Feb 27, 2004  |  By: ADRIAN BRUNE  | COMMENTS     

As a newly out gay man, Tom Duschney moved from a Maryland suburb to Dupont Circle a little more than four years ago to explore the dating life.

Not a fan of the bar scene, he enrolled in an abs class at an area health club — also known as a “transactional market” — where he started looking for friends and potential lovers. As someone who previously dated women with similarly conservative Catholic views about romance, Duschney wanted to find someone far removed from the constraints of his old life.

“I hadn’t come out to my family yet, and I wanted the freedom to be with whomever I pleased far away from my background,” Duschney said. “Dupont seemed like an ideal place to discover this new side of me.”

In his initial quest, Duschney typified the behavior of an urban gay male — men who relocate to gay districts and spend their free time in noncommittal environments in the hopes of meeting other gay men to date, according to recent research out of the University of Chicago. But contrary to the images portrayed in such television shows as “Queer as Folk” or “Sex in the City,” these social and institutional structures potentially limit, rather than facilitate, sexual and romantic options by making different types of sexual activities, relationships or meeting places less accessible.

In his upcoming book, the “Sexual Organization of the City,” sociologist Edward Laumann argues that typical gay city inhabitants spend most of their adult lives in “transactional” relationships, or short-term commitments of less than six months. This reality has led to the formation of a sophisticated network of “markets,” including neighborhoods and friendship circles, in which these adults — both straight and gay — search for companionship and sex, but most often end up alone.

“On average, half your life is going to be in this single and dating state, and this is a big change from the 1950s,” said Laumann, sociology chair at the University of Chicago. “The gay scene is a fairly volatile scene without much nominal guidance from family and long-term friends, which tend to help with bumps in the road. When you’re in that single scene, these partnerships aren’t one-night stands, but they usually have a life of about six months.”

On the whole, these new sexual markets operate differently for men and women, and within racial groups. Neighborhoods, in addition to sexual orientation, tend to define modern sexual markets, the University of Chicago sociologists found during a three-year study comprising the major premise behind the book.

The Chicago Health & Social Life Survey (CHSLS) studied the habits of 2,114 people in four distinct Chicago neighborhoods: one predominantly black neighborhood on the South Side, one mostly Puerto Rican area in northwest Chicago, another with a large Mexican population to the west and a northern city neighborhood with the largest contingent of gay and upper-income residents.

“Each major American city is organized much as Chicago is, with similar neighborhoods, similar people and similar institutions,” Laumann said.

Transactional markets form
For example, Laumann and his team ventured into the gay neighborhood of Chicago, known as Boys Town, and uncovered a set of societal rules determining sexual interaction. On the whole, Boys Town deterred lesbians with male dominance and few gathering places for women. The area also alienated black gays by practices such as “triple carding” in bars. The majority of Boys Town residents and patrons frequented the area for its transactional, unattached “market,” according to the CHSLS.

Duschey was lucky and unusual, he says, in that he met his current boyfriend of four years, Armando Cortinez, at the abs class he frequented. In Washington, D.C., however, he and Cortinez experienced some of the negative effects of these transactional attitudes, particularly “in the bar scene where there’s not much honor for a committed relationship.

“If someone comes up to meet you and you tell them you’re taken, it’s not about respecting that. The mindset becomes ‘Oh, I’ll just flirt with you on the side anyway because it’s not going to last long.’” he said. “There’s a tearing away at a vow to someone else.”

On the other hand, lesbians gravitated to the “relational” market, mostly guided by friends and family. In this more complicated romantic bazaar, familiar people introduce prospective lovers with common interests and backgrounds in the anticipation of a long-term relationship forming out of the contact, Laumann said.

Churches and similar institutions traditionally facilitate a relational marketplace for straight couples, but for gays — who are not accepted by ...