you and for you to care for someone else, as well as a life long best friend that can satisfy certain needs. The legalisation of gay marriage this year now allows and hopefully encourages gay men and women to experience this the same way as straight people do.