Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: I was waiting at the bus stop and I was
Speaker 2: sitting there listening to my walkman right, And I'm sitting
Speaker 2: there and this car pulls up. He rolled the window
Speaker 2: down and leaned across and said, do you need a ride?
Speaker 2: And I said yeah. And the minute I said yeah,
Speaker 2: I knew exactly what was going to happen. There's no manual, right,
Speaker 2: but I just knew the way he said it that
Speaker 2: I was going to have my first sexual encounter with someone.
Speaker 2: It just it made me feel powerful. It made me
Speaker 2: feel like I was in control.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn that
Speaker 1: by seeking out our history, and what I've found are
Speaker 1: people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we'll meet Alex Espinoza, the author of the
Speaker 1: world's most comprehensive history on gay cruising. We'll learn about
Speaker 1: his own cruising experiences and how anonymous sex empowered him
Speaker 1: to find the love he'd always been searching for. From
Speaker 1: My Heart Podcast I'm Jordan and Solves, and this is
Speaker 1: what we loved. Cruising basically refers to the practice of
Speaker 1: anonymous sex in a public place. It's believed that the
Speaker 1: word itself derives from a Dutch word called kroisen. It
Speaker 1: means to cross personally. I've never had a cruising experience,
Speaker 1: but one time I was walking in Central Park and
Speaker 1: this really handsome man was sitting on a park bench
Speaker 1: and he made eyes at me. I was so shy
Speaker 1: I immediately looked away. But when I looked back at him,
Speaker 1: he was staring directly at me, and he was tapping
Speaker 1: his foot and smirking. My stomach just dropped and I
Speaker 1: ran away. But even just him looking at me gave
Speaker 1: me a rush. I didn't realize it, but that handsome
Speaker 1: man was just trying to partake in the ancient tradition
Speaker 1: of cruising. Cruising can be traced back to the sixteen
Speaker 1: hundreds in London, when the city built its first public toilets.
Speaker 1: At night, men would go there to have sex with
Speaker 1: each other, but cruising has probably been around since the
Speaker 1: beginning of time. In cities where same sex attraction was
Speaker 1: stigmatized or criminalized, these public spaces offered some of the
Speaker 1: only opportunities for queer intimacy at all. My next guest,
Speaker 1: Alex Espinosa, is the author of Cruising, An Intimate History
Speaker 1: of a radical Pastime, one of the only official histories
Speaker 1: on gay cruising in existence. He's a professor of creative
Speaker 1: writing at the University of California, Riverside, but before that
Speaker 1: he had his own cruising experiences. He grew up in
Speaker 1: southern California in the seventies and eighties in a big
Speaker 1: Mexican Catholic family. He also grew up with a disability
Speaker 1: that I would shape his relationship with his body, with
Speaker 1: sex and with his sense of worthiness.
Speaker 2: I was born with limited use in my right arm,
Speaker 2: so my right arm is stunted, so it's smaller than
Speaker 2: my left arm, and you know that prevented me from
Speaker 2: doing any real physical activity. I couldn't play sports. I
Speaker 2: also had have a condition called lopcire where I've lost
Speaker 2: my hair, So it was either going to a doctor
Speaker 2: for my arm or going to the dermatologist who would
Speaker 2: give me shots Cortisan shots in my scalp to promote
Speaker 2: hair growth. And those are some of my earliest memories
Speaker 2: as a kid. Like five years old, sitting on this table,
Speaker 2: this exam table, and like ten doctors parading in and
Speaker 2: me in my underwear and then just like watching me,
Speaker 2: you know, poking me.
Speaker 1: What effect did that have on you?
Speaker 2: I grew up, ye, feeling like my body was infirm,
Speaker 2: you know, that I had an that I had an illness,
Speaker 2: that I was sick, that my body was wrong and
Speaker 2: needed to be corrected. So they created within me this
Speaker 2: sensation that I was apart from my body. I was
Speaker 2: I wasn't a part of it, I was apart from it,
Speaker 2: and and that my body was wrong, that it was
Speaker 2: you know, sick, that it was weak.
Speaker 1: So when did you actually know that you were gay?
