Ask any fag with experience and they’ll say that the keys to successful cruising on the street, mall, locker room, toilet, bar, sauna or wherever, lies in 3 factors: confidence, body language and the look.
To which FuelMix would add a 4th factor: hotness.
Cruising in public, however furtive, is actually a brazen act of public defiance liable to criminal charges of indecency or loitering with intent or soliciting. But this post isn’t about the criminality of cruising. It's about the convergence of the 4 factors listed above and the head-on collision with so-called "online cruising".
Real-time face to face cruising requires skill, persistence, finesse and a certain skill to determine compatibility. Cruising is in the other guy’s face and everything’s on view. It’s also awfully hard on the feet.
So, along comes the Web, the fag chat rooms, the apps: Grindr/Jack'd/Scruff/Growlr. Theoretically hookups should happen with a mouse click or a swipe. Pull up a chair, lie on the bed, arrange a lunch time quickie, post a profile, a pic, say what you’re into, what you’re looking for, when you wanna meet and bang!!…the trick shows up like a pizza delivery. Exactly what you ordered. All smiles, good manners,clean cut, freshly showered, smelling of Tide, high-priced body wash and Ozone.
Not so fast.......
1. The attitude of the fag claiming to cruise online is quite different to the fag’s attitude whilst cruising on the street, yet the professed desired result is the same.
This is a crucial point because it shows a marked divergence in strategy which leads to zero, or infuriating, or an utterly disastrous online result.
2. The fag’s propensity for lying (an ingrained and inbred characteristic that first started as a survival method in childhood to cover up the fact that he knew he was “different”) shows up in all its glory online. Virtually every fag with an ISP has had at least a dozen experiences with online fag flakes. That’s not to say that 2 fags won’t lie to each other when they’re cruising on the street, but since cruising in those circumstances is mutually visible, the most they can lie about is their age, drug use and health status. Online, there’s no shortage of what they can fabricate. Going digital, is inherently nefarious.
3. The truth is that fag chat rooms are NOT a place to hook up. They are merely a place to loiter (without threat of criminality), waste time, rabble rouse, insult, get insulted, get angry, get pissed off and log off. In fact, very little chat actually goes on in the public rooms. Conversation is cursory, pretending to be banter. At other times it’s virtually non-existent.
4. If cruising on the street is supposed to be anonymous, chat rooms are not. Every key stroke can be traced. The notion of cruising for anonymous sex shatters right there. (We are prepared to accept that with surveillance cameras installed all over the streets and parks in the West - in the fight against terrorism of course, - cruising on the street is not that anonymous either).
5. In the real world, cruising is a silent, predatory action marked by repeatedly returning to the same spot (or series of spots in a given area) in search of action. Online, the chat room is a crypt with a revolving door, names spinning in and out leapfrogging to the top of the newly arrived list. All the while, they’re hoping for an acknowledgement or a flicker of interest. Most of the time they get none. It’s the cyber equivalent of “stand and model”. The silence can be deafening.
6. In the real world, when no fish bites, you just walk, take the bus, hail a cab, hop on the subway and get the hell out of there plotting to return at some later date. In cyber, fags leave their profile in the chat room for days at a time. It’s a sure sign they’re desperate. It reminds FuelMix of a particularly notorious fag who would take up residence in a certain public toilet cubicle for hours. He’d bring porn, sandwiches and coffee in a thermos flask. It was jaw-dropping in its hilarity and deeply pathetic. It was also the only public toilet to have the aroma of freshly roasted Arabica beans and piss.
7. So why have fags bought into this notion that chat room cruising is easy and fun? Probably because it appears to be the quickest way to see profiles and (sometimes for a fee), pictures of dudes. That’s really the hook – the curiosity factor. Every fag in his heart knows that right now he’s just too fuckin’ lazy to get dressed and go to the other side of town to actually meet the dude, or he’s still at work, or it’s late, or he’s surfing during class, or still high, or not even in the same city. In the meantime, why not toy with that apparent jock in the same way as a kitten toys with a ball of wool? He can be vague, tantalizingly nebulous, complimentary and even carry on a conversation…....hell, we all lie. What’s the harm?
8. That ain’t cruising by any definition.
9. Face it. If the guy cruised on the street is more interested in oratory than oral sex, walk.
10. True cruising has the briefest of conversations, the shortest, sharpest answers to the right questions and a snap decision. Even getting to and finding a place to play is done in silence or only occasional conversation. True cruising on the street or anywhere else in real time, is characterized by libido and instant lust, a shared commitment to get it done and get it done right.
Yeah, it's Old School. And it still fuckin' works.
Originally published 3 February 2009.
Republished 4 November 2011.
Amended and Republished 23 July 2013 | 3 November 2014 | 5 May 2016 | 5 September 2017
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