Introduction
This journal is less of a diary than it is a protracted montage of my 50 favorite memories, across 40 years of my life. Maybe not even favorites as much as the most important moments, or firsts, or turning points in my evolution as a bisexual man, with an obsession for cruising.
My discovery, acceptance, and exploration of my bisexual nature came at a young age. But that is a whole other memoir, for probably a much different audience. I mention my early start only to explain why and how I became so immediately active in the world of cruising, once I achieved legal age.
I wasn’t gay; I knew that from the start. But I knew I wasn’t straight either. For a short time, I didn’t know what I was, except insecure. I was lucky enough, however, to cross paths with other bisexual boys and men, who gave me confidence that there was in fact a world in the middle where I could belong.
I also saw very clearly in the late 1960s and 1970s that gay men were oppressed because of their identity. I saw the good guys in the media telling me they had rights and dignity, but my own father made fun of them. My male friends feigned juvenile contempt for them. I crossed paths with gay men who pretended not to be gay, and bisexual men who pretended not to be bi. So, from the very beginning of my sexual exploration, all homosexual activity was secretly relegated to something that resembled anonymous cruising. I suspect that many of the fundamental turn-ons and attractions for me, surrounding all gay sex, are deeply rooted in that forbidden secret fraternity of boys and men with whom I experienced life-changing intimacy in bathrooms and basements and cars, behind bushes and in my mom’s china closet under the stairs.
It seems like everyone either demonizes or makes fun of gay cruising. I guess it’s an easy target. It’s truly unthinkable to many straight people, and even to some gays, it’s a guilty pleasure they don’t completely confess. But it’s raw and honest and vulgar, and it’s only about giving or cumming. As personal as masturbation. To us bisexuals, it is the sacred lifeblood of our homosexuality.
Until the 2000s, I think most bisexuals remained closeted, and I think many still are. Being unwelcome in so many aspects of gay social life, we often feel like the traditional cruising environments are still the only place we can participate in that side of our sexuality. Before the days of gay marriage, I was snubbed 100 times in gay bars just for my wedding ring, but no one ever said “no” to me in a porn theatre. Cruising is so necessary for bisexual men.
Coming out as a bisexual man to straight people, even as half of a male/female couple, isn’t exactly fertile ground for a normal social life. Straight people have argued this to me, but from my own repeated experiences, the vast and overwhelming majority of straight people react to the term “bisexual man” with the feeling of, “Yeah, he’s gay!” It’s more than just dismissive and diminishing—you’ve just lost your status and trust among that circle of friends. You will be forgotten from the invitation lists of many events. Monogamous gay couples will quickly move ahead of you in the “friends line.” Both straight and gay people still have a hard time understanding bisexuality, and that often leaves them frightened.
Now cruising isn’t complicated. I have to admit that media images made it confusing, even for me, when I was young. The Al Pacino film Cruising, which is a brilliant film, made the unintended mistake of making many of us apply the word only to aggressive hardcore S+M and leather culture, filled with secret codes and symbols necessary to identify your potential partners.
Years later, another brilliant film, Angels in America, presented the public park scene as a rough-sex paradigm as well—screaming desperation and frenzy! Those places and those vibes certainly exist, but that’s only a sliver of what’s really out there.
What is “cruising,” really? Though there is a nuance to many definitions of the word, they all agree, in its simplest context, that cruising is an informal word for “wandering about in search of sexual partners.” Doesn’t that sound nice? Simple? Easy to understand and execute? That really is all it is, just dressed up and giftwrapped a couple of dozen different ways, for different tastes, social structures, and navigating around imposing law enforcement scrutiny in the United States.
Most of the places I’ve lived and traveled provided some type of commercial venues for cruising: theatres, arcades, bathhouses, clubs, and bars. That goes for most large, liberal, urban centers around the world. For the record—and probably only the result of bad luck, circumstance, and cold weather—I never had much experience in outdoor parks and highway rest stops. Nothing against that segment, just didn’t get a chance.