Speaker 2: One of the things I remember is being attracted to
Speaker 2: hairy chests. For some reason, I can call that gay
Speaker 2: per se, but I just remember being incredibly attracted to that,
Speaker 2: like like thinking that that was amazing. Also, I just
Speaker 2: knew that I felt more comfortable and say, in fact,
Speaker 2: surrounded by women. When I remember as a kid going
Speaker 2: and visiting my grandparents, and like my brothers were always
Speaker 2: would always go outside with their cousins in the garage,
Speaker 2: right That's where they would hang out, and I would
Speaker 2: stay in the kitchen with my mom and my grandma
Speaker 2: and my aunts. I always felt safest in the spaces
Speaker 2: you know that I occupied with women.
Speaker 1: What were some of the first messages that you got
Speaker 1: around being gay at that time.
Speaker 2: The first messages that I got were that it was,
Speaker 2: you know, an aberration, that gay men were weak and
Speaker 2: effeminate and were lesser, were picked on, made fun of, ridiculed.
Speaker 2: And I remember watching like talk shows right, like Phil Donahue,
Speaker 2: or for my mother, like the Spanish ones like Christina right,
Speaker 2: and they would have segments with gay people, and you know,
Speaker 2: she would just like shake her head and say, oh
Speaker 2: my god, like those people would like, you know, when
Speaker 2: an embarrassment. It's hard hearing that from someone who gave
Speaker 2: birth to you, who you know, mothered you and loved you,
Speaker 2: that harbors that can harbor such raw anger at the
Speaker 2: same time that they love you. So it was really painful.
Speaker 2: It was really lonely, and you know, but I didn't
Speaker 2: have many I didn't have any gay role models. I
Speaker 2: didn't have anyone that I could look to. And this
Speaker 2: was in the eighties and we were hearing about AIDS,
Speaker 2: and my mom definitely considered AIDS a punishment from God.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in a religious household.
Speaker 2: My mom, you know, and my father were both very Catholic.
Speaker 2: Catholicism was really sort of encoded into our brain right
Speaker 2: from a very young age. You know, you were expected
Speaker 2: to go to church every Sunday. We were expected to confess,
Speaker 2: we were expected to you know, obey our parents, we
Speaker 2: were expected to do all of those things. Was an
Speaker 2: ultar boy, you know, I did the whole thing, and
Speaker 2: it really, for good or bad, shaped my perception about
Speaker 2: my sexuality in relationship to sort of, you know, something bigger.
Speaker 1: What was it like coming of age as a gay
Speaker 1: person in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: It was scary. It was frightening. I saw the rise
Speaker 2: of AIDS again and you know, people were dying. If
Speaker 2: you were diagnosed with it, you're basically outed. So it
Speaker 2: definitely scared the hell out of me. I grew up
Speaker 2: at a time and it was just incredibly frightening to
Speaker 2: be gay, to be an outsider, to be a quote
Speaker 2: unquote misfit. I felt like I didn't have anyone to
Speaker 2: talk to, and it felt like I was some sort
Speaker 2: of anomaly. Was born into a world that didn't want me,
Speaker 2: that did need me, and that didn't appreciate people like me.
Speaker 1: So it's the late eighties and being gay was really difficult.
Speaker 1: How do you sort of then go from that to cruising?
Speaker 1: What was your first sexual experience?
Speaker 2: Like I was about and I want to say sixteen,
Speaker 2: and I used to work at the mall and I
Speaker 2: was on my way to pick up my check and
Speaker 2: I would take the bus. I was wearing white. I
Speaker 2: was wearing all white. I was wearing white shorts, a
Speaker 2: white sweatshirt even though it was really hot, because I
Speaker 2: used to always hide my arm because I was ashamed
Speaker 2: of it. And I was wearing a white hat. Woh awesome,
Speaker 2: a little white hat that I would use because I
Speaker 2: also have alopecia, so I'd lost all my hair, and
Speaker 2: back then, I used to have bald spots, so I
Speaker 2: would always wear a hat to conceal that. And I
Speaker 2: was waiting at the bus stop and I was sitting
Speaker 2: there listening to my walkman right, it was the boy
Speaker 2: with the thorn in his side by the Smiths. And
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there and this car pulls up. It was
Speaker 2: a Hyundai HNDAI Excel hatchback. He kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: leaned over. It was a Latino guy, long hair, hair
Speaker 2: sprayed with gel on the sides, spiky up top. I'd
Speaker 2: say he was in maybe his twenties. He was muscular,
Speaker 2: he was fit, he had a nice body. He was
Speaker 2: in the driver's side and kind of looked at me
Speaker 2: and then drove off. And then he came around again,
Speaker 2: and this time he got out and he pretended to
Speaker 2: expect this the tire, the back tire, and then he
Speaker 2: kept looking at me and then drove away again, and
Speaker 2: so I was like, what's that about? And then he
Speaker 2: drove by again the third time, and this time he
Speaker 2: rolled the window down and leaned across and said, do
Speaker 2: you need a ride? And I said yeah. And the
Speaker 2: minute I said yeah, I knew exactly what was going
Speaker 2: to happen. There was no manual, right, but I just
Speaker 2: knew the way he said it that I was going
Speaker 2: to have my first sexual encounter with someone. So we
Speaker 2: ended up parking in a field, and it was instinctual
Speaker 2: for me. It was like I knew exactly what to do.
