The date is Monday the 9th of February 1992. The time is evening. I don't know why I am there - in a public toilet for all the reasons that nobody else knew or cared about. But I was one of several men there, all of us there for that same private moment that seemed important to us alone where our being alone together seemed most important.
Moments of meaninglessness is what the place has been adapted for, where resisting other peoples common understanding is something that has to be done quietly, though a Quaker meeting would do it with more grace and efficiency. I am there after several months of not going for anonymous sex. I am gripped by the need to seek it and past caring as to why. If the worst happens and I am named by anyone as the sex happens then I have determined that I will sort out how I feel about that after the event. I have to learn afresh how to own the experience of being named when the name for what I was doing was so secret and I thought I was anonymous.
It is dark and cold, and the lights are out, the bulbs have been broken or removed. There is a large disabled cubicle with a wide entrance, and two small regular sized cubicles with narrower doors. Lastly there are three urinals to the left of the cubicles. They are all rather smelly. One of the toilets may be blocked. It is a guess in the dark as to which one it is. There is also a queue for the use of each facility with probably five men, including me, waiting in row against the wall, and nobody knows how many men in the cubicles. We knew better than to be surprised if when one man left a cubicle the door closed again, and after a few minutes more another man would come out and then the door would stay open. The men who stood against the wall in the dark were starting to sort out with each other who wanted who and get what they came for; anonymous sex in a public toilet. In the dark nobody could see anything. So why wait for a space that would be no more private? Only not everyone there is sorting out their needs with the others in the queue.
Some, well, seem to not want sex with who is there. If they wanted sex it was not in this setting with anyone who was present. Maybe better weather and natural light was what they really wanted. Until then their sexual appetite could wait for somewhere that smelt better. In the silence and timidity of inaction who knows what the men there wanted? None of those present could say.
I decided that I had waited long enough and I made as if to leave. Without realising I'd done it, I caught somebody's eye as I left. To my surprise somebody my age started following me, a few yards behind, as I left the toilet, The fresh air smelled good after the wait. Most of the men I had anonymous sex with were not so anonymous that I could say absolutely nothing about them. Most of them had a ring on their finger, which meant that they were married and they had a script which worked for them better than who they went with; if the sex is not with another woman and is non-procreative then they have not committed adultery. That the sex might be non-relational, well that was okay for them. That makes it less to disown should the need to disown where they had once shared their willies later arise.
Marriage was clearly a very leaky vessel for it to require the exceptions it did. I was one of the men who covertly maintained other men's marriages by meeting the male partners need for non-relational sex. But I was frustrated, less by the sex or absence of it, and more by how I'd become more aware of getting myself into the position of some sexual equivalent of 'The Samaritans' but without the virtue of being recognised as being supportive.
The man who followed me out did not have a ring on his finger, as he followed me into a nearby field, where I knew there was a log to sit on. In relative comfort, in the dark, we talked enough to negotiate the sort of sex we thought each of us wanted to prove that we wanted no more of it. We talked because we could, because we were on our own, well away from the toilet which acted as a sexual library, where, library or cruising site, silence was a given. We undid each other's tight jeans and both had a fumble, attempting to please each other. But between the cold, the dark, and where we had first found each other, our ardour had gone. But we could talk, and we both had beards, something I found attractive. Mine was slowly growing back again after I had shaved it off the previous November, in the hope of the shave symbolising a restart, a change of life. Who knows? Maybe this was the change of life I had shaved it off for His beard was trimmed but fuller than mine and in good light I could see it was ginger against his pale skin. He was not the first bear, gay bearded/hairy man, who I had attempted sex with. There had been a very few of them. But he was the first bearded man to remove from me the expectation that gay sex always had to be anonymous.
I said to him 'Would you like to come back to my house and share some soup and I want to be able to talk to somebody. Would you listen to me?'. Probably somewhat overwhelmed by my request, and not knowing what else to say, he said 'Yes'. He followed me the ten mins walk to the house where I rented a room. Part of me did feel as if I were bringing a stray cat into the house, something that it took no words to say was against the rules that I would not know how to explain if caught. Thankfully, nobody saw me smuggle Russell in and I never had to explain.
I made the tea and warmed some frozen chicken broth from my shelf of the freezer in the microwave, and we sat in my room. He ate and drank but with more interest in my story than the food. I laid out before him where I had come from and what had got me to the point of sitting with him, much as I have laid out the material in the two chapters of this memoir. He listened, and no doubt he thought me strange and wondered where the punchline was, and where story might go next. Much of what I said must have baffled and surprised him. To stop me saying any more he took on the simplest, most practical problems, first.
I told him that I had never been in a gay pub, did not know where they were, and I had been told 'They are very lonely places' by the church leaders who I had hitherto trusted enough to share with, who I expected to know anything about such matters. His response was brief and immediate 'Shall we go to The Admiral Duncan, when you are ready?'.
And we went. The walk to the city centre took most of an hour, which was a fine way of giving each other a more general introduction of ourselves before we found the pub. We arrived at The Admiral Duncan at near ten pm, the place was nearly deserted. The house-oriented disco music and fancy light show were both underwhelming to me. The music I normally listened to was bands like The Grateful Dead, who played real instruments with empathy towards each other in how each of them played.
The dance music might as well have been the theme to 'The Magic Roundabout' for all I could pick out of any empathy in the sounds. A lot of so called 'dance music' sounded like that to me. But The Magic Roundabout was my childhood memory of what used to enchant me on television and I understood how this manufactured music was made with the intent to enchant. With the volume of the music, the light show, and so few customers, there was nobody at the bar after last orders was called, with a handlebar moustache, to say 'Time for bed? as Zebedee always said as the last line of every episode of 'The Magic Roundabout'.
Russell and I kissed as we left the pub. He had to go his way home and I had to go mine. He asked me 'Will I see you here next Friday?'. Not thinking through what he said for even a moment, including that Friday was Valentines Day, I said 'Yes, and I hope I have completed my apprenticeship.', This may have been rather opaque, but I meant by it 'Now I can go where the men talk to each other, and whilst they are sexual people, the choice is much more than secretive silent sex. I can be among some men who will actually kiss each other.'.
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