Penn Station, Sniffies, and Everyone Forgot What Cruising Is.

Have you heard the latest news? Fascist pigs are arresting gays at the Penn Station urinals! If this isn't a sign of the rising tides of gay hatred and the camps we all await, what else could be a more clear indicator?

If you haven't picked up on the sarcastic tone yet, get into it folks. In all seriousness, the gay community faces the same, if not worse, dangers than in the past few decades past, which makes bearing witness to this story's unfolding all the more unbearable. The dialogue on the current situation at the now heavily policed Penn Station men's bathrooms has me wondering if there is any small corner of society in which I can hide and not feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. I seek a crumb of critical thought, a tidbit of historical knowledge, a shred of basic understanding of premeditated actions and their occasionally severe consequences.

On this particular subject, no such luck, as I've managed to be spoon fed by the algorithm no fewer than 15 rancid comment sections filled with the gays of Gotham gawking at the gall of public safety officers preventing them from shaking their scro-filled genitalia a few more than 3 times in some school child's face. There are so many issues here, but two of them are observations on the less glaring negatives of this story.

First, Sniffies - an app for cruising. Is that an oxymoron? I forget what an oxymoron is quite frankly, but to rephrase, to plan with someone when and where you will meet them in public to do the deed is not cruising, but instead simply planning a public hookup with a stranger on a public app that, yes, can be infiltrated by cops. The question is, why are we complaining about the "loss of cruising culture" when discussing something that is not cruising at all. Cruising may be premeditated in intent, but would not be prearranged on a Grindr equivalent for exhibitionists.

This brings me to my second observation. My personal understanding has always been that the spontaneity, the risk, the ability to read signs and have a half-developed gaydar, were all parts of cruising. Emphasis on spontaneity and risk. If you are going to intentionally plan to perform sex acts in a public restroom, an illegal act, on an app with someone you have never met, you have elevated your risk from "I hope I don't get caught in this moment" to "I'd rather have Chris Hansen flushing the stall next to me than have to wash my sheets again". The self-victimization is astounding. As though because we are gay we deserve to get our freak on anywhere and everywhere we damn well please or YOU'RE HOMOPHOBIC OKAY?! Well, call me old fashioned, but I think there are enough steam rooms in NYC to collectively keep the city in a rain forest-like atmosphere for the next few decades.

OK, I forgot, I have one more gripe about all of this. Like I mentioned, and as we all already know, we are in the midst of a renewed demonization of the LGBTQIA+ community, and the all-too-familiar accusations of gays being predators remains ever present. When there are so many things going on in this world for which we can be advocates, not even exclusive to our community, why on earth would you put a target on our backs by vocally expressing outrage that you cannot have sexual encounters in a public space that is shared with children? Sometimes I think people actually want to be persecuted or enjoy being looked at as the problem. Whatever childhood trauma that kind of feeling stems from, I'm unfamiliar, but please stop putting us all in the firing line for something so trivial. The urinal at a train station isn't the hill you should die on, especially when it's your entire community you drag into the spotlight by default.

I peed sitting down until I was 13, and to this day am, for all intents and purposes, incapable of peeing at a urinal. Perhaps I don't have any foreskin in this game at all. That being said, nothing irritates me more than an ill-behaved queen, totally void of self-awareness, playing victim knowing good and gyat-dang-well they deserve the ticket and the shame. To get caught with your pants around your ankles is super embarrassing, but it's even more embarrassing when you told the cop directly in which public bathroom he could find you standing with your shlong hanging out. You can't buy street smarts, and the digital age has made a very visible half of us both braindead and addicted to sex - a combination that led us to this moment.

May your cruising endeavors remain as risky, fun, and secretive as they ever were, because cruising has always a quiet glance, not a billboard of your coordinates.