Speaker 2: I gave him a blowjob. Yeah, I remember, I remember
Speaker 2: going down on him, you know, while he was you know,
Speaker 2: in his seat, in the driver's seat, and remember the
Speaker 2: steering wheel against my shoulder. But it was it was
Speaker 2: hot and it was fun. I'm not gonna lie. It
Speaker 2: was fun. I finally felt sexual, right, I felt like
Speaker 2: I had power and that's how it began for me.
Speaker 1: And this was during broad daylight that you guys pulled
Speaker 1: up and you hooked up in a car. Basically, well,
Speaker 1: after this encounter, how did you feel?
Speaker 2: I felt empowered. It was erotic. It was like, you know.
Speaker 2: The the really messed up thing was he didn't drop
Speaker 2: me off at the mall. He just kind of left me. No,
Speaker 2: he didn't. I remember afterwards sitting on the bus and
Speaker 2: you know, looking around and seeing, you know, all the
Speaker 2: other people and thinking like I have this secret, you know,
Speaker 2: I did this thing and nobody knows about it. And
Speaker 2: I remember just feeling very just like empowered, you know,
Speaker 2: just I felt like I was wanted, that somebody desired me.
Speaker 2: I felt like I'd been initiated into a culture, like
Speaker 2: a subculture, even though I didn't know what that was.
Speaker 2: I remember going to a movie theater with my brother
Speaker 2: and my mother, and I remember going and going to
Speaker 2: use the bathroom and using it as an opportunity to
Speaker 2: like stand at the urinals and watch, you know, watch
Speaker 2: men right pull their their digs out, and I remember
Speaker 2: I remember a couple of the men very being very
Speaker 2: obvious about showing it to me, and I remember liking that,
Speaker 2: like I never reached out and touched them, but I
Speaker 2: remember like, hush, like this this goes on, right, Things
Speaker 2: like this happen. I learned that there was a subculture
Speaker 2: that existed beyond the veil of our every day that
Speaker 2: I could enter into and out of as as I pleased.
Speaker 1: It's the late eighties. Alex is in his late teens
Speaker 1: and has just discovered cruising. Having grown up with a
Speaker 1: disability that made one of his arms shorter than the
Speaker 1: other and having alopecia, which meant that he was balding
Speaker 1: at a young age, he felt undesirable. He felt like
Speaker 1: beauty was a currency for how lovable you were, and
Speaker 1: because he believed he wasn't beautiful, he also believed that
Speaker 1: he wasn't lovable, but cruising was an escape from that.
Speaker 1: In the cruising world, people wanted to have sex with him.
Speaker 1: He felt desirable and deserving for the first time. So
Speaker 1: where would you cruise? I mean, once you as in
Speaker 1: your own words, once you were initiated into this secret society,
Speaker 1: where were some of the places that you would go
Speaker 1: to find these sexual opportunities.
Speaker 2: Well, when I first started, like when I was younger,
Speaker 2: or like in my late teens, after my first encounter,
Speaker 2: it was it was always like bathrooms or parks places
Speaker 2: like that. I remember one time there was a park
Speaker 2: that I found out was a cruisy park by a
Speaker 2: friend of mine who was straight. Actually, she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: John and I. That was her boyfriend. She said, John
Speaker 2: and I were here one night and we were parked
Speaker 2: and we were just like sitting in the car talking,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was night, and we kept seeing
Speaker 2: all these cars drive up and guys get out, you know,
Speaker 2: guys getting out of their cars. And she said, she
Speaker 2: said it was her boyfriend that told her, oh, you
Speaker 2: know what that's you know what that is. Those guys
Speaker 2: are like cooking up, you know, they're they're having sex
Speaker 2: with each other. And so when she said that to me,
Speaker 2: I was like, ah, I know where I'm going.