1976 – 1979, The Early Years
Memory #1 Im Kino [At the arcade]
My first cruising experience was something most Americans will find hard to believe. I had moved to West Germany with my family in 1976, where I attended an English-speaking prep school. My small posse of mostly American friends would sometimes enter the brothel bars along Kaiserstrasse, in downtown Frankfurt. Most of Kaiserstrasse near the main train station was Frankfurt’s official and highly regulated red light district.
Us American boys who were all older teenagers in my pack, all regularly drank in bars. That was perfectly legal in 1976. Now I doubt that it was legal for us to enter the brothel bars, but we tried it one Saturday and nobody balked. We drank a couple of beers and watched shocking German pornography they projected onto a large wall with a 16mm projector. The prostitutes were sometimes our mothers’ ages, and they would solicit us for sex, and we would politely refuse. “Kein geld!” No money. I remember more than once thinking, “My friends in Illinois will never believe this!”
But that was not where my second cruising event occurred. I mention the brothels because that’s what convinced me that I should check out Dr. Mueller’s. Dr. Mueller’s was a chain of “Sex Shops” all over Germany at the time. I had no practical idea what a “sex shop” was! I knew enough German to read the signage in the windows, promising x rated books! And a movie theatre? And an arcade? What kind of arcade?
I asked my new Germany-friends what these shops were all about, and they all groaned. One of the older boys who’d lived the longest in Germany said, “You don’t wanna go in there. It’s just dirty magazines, and lots of homo stuff.”
“Homo stuff?” But I loved homo stuff! I’d had no partners in crime for homo stuff since we moved to Germany, and I wanted to find some kind of outlet. Maybe this could be for me? So I scheduled a Saturday just for me to go to the city all by myself, and take a stab at Dr. Mueller’s.
When I finally arrived at Dr. Mueller’s weeks later, it was about 10:30 am, and my heart was racing. I stood around in front of the store pretending to read the signs. I pretended to be a thoughtful adult customer, contemplating these great offers on pornographic products. No one had entered or exited the store since I arrived, so finally I took a deep breath and entered.
The door opened along a glass counter that ran all the way to the opposite side of the store. I could translate a sign that demanded 3-DM [Deutsche Marks] for entering. Three Marks was around one U.S. Dollar at that time. The tall middle-aged clerk was severely pock marked and mean looking. I was so nervous I entered the near out-of-body zone. I raised my hand to him silently with 3 1-DM coins in my palm, and he almost laughed, but smirking he opened up his hand palm-up to the register and rang me up! I started to walk away when he blurted “Achtung! Farschein!” Apparently I would need my receipt later?
I took the cash register tape receipt from him and he nodded to me politely. I was in! That was all! I felt the rush, half was relief, the rest was new excitement. New anticipation. That knot in your stomach from expectation, like when you’re waiting for cocaine. So I began strolling around the store pretending I wasn’t shocked or confused by anything I saw. The store was ½ magazine racks displaying acres of hardcore print porn. Really hardcore! Even the covers showed super-hardcore close-up penetration pictures, the kind I’d not yet seen, which were just now becoming legal for the first time back in the States.
The walls and other freestanding shelf racks were filled with dildos and vibrators and butt plugs and home enema kits. Some of these items were a mystery to me, even though most of the packaging included English descriptions. I’d read about cock rings, but looking at them close-up in a clear plastic package, I couldn’t figure how you could actually get one on? Not even on to my humble sized teenage penis.
From the moment I’d entered the store, I registered the large neon sign at the back that said “Kino,” above an arched entry way into another room. Kino was sort of a vague Euro-slang for either a theatre or an arcade. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I was pretty sure that this had to be where the “homo stuff” was going to take place!
I walked as slowly and deliberately as I could without being conspicuous. As I passed through the archway I saw there were thick velvet curtains a few feet further ahead. Once through the curtains the next room was so dark that it took a minute for my eyes to adjust. What slowly came into focus was one hell of a spectacle!
