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KATHERINE VOLIN
Friday, August 11, 2006
Eighties pop star George Michael’s latest tabloid scandal is raising questions about the role of cruising in gay male culture.
Last month, Michael was photographed by paparazzi emerging from the woods in London’s Hampstead Heath — a gay cruising site — after an alleged sexual encounter with another man. When confronted by photographers, Michael blamed gay “culture” for his behavior.
“Are you gay?” British tabloid “News of the World” quoted Michael as asking the photographer who snapped pictures of him after allegedly engaging in a sex act with a middle-aged, unemployed van driver. “No? Then fuck off. This is my culture.”
Cruising, or anonymous sex in public places, has long been part of the gay male experience, but Michael’s claim that such behavior is a part of gay “culture” has met with some raised eyebrows.
Michael Alvear, who writes the gay male sex advice column “Need Wood?,” which appears in the Blade, and is a sex and relationship coach on the British TV show “The Sex Inspectors,” says that he considers anonymous public sex to be a behavior of a minority of gay men.
“When [Michael] says cruising is part of our culture what he means is anonymous sex in public toilets is part of our culture and I reject that completely,” Alvear says. “To say that it’s an inherent part of our culture is wrong.”
ROB WEISS, A GAY social worker and therapist, says he considers anonymous sex to be more an issue of gender than sexual orientation.
“Certainly, cruising and anonymous sex is endemic to gay culture,” Weiss says. “There’s no question about that, but I don’t think gay men’s pursuit of sex is any different from straight men’s pursuit of sex.”
The female pursuit of sex may require more of a relational approach than cruising allows, says Joe Kort, a gay social worker and therapist who wrote “Ten Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love.”
“Cruising doesn’t involve any social grace,” Kort says. “You don’t have to talk, you don’t have to really do anything but stare. It’s a stare down. It’s so predatory. With flirting, women know how to do that because it’s relational and it’s more playful and respectful.”
Because straight men have to adapt to women’s methods of courting, cruising becomes less of an option for them.
THE ACCEPTANCE OF partners engaging in “extracurricular activities” in gay male relationships may also have to do with the absence of women.
Kort says that although the vast majority of gay men he counsels have non-monogamous relationships, the lesbians he counsels almost never do.
“Women tend to not want that to be part of their relationship,” Kort says. “It feels like it’s a violation against them, whereas males don’t take it as personally.”
George Michael has a fiancé, his long-time partner Kenny Goss, but says that Goss doesn’t mind his dalliances.
“It’s never been an issue between us,” he said recently on Richard & Judy, a British TV show.
“My 10th anniversary present to him cost me a million quid so I reckon I should get away with more than [having sex with an unattractive man],” Michael also said on the show.
Non-monogamous relationships are common among the men he counsels, Kort says.
“After five years together, most gay couples have open relationships,” Kort says. “I think it serves two functions. Number one, it helps gay men find partners. It’s how they look for partners and I also think it keeps relationships together so that these gay male couples who are non-monogamous and cruise, they have emotional fidelity, but they have sexual openness.
“The other reason that it works is that every couple has a sexual desire discrepancy. In gay couples, the one that wants it more can go get it. It relieves the pressure in their relationship in that area. It’s the truth and I can’t hide from it. But I do believe this — you open your relationship up for more problems when you’re not monogamous.”
Alvear, however, says that his observations have led him to conclude that younger gay men are pursuing monogamous relationships.
“I can almost tell you with 90 percent accuracy that whenever I get a letter from somebody who is longing for monogamy or is upset at seeing couples who have open relationships, it’s inevitably somebody younger, someone in their 20s,” Alvear says. “It’s a sort of retro gay, a turn to traditional values and relationships in guys in their 20s.”
KORT, ALVEAR AND WEISS all say that sex in public can be problematic.
“It’s rude because you’re using a public space for something it wasn’t designed for,” Alvear says. “How would George Michael like it if people starting having sex in the middle of one of his concerts and started driving away people who came in for what that stage was designed for, a concert? How would people at the baths feel if IBM conducted a business meeting in the middle of the place? There’s a time and place for everything.”
Weiss declines to give his opinion on public sex, but points out that its illegality means participants must accept personal responsibility if they are caught.
“It’s not up to me whether to say the laws are right or wrong, but they are,” Weiss says. “So to put yourself in the situation of getting arrested and then turn around and say ‘I’m harassed,’ I have trouble with that.”
Weiss, who wrote “Cruise Control: Understanding Gay Men and Sex Addiction,” says cruising turns problematic when it becomes compulsive.
“When recreational behavior can be identified as an addiction is when it’s having serious consequences to the life of the person that’s doing it,” Weiss says.
The consequences can include betrayal of a relationship, loss of career or job, acquisition of disease, violation of personal belief or value or some form of public humiliation, such as an arrest.
“The people I see in my experience are people who have consequences because of their behavior and can’t seem to stop,” says Weiss, who has been treating people with sex addictions for 12 years. “These guys are acting out sexually … because of the arousal that goes on. Not genital arousal, but the endorphins, out of the chase, the possibilities. It’s not so much about the sex or the orgasm.”
Weiss and Kort say they lack statistics on the matter, but suspect that a majority of gay men have experienced sexual addiction. Weiss says that his treatment clinic, the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, sees about an average of 150 men and three women per week.
In 1998, Michael was arrested on lewd conduct charges in Los Angeles after allegedly exposing himself to an undercover cop in a public restroom. He subsequently came out as gay and parodied his arrest in a music video. His second incident involving public sex acts leads some experts to question whether he has a sex addiction.
“That really chaps my ass that someone uses their addictive behavior as an expression of freedom,” Alvear says.
Kort claims denial about the pervasiveness of sexual addiction remains.
“We’ve been pathologized our whole lives around our sexuality, but as a culture we’re not going to do it to each other,” Kort says. “But I don’t believe that. If that’s what it is, we’ve got to talk about it.”
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