Speaker 1: She told it to you as gossip, but then you
Speaker 1: used it as functional in front.
Speaker 2: I was like, interesting, how weird? Right?
Speaker 1: So basically, you know what you're saying is all of
Speaker 1: these sort of public places that you might go shopping
Speaker 1: at or to the park or to buy a book.
Speaker 1: There's this underground, unseen world that the common eye, the
Speaker 1: common person doesn't even know about is happening. There's all
Speaker 1: these men that are having sex and hooking up while
Speaker 1: we're going shopping for a baby shower, yeah, or going
Speaker 1: to the park for a walk or something. M hm.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the real power of cruising of this
Speaker 2: culture is that you can sort of step into an
Speaker 2: alternate world almost right, And if you don't know about it,
Speaker 2: it's just the bathroom in a department store. But if
Speaker 2: you know that bathroom and that space becomes something very different,
Speaker 2: it becomes a very different type of location for an exchange.
Speaker 2: I can just remember the thrill of it. Remember one
Speaker 2: when being in a stall. This was at a bathroom
Speaker 2: in Macy's. I went in and I sat there. A
Speaker 2: lot of times, you just sit there for a while,
Speaker 2: and I knew the bathroom was cruising. I knew that
Speaker 2: that things happened there. But then you know, the person
Speaker 2: person came into my left and sat and the minute
Speaker 2: they sit like you, there's just an energy that's that's
Speaker 2: exchanged like a sort of a feeling, right, a vibe,
Speaker 2: a pheromone, I don't know what you want to call it.
Speaker 2: But the guy sitting next to me, and you know,
Speaker 2: he pulls his pants down and and then he starts
Speaker 2: tapping his foot right casually, and then I tap my
Speaker 2: foot casually, and then he does it again, and then
Speaker 2: I do it again, so where it's clear that it's
Speaker 2: not it's not like an unconditional response, right, that we're
Speaker 2: doing it with intention. Then you know, he and I
Speaker 2: you know, start doing our thing, like we sort of
Speaker 2: go under the stall and you know, and then and
Speaker 2: another person came in and he moved into the stall
Speaker 2: to my right. So again me and this other guy
Speaker 2: are not doing anything because there's somebody there now, so
Speaker 2: we're like trying to act like we're using the bathroom.
Speaker 2: And then this other guy does the same thing, right,
Speaker 2: he pulls his pants down, and then I see him
Speaker 2: starting to kind of you know, tap his foot, He
Speaker 2: lowers his hand, he kind of moves his hand under
Speaker 2: the stall mm in the space, and then that was it.
Speaker 2: You know, we just sort of had a phone with
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 1: Wow. I wonder, you know, in those moments, like what
Speaker 1: did you like about cruising, I felt empowered.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I never considered myself a very
Speaker 2: attractive person. Right, The gay culture of my time was
Speaker 2: like everybody went to West Hollywood, and in those spaces,
Speaker 2: I was not very attractive, you know. I I have
Speaker 2: this disability. You know, I was losing my hair. You know,
Speaker 2: I felt very, very unattractive. But I think when I
Speaker 2: started cruising, I found that I was attractive. People men
Speaker 2: liked my dick, and I I was gonna use it.
Speaker 2: It's all. It's the only thing I had. It's the
Speaker 2: only thing I had that gave me confidence. Right, was like,
Speaker 2: I better use this thing then, And boy did I
Speaker 2: in a world where I had no control over my upbringing,
Speaker 2: you know, my situation, my financial situation, my family situation,
Speaker 2: in this space, I had control.
Speaker 1: It sounds like in the outside world you had thought
Speaker 1: of yourself as someone unworthy of love or of sex,
Speaker 1: or of people finding you attractive. But then in this
Speaker 1: cruising world you are sort of like the top of
Speaker 1: the so called pyramid. I wonder, you know, putting myself
Speaker 1: in your shoes, there's so much adrenaline going on, like
Speaker 1: having sex with these people you don't know and and
Speaker 1: the fear of getting caught. Was that rush and that
Speaker 1: adrenaline part of what kept you doing it?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally. I mean that's one of the main
Speaker 2: reasons why I did it. You know it is really
Speaker 2: it gives you some Yeah, it gives you a high.