The store opened up into a warehouse sized room behind the storefront. You couldn’t even see the ceiling in the dimmed lights, but it must have been a full two story spans. Within this open space was a forest of giant alphabet blocks! Cartoonish looking toddler toys, taller than any human, these great big cubes had been painted up to look like brightly colored alphabet blocks! On all the visible sides each block had a large number or letter and a closet sized door on the front with a visible doorknob. There were clusters of two and three block groups, together, touching side by side. There were also stacks of 4 blocks, 2 on top of 2 like a small wall, with metal stairs rising up to a door on the outsides of the top 2 blocks.
As I walked slowly through this large airy dark space I saw that there were a handful of men scattered around in front of some of the blocks, just standing in front of the open doors like they were waiting for someone. Either my nature or my upbringing forced me to be polite and smile, nod, make eye contact. But every man I looked at with my “cheery face” looked down or away instantly! Like I’d violated a code, or he was ashamed, or both? But then a couple of men looked at me, doing a double-take. They look surprised. It was my age! I was at least 20 years younger than almost anyone in the place, on top of being technically illegal, I’m sure. If I could relive that day, knowing full well what the currency of youth is worth? Especially in a place like that? I would never leave!
I continued meandering around trying to peak into the blocks with open doors. I wanted to know what was inside them. Then as I passed a door open wider than others, I saw light from a small movie screen playing what looked like a dirty movie. I would later learn that this was Super- 8 mm film, playing a short film that would repeat, all housed in a metal box the size of a lunch box, with a glass front. 1950’s technology. On top was a coin slot. Then I saw the folding metal chair in front of the movie box, with a middle- aged man sitting in it, and stroking his hard cock! Out in the open! With an open-door invitation! Was that what I was supposed to do? I was buzzing from seeing only my second uncircumcised erection.
I decided to dip my toes into the water slowly, and enter one of the blocks, or booths. I had also become aware that one of the men had been lurking outside a booth, one of the ones who looked back at me surprised, he had peeled off and was quietly following me. I was equal parts scared and excited. Someone had made the first move?
At the next pair of two blocks, side-by-side, I opened the closed door on “block” with a large 8 on three sides. I was surprised by how lightweight and cheap the door felt in my hand. I entered the booth and quickly closed the door behind me. There was a push button lock in the center of the doorknob. Pushed, locked, safe! I looked around in the dim light given off by the small screen on the movie box. The chair looked clean but the floor looked horrific! There were cum-filled condoms in the two corners, and soiled tissues scattered everywhere. There were cigarette butts galore all over the cement floor, but that wasn’t surprising in Europe. There were sticky little cum-puddles along one side, below a big hole in the wall that looked at least 12-inches across. I peeked through it, and confirmed it was an identical booth next door, complete with chair, movie box, condoms and cigarette butts.
On top of the movie box in my booth was a sticker with a 1-DM label on it, so I fished another one Mark coin from my pocket and inserted it into the gravity slot on the top of the machine. Even in 1976 the machine sounded archaic. You could hear the electronics and the mechanicals snap to life, buzzing and spinning.
After a few second delay a hardcore sex scene in-progress appeared on the lunch-box size screen. There was audio, confirming it was Super 8, not just 8 mm, but the audio was faint and muffled, coming from a small speaker on the side of the box. The visual clarity was mediocre even for 1976. However, there was no questions as to the contents: an older man was lying on his back with two women on top of him. One was squatting over his face, the other humping him up and down on his cock.
What amazed me at that moment was that both women’s vaginas were shaved bare! This was new to me. I’d seen a couple of hairless pussies on the magazine covers in the store, but this confirmed that shaving was a thing in Europe. In all the R-rated nudy mags I’d seen back home, Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler, a woman’s topography of canyons and folds was always obfuscated by a jungle of curly hair. This brought me back to my childhood, when I could see everything! This pornographic fashion statement was only beginning in Europe in 1976. It would be 20 years before Americans followed suit and began extreme grooming. There was also a portion of the male actors with completely hairless genitals, which was even more shockingly erotic to me.
