Cruising mens toilets
Illegal Sex: Photos exploring Berlin’s Underground Cruising Scene
photo: Marc Martin
With his photo series “Cruising” French photographer Marc Martin reimagines a time before dating apps, a time when widespread toilets, were the only place to find sexual encounters for many queer men. Behind closed doors, in front of shiny tiles and messy graffiti, these places were a meeting notice for those who could not utilize their own homes, who could not be open about their sexuality and desires. His serve is on show at Schwules Museum Berlin in the exhibition “Fenster zum Klo &#; Common Toilets & Confidential Affairs”.
photo: &#;Cruising&#;/Marc Martin
The photos, set in a vintage Berlin toilet, featuring Berlin models such as Pierre Emö, undertake not shy away from explicit content. Men out of different social classes, pencil pusher or handyman, share a brief moment of intimacy, crammed in a small widespread bathroom. The scenario might be staged, yet its setting is original and the actions shown far from the lived reality of many gay men up to the ’s. Underground Common Toilets at Hermannplatz, Kaiser-
How did toilet cruising work?
February 17, PM Subscribe
Any info or stories about etiquette and risk mitigation would be of interest.
Bonus points if you can explain how toilet cruising worked in an international context. After a solid warning about how risky cruising is in the Middle East, for example, the guide lists toilets in Syria and Kuwait. There are similar listings throughout the world. While cruising in the U.S.
Of the places queer people have transformed into sites to cruise for sex—from parks like the Main Park Ramble and Berlin’s Tiergarten, to sanctums favor Provincetown’s Dick Dock and Fire Island’sMeat Rack—few hold impacted the queer psyche like the public restroom.
“Mischief in public toilets left more traces in vice squad logbooks than in high literature,” photographer Marc Martin writes in the introduction to his recent exhibition at Berlin’s Schwules* Museum, Fenster Zum Klo [Window to the Toilet]: Public Toilets, Intimate Affairs. (Full disclosure: I’m a Schwules* employee in the curation and exhibition department.) And while many modern queers would rather forget this chapter of their people&#;s sordid past, public restrooms are undeniably places where community and connection were kindled among us against unlikely odds. “These public toilets, whose history is intertwined with the lives and adventures of many gays, transitioned people, escorts, libertines, are also unlikely bastions of freedom,” Martin writes.
Martin has spent years collecting tens of thousands of historic objec
Let&#;s Examine the Phenomenon of Cruising Bathrooms Through 4 Renowned Queer Men
Throughout history and for a variety of reasons, queer men have looked to public bathrooms as places to get laid. Some men relish cruising public restrooms because they’re turned on by the exhibitionism and the possibility of getting caught, while others see it as a place to anonymously and discretely have a gay encounter in times when creature outed as queer carries grave social, political and legal consequences.
Cruising public restrooms has become an ingrained part of queer history, with mixed feelings surrounding it. On one hand, it’s considered so seedy, sexy and transgressive that “toilet tramp” hookup scenes have become a common scenario in gay porn (and even inspired drawings of gay erotic illustrator Tom of Finland).
On the other hand, it’s also considered by some to be a dark side of queer sexuality and history that has been used to shame queer men for their otherwise harmless sexual proclivities (often in the specify of protecting children or universal decency).
Noting both sides, gay vide