Speaker 2: It's very erotic, it's taboo. You know, you're doing something
Speaker 2: that you're not supposed to be doing with another person,
Speaker 2: and you're doing it in a public space. Right, there's
Speaker 2: an adrenaline rush. You're experiencing this very intimate moment with
Speaker 2: a stranger in a space, and then you're just gonna
Speaker 2: pick up and go on, you know, your merry way,
Speaker 2: and you know no one will ever know it. Just
Speaker 2: it made me feel powerful. It made me feel like
Speaker 2: I was in control, and who doesn't want that?
Speaker 1: Well, you know the other part of this alex was
Speaker 1: that you were cruising during the peak of the AIDS pandemic.
Speaker 1: This is like the nineties, the early nineties, late eighties.
Speaker 1: Were you ever scared that you were putting yourself at
Speaker 1: risk of contracting HIV?
Speaker 2: Oh of course, I mean that was you know, I
Speaker 2: was petrified of that, But I also knew that I
Speaker 2: couldn't ignore my feelings. Right, The alternative was what celibacy Like,
Speaker 2: I don't have that much.
Speaker 1: Control, and so I do kind of wonder like knowing
Speaker 1: that there was this really big risk. What kept you going?
Speaker 1: What kept you having these encounters, these anonymous encounters.
Speaker 2: Again, I didn't consider myself very attractive. I felt like,
Speaker 2: you know, I I couldn't find a partner. So for me,
Speaker 2: it was what kept me going back was was that
Speaker 2: sense of intimacy that I would experience every time I'd
Speaker 2: do it right, and it was it was so powerful
Speaker 2: that I was willing to risk contracting a deadly virus
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm just thinking about your Catholic conservative upbringing. How
Speaker 1: did that tie in?
Speaker 2: You know? As I went on, Like I said, the
Speaker 2: first few times, it's when it's you know, a novelty,
Speaker 2: it's it's kind of exciting and you're you know, you're
Speaker 2: charged and all that. But as I got older and
Speaker 2: I had some age behind me, some years, I would
Speaker 2: feel a lot of shame. I would tell myself, I'm
Speaker 2: never going to do it again, and you know, that's it,
Speaker 2: like I'm not visiting those places anymore. But then I'd
Speaker 2: find myself there again. When you're in the moment, it's
Speaker 2: it's such an intense high, right, But whatever intense high,
Speaker 2: there comes a you know, a down, right you have
Speaker 2: to crash. And I always felt just horrible, you know,
Speaker 2: it felt like a just a terrible human being, you know,
Speaker 2: just an absolute like sinful, horrible person that's gonna go
Speaker 2: to hell.
Speaker 1: Other than the sex, what do you think you were
Speaker 1: searching for?
Speaker 2: I think I wanted to be loved. I think I
Speaker 2: just wanted someone to love me, you know, intimately, right,
Speaker 2: And that was the closest that I could get at
Speaker 2: the time, and the moments that I was cruising, I
Speaker 2: knew that it wasn't love I was encountering, right, it
Speaker 2: was it was intimacy, but at the time I couldn't
Speaker 2: distinguish the two. It's not that like I would meet
Speaker 2: these guys and like fall in love with them, No,
Speaker 2: but it was the closest thing to quote love that
Speaker 2: I could get.
Speaker 1: And what do you think was stopping you from truly
Speaker 1: experiencing the love and the intimacy that that you were
Speaker 1: really looking for.
Speaker 2: I still wasn't comfortable with myself. I wasn't willing to
Speaker 2: accept all parts of me. And again in the cruising space.
Speaker 2: It was like they weren't seeing all of me. They
Speaker 2: were only seeing a part of me, right, so they
Speaker 2: weren't getting a full picture of me, and so I
Speaker 2: And that's not to say that that people who cruise,
Speaker 2: you know, are uncomfortable, you know, in their skin.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't want to generalize anybody's experiences. Their experiences are
Speaker 2: their own right. But that's what it was for me
Speaker 2: was I clearly was not comfortable in my own skin yet,
Speaker 2: and I didn't feel like I was worthy of being
Speaker 2: loved intimately by someone else.
Speaker 1: It's the late nineties and Alex is in his twenties.
Speaker 1: He was cruising regularly by this point, and it felt
Speaker 1: like a superpower. It was an escape from the painful
Speaker 1: feeling that he was unlovable. Years of hating the body
Speaker 1: that he was born in, coupled with the shame that
Speaker 1: he had lugged around for being gay, was a lot
Speaker 1: to bear. Anonymous sex also gave him a short lived
Speaker 1: sense of intimacy, and he liked that. The feeling of
Speaker 1: being close to another man, even for a moment, even
Speaker 1: with a man he didn't know anything about, was powerful.