I decided there was no harm in starting off my first visit by rubbing one out to a Europorn short, so I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans and pulled out my stiff cock. I’m embarrassed to admit how naive and simply daft I must have been as a teenager, not to have contemplated the intention of a giant hole in the wall between the booths! I began to relax in a delusion of privacy while watching the threesome sex on the crappy little movie-box and jerking off my adolescent dick in earnest.
Then I heard the door open and close quickly in the booth next door. I tucked my cock out of sight, but I didn’t zip up. I was confident that jerking off was the intended purpose of this entire establishment, so I wasn’t afraid of getting into trouble. But I was feeling a momentary modesty about showing my naked penis to a stranger in a dirty jerk-off club. That feeling would not only disappear, it would eventually turn into a frantic raging turn-on!
In one second flat, the entire head of the man who had been following me around the arcade, popped through the hole smiling like he’d just won at Bingo! But he was gross. Forty something with jet black greasy hair and a 70’s porno-moustache. He made a gesture of opening his mouth and cupping his fingers into a tube in front of it, pantomiming a blowjob. Then he made the “come here” sign with his index finger aiming right down toward my lap. I wasn’t too naïve or stupid to get that hint, and I complied. Even though he was gross!
Look, teenage bisexual boys don’t turn down a blowjob from anyone! Ever! Yes I am or was a slut, and yes I’ve been undiscriminating in my life, and yes there was nothing sexually attractive to me about this man. [Of course I couldn’t see his penis.] But the circumstances were absolutely electrifying to me! This was a building, a business where strangers met to have anonymous sex! This was one of the most exciting moments of my life. This whole day would turn out to be life changing.
When I pulled out my not-very-hairy adolescent penis with the swollen purple head and my young erection so firm that my dick pointed up at the ceiling, the greasy man almost cried! He made a high-pitched squeal-moan, with an intonation that spoke gratitude. He began mumbling in German about my penis. As he mumbled he grabbed the folding chair and sat down right up to the hole. He stuck his whole head back through the hole again in my side, and said “American?” I realized my circumcised cock gave me away again.
“Yes,” I replied apologetically.
“Your Schwantz is so…pretty,” he said in a breathy voice and a thick accent. He reached a hand through the hole, under his chin again, grabbing my dick and pulling me firmly toward him. I was not resisting, but I stumbled forward as he moaned his high-pitched whine of gluttony, taking my cock right into his open mouth like a greedy hungry man. He sucked and slurped and began bobbing up and down .
When he made his high-pitched whine the second time, I wondered what could be heard outside the booths? It seemed loud to me. That mystery was solved when we heard a few chants and cheers come from just outside the door. Men were listening, but there was apparently nothing to hide or be ashamed of. He was an amazing cocksucker who obviously loved and adored the penis unconditionally. Maybe bit, but probably gay. The porn-film reel timed out and stopped, but I couldn’t care less.
As a senior citizen now looking back in time, I still wonder if that greasy man had much experience with adolescent boys? Because just like my previous experience with a German stranger, I blew my load like a volcano in under a minute! And I forgot to give warning! Again. And again the poor recipient gagged, but this time the man choked like he’d taken a glob straight down the wrong pipe! I felt terrible as he choked and coughed, saying “I’m sorry! I’m sorry Entschuldigan Zie Bitte!”
He finally recovered, coughing and laughing intermittently. Someone outside the booth said something probably directed at the choking event, and both the greasy man and the stranger outside the booth laughed hysterically. [Note: I’d been living in West Germany for 6 months at that point, and that was the first time I’d heard a German man laugh hysterically.] I was glad the two men invisibly enjoyed some blowjob comraderie humor.
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