While I’m not against public sex on principle (in fact, I insist on it), the risk of getting caught in flagrante delicto has never been a big turn-on for me. What can I say? I love safety. For this reason, when I went to meet a hookup at a co-working space last year, I did so with the vague hope that the danger would finally click. I’ll try anything a hundred times, you know.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my hopes were dashed. Though I made my patriotic contribution to the ambient surveillance matrix with yet another cute video of my ass getting fucked, I couldn’t really feel the frisson of possible capture or humiliation. Despite the risks—the security personnel; the frosting on the glass walls that began a foot above the ground, exposing our stocking feet to the adjacent cells; the unlocked door—I was not afraid.
I walked home afterward under a blue sky, Stay Puft clouds, gentle cranes impressed into condo construction, thinking. Far from being dangerous, that particular co-working space on that particular day, I realized, presented less risk than most of my hookups do1. My diffident date was as harmless as they come, but even if he hadn’t been, he would have had more opportunity to hurt me if we’d met at his apartment, or in a car, or at a park in the dark. Some of the straight chasers I talk to express frustration about having to convince trans people that their worship won’t end in murder2. If they were willing to sacrifice a little more of their own safety, like my closeted date did by meeting me at his place of business, those chasers would probably have an easier time getting laid.
Not too long ago, a TikTok in which a young white gay man recorded himself sitting on the New York City subway went viral3. The text overlay says “omw to meet a guy i met online 8 mins ago” and the audio is the bit in Lana Del Rey’s “Happiness is a Butterfly” where she sings, If he’s a serial killer / then what’s the worst / That can happen to a girl who’s already hurt?” The song lyrics reaffirm what the TikTokker’s casual clothing and almost schoolmarm-ish pose—legs crossed, fingers clasped on the top knee—already tell us: that he is about to do something with at least some level of risk, and that he feels a little silly about just how resigned he is to that risk. Who among us?
I sometimes think of this TikTok when I’m on my way to meet a guy I met online 8 minutes ago, my horniness and curiosity alternating with that sense of silliness and resignation. It’s pleasant to know that some cis men share these feelings of vulnerability with the rest of us, not because I wish for them to be endangered but because being aware of their endangerment gives me a better sense of my own. One hallmark of feminine socialization (whatever that is) is the notion that we are uniquely unsafe by virtue of our bodies (your fault); for better or for worse, the dangers of the masculinely socialized (again—whatever that is, and I recognize the iffiness of ascribing it to gay men as a class) are concealed, de-linked from their bodies, or at the very least dignified with meaning4.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that to be allowed to make the tradeoff in the same way that certain cis men may—that is, to be allowed to accept fear or silliness as the price of satisfying a desire—is, and my apologies for using this word, empowering. Such empowerment is surely a result of being white rather than otherwise, transmasculine rather than otherwise, etc; it’s also one of the privileges that we are hoodwinked into thinking lives inside identities rather than exists in circumstances and vibes. Risk can be seized, not just endured. It’s not perfect, but it’s what’s available. My advice, mercenary, is to enjoy it, this narcotic and beautiful and tasty thing.
As much as that TikTok resonated with me, or whatever, it’s not the first or favorite thing to think of when I’m on my way to meet a guy I met online 8 minutes ago. This bit of Frank O’Hara is: subways are only fun when you’re feeling sexy5.
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My body both invites and mitigates these risks.
The gay ones don’t seem to encounter this problem as much, perhaps because they are not cursed with the sexual tunnel vision the straight ones are.
See Footnote 1. I won’t forget about race, ability, class, all of that. Promise.
David Davis