Speaker 1: But what he really wanted was to be loved authentically,
Speaker 1: to be fully accepted. There came a point where he
Speaker 1: also realized that he had been avoiding a huge fear
Speaker 1: of his getting tested for HIV. This was the late
Speaker 1: nineties and HIV drugs were new, but people were still
Speaker 1: dying from the virus that could be spread through sexual contact,
Speaker 1: including many in the gay community. Alex was almost certain
Speaker 1: that he was HIV positive. What was the boiling point
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: I was living out in La here. If I was
Speaker 2: going out, I was partying, and you know, at night,
Speaker 2: I would hook up with guys. I would go to
Speaker 2: you know, sex clubs and do all kinds of things.
Speaker 2: And after a while I kind of realized, like, I'm
Speaker 2: not really doing anything with my life. I'm just sort
Speaker 2: of partying and waking up and going to work at
Speaker 2: the stead and job. And it was that time that
Speaker 2: I kind of took stock of like everything I'd done.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, you know, I had
Speaker 2: all these risky experiences, I'd done all these things, and
Speaker 2: I finally just faced my fear on like I just
Speaker 2: need to and this I need to get tested. I
Speaker 2: remember this was the late nineties, like it was nineties, you.
Speaker 1: Mean an HIV test. Yeah, why were you sort of
Speaker 1: avoiding that test?
Speaker 2: Well, because I was scared. I was frightened. It was
Speaker 2: frightened that I had it, frightened that I'd given it
Speaker 2: to other people and not known about it. Right. So
Speaker 2: I remember talking to my best friend and then we
Speaker 2: were having a conversation about he's straight, and we're having
Speaker 2: a conversation about like HIV tests or something, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I should probably get tested too, and he
Speaker 2: At that time there were these tests that you would
Speaker 2: mail off right and you would have to wait. So
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm just petrified of it and I
Speaker 2: can't do it. And then my best friend was like,
Speaker 2: if you're scared, I'll do it. Like I'll do it
Speaker 2: with you, I'll do it for you. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: you know. So we went and we got it, I remember,
Speaker 2: and it was at his place. I remember I was there.
Speaker 2: And then we went and we got it and then
Speaker 2: we opened it up and then like he pricked my finger,
Speaker 2: we put it on the little sample thing and mailed
Speaker 2: it off. And I remember weeks later and I was
Speaker 2: back at home and I was on my computer and
Speaker 2: I was on AOL. This was AOL America online and
Speaker 2: I was on my Alel instant chattam and then he
Speaker 2: sent me an instant message and it said negative. And
Speaker 2: he called me and he said, yeah, he's like, you're
Speaker 2: testing back in your negative. It was just an average day,
Speaker 2: nothing special about it. It was just a normal day.
Speaker 2: And I remember just getting up and going in the
Speaker 2: bathroom and brushing my teeth and all of that, and
Speaker 2: just having a realization and looking at myself and just
Speaker 2: realizing that I did love myself. I looked at my body,
Speaker 2: and I realized that my body wasn't something that was
Speaker 2: defective or infirm or weak. It showed signs of survival.
Speaker 2: And you know, I wore the wounds, the scars, and
Speaker 2: it was that moment that I realized, like, I've got
Speaker 2: a lot to offer, and I need to start remembering that,
Speaker 2: and I need to start loving myself more. It was
Speaker 2: the first time I really took account of my body,
Speaker 2: I took account for myself and and and realized that
Speaker 2: I was still standing. You know, I hadn't succumbed, not
Speaker 2: just not just aids or but like to all the
Speaker 2: threats right that I, you know, experienced as a kid.
Speaker 2: You know, my my Catholicism and my my culture, my cheesemol,
Speaker 2: like I had survived all of that, all of it.
Speaker 1: In other words, what you're saying is that you had,
Speaker 1: up until that point looked at your own body as
Speaker 1: something that was not lovable.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: You then realized, having this moment where you're staring at
Speaker 1: yoursel self, that this is the same body that's carried
Speaker 1: me through so much and I've actually survived and I'm
Speaker 1: still living exactly.
