Old School Cruising Cred

With this whole Senator Craig bathroom-cruising scandal, I thought I'd talk about my personal experience with pre-online cruising. I was never into bathroom cruising even though I loved to read trashy bathroom walls. I don't think I ever called any of the numbers posted there either. However, when I first went away to college, I got a lesson in "cruising the park" from one of the first gay friends I'd made on campus. He didn't have a car, so we would occasionally cruise together for some awkward moments.

The park was kind of a long rambling riverside affair in several sections. The parts closest to downtown were less active for cruising even though they were much closer to the town's one gay bar. The middle section was a good place to go if you met up with someone and need a little more privacy to talk or whatever. The transition between the middle and end section was a significant side street, a church and the odd fact that the street jogged over a bit, so you had to swerve a bit at the stop sign to continue gaily forward. The end section included a rest room that was supposed to be cruisy, but frankly, I never saw it, at least not at night. That end section had 3 smallish parking areas. The first two areas were suitable for 3 or 4 cars and the one closest to the rest room could have parked 10 cars. With this configuration, you could have 3 or 4 cars backed in so that potential hunters could just pull right in, roll down the windows and see what was what.

This park ended near the dam for the river, however, if you drove around to the lake side of the dam, there was another park that was less cruisy and more isolated. So if you were particularly bored, horny or desperate, you could leave the gay bar after striking out there, hit all the sections of the riverside park and then hit the lakeside park. If you don't find anything by the end of that route, you could turn around and backtrack. After all, you've wasted 30 minutes getting to the lakeside, the scene could have completely changed at the riverside or the bar by the time you get back. At least, that's what you told yourself on the slow nights.

From about age 19 to about 22, most of my sexual experience came from cruising this set of parks. While a lot of it has gotten blurry over the last 20 years, I have some distinct memories and milestones from my experiences there.
1. I remember fucking a guy about a my age at the lakeside park, probably without a condom and maybe even without lube. I remember him telling me he was a virgin, but he was quite into it when I bent him over his trunk.

2. I remember going somewhere with a guy from the base and fooling around. He was going to fuck me, but not having much luck. I distinctly remember him ordering me to "stand and deliver." I don't recall that being any more successful than his other attempts, but the spoken line was quite memorable for me.

3. I remember hooking up with an older chub who turned out to be my first gay mentor. He worked some government job involving psychological profiles. I remember him describing his own psych profile as "grossly normal." This was in the very early days of AIDS and the term "safe sex" was just entering the lexicon, but I remember he played safe every time we were together. Mostly, he was into mutual masturbation. He used lotion and I was entirely too sensitive for that. He had a lot of gay literature and I don't mean just porno magazines, although he had that too. We talked a lot and I learned a great deal of useful common sense stuff from him, but I never saw him outside the park or his mobile home.

4. I remember going home with this handsome blond gentleman who turned out to have a big dick and wanted to fuck me. Until this time, I really hadn't been fucked much or enjoyed the experiences I'd had. He was experienced enough to know how to deal with that. I remember he had some good lube and that was really my first exposure to that. He also recommended a position I had never tried before. I think that position is most commonly called the "cowboy" although "sit on it" seems to be the way to communicate that to your partner. His reasoning was that it allowed me, the bottom, to control how much and how fast I took. It worked! While I certainly recall a feeling of fullness from his big dick, there was also a significant amount of pleasure to be had. It wasn't at all like previous times, where I mostly endured what was being done to me. This didn't turn me into a big ol' bottom, but it did broaden my horizons a bit as well as ease my apprehensions about getting fucked.

My biggest scare happened at this park during this time. It's the closest I've ever come to being gay-bashed. I would say that I was assaulted, but battery is questionable. I remember being backed into one of the smaller parking lots at the end of the riverside park with another friend as we sometimes did. There was sort of an unwritten rule at the park about the number of people in a vehicle. If there was one person, it was considered safe to pull up and try to chat. If there were 2 people, it was considered a bit risky, but sometimes worth trying, especially if the vehicle was familiar. If there were more than 2 people though, it was safe to consider them gay bashers. I remember a car pulled up to chat with us and there were 2 people in the front and they both got out. One came to my side of the car and one came to my friend's side of the car. The conversation seemed normal for a minute or so and then suddenly one of them takes a swing at me and knocks off my glasses. Suddenly in "fight or flight" mode, I turned the key in the ignition and got the heck out of there. I know we were completely out of the park before either of us stopped shaking enough to think about looking for my glasses. This didn't really scare us off, but it did make us more careful or at least think we were being more careful.

Despite spending almost all my free time and late nights cruising, I graduated with better than a 3.0. I moved out of this town within a year of finishing college. I did move to a slightly bigger town, but that's a story for another day.