Speaker 2: And it was a real moment where I took agency
Speaker 2: right and just decided that I was going to love
Speaker 2: myself more, and that learning to love myself meant accepting
Speaker 2: every facet of myself, including my imperfections, my quote unquote imperfections.
Speaker 2: And it was really it was really liberating, but it
Speaker 2: was also kind of sad and painful because I think,
Speaker 2: I you know, I liked my misery, right, I liked
Speaker 2: my sadness.
Speaker 1: It was all you ever knew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you take that away and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: like you're sort of like you're walking into like the
Speaker 2: harsh light of day.
Speaker 1: Right, sort of like who am I once?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Who do I become? Now? Right now that I've no,
Speaker 2: I'm no longer participating in the script. So that meant
Speaker 2: really sort of rethinking everything about myself. That's intimacy for me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm curious, did you end up finding that
Speaker 1: love that you were searching for?
Speaker 2: I did, Yeah, I found that love. We actually met online, ironically,
Speaker 2: and it was like two thousand. You know, back then
Speaker 2: it was it was still an anomaly for people to
Speaker 2: meet online. It was kind of seen as something kind
Speaker 2: of tawdry. And so I went logged on and chatted
Speaker 2: with the person that would eventually become my partner. He
Speaker 2: was where I was in terms of like accepting his
Speaker 2: situation and accepting, you know, who he was and what
Speaker 2: he had to offer that we both kind of thought, well,
Speaker 2: we both said to each other, like we you know,
Speaker 2: we've done the hooking up, we've done that, we've messed around,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of time for something different. And so
Speaker 2: we agreed to meet. And when we met, nothing intimate happened.
Speaker 2: We had tea in his apartment, and then I left
Speaker 2: and we stayed in touch.
Speaker 1: And then twenty years later, twenty plus years later, yeah
Speaker 1: you're still together.
Speaker 2: We're still together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, now shifting gears a little bit, what did you
Speaker 1: learn from writing this comprehensive analysis of cruising.
Speaker 2: I learned a couple things while writing it. I learned
Speaker 2: that this practice is one that's been going on ever
Speaker 2: since there have been societies, that it's a practice that
Speaker 2: no matter how many times a society tries to quell
Speaker 2: it or stop it, it only comes back stronger. And
Speaker 2: I learned also that other men who'd had cruising experiences
Speaker 2: experienced the exact same thing that I did. Like we
Speaker 2: talked about like the the uncoded language, the sort of
Speaker 2: knowledge of knowing that something was going to happen without
Speaker 2: any words being exchanged. A lot of the men that
Speaker 2: I interviewed, we're grateful that I had pulled them aside
Speaker 2: and said, tell me about your experience, because they were
Speaker 2: harboring this right and they felt like this is something
Speaker 2: they needed to get off their chest for years, right,
Speaker 2: and nobody had given them the license to do it.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I was like, hey, tell me about you know,
Speaker 2: tell me about the bathroom at your college. And it
Speaker 2: was a bittersweet experience. I think looking back at some
Speaker 2: of those moments, and again, it was rehashing a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of the pain and a lot of
Speaker 2: the fear and a lot of the doubt that I had.
Speaker 2: But that's what art, That's what we do as artists.
Speaker 2: We take our pain and we turn it into something.
Speaker 2: We turn it into a work of art, right, or
Speaker 2: something that we can provide the world with. It was
Speaker 2: the first time that I, you know, that I was
Speaker 2: able to make sense of all of it for.
Speaker 1: Me, and and so it was sort of part of
Speaker 1: your unshaming journey in a sense.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, so, now pivoting a little bit, this show is
Speaker 1: about basically creating role models for young people, and you've
Speaker 1: sort of now taken on this new role as an
Speaker 1: educator and writing books for young queer people to engage in.
Speaker 1: I wonder, though, if you were to be a role
Speaker 1: model to your younger self looking back all those years,
Speaker 1: what advice would you give to your younger self as
Speaker 1: you were trying to find your.
Speaker 2: Way love yourself more, you know?
Speaker 1: And what advice do you have for young queer people
Speaker 1: now that are trying to find their way with sex
Speaker 1: and dating and figuring out who they.
Speaker 2: Are, accept every facet of yourself.
Speaker 1: It sort of sounds like the advice that you will
Speaker 1: give to your younger selves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's the same thing in a way.
Speaker 1: Basically, the generations are different, but the advice on how
Speaker 1: to navigate queer life is the same.
Speaker 2: It still is, It still is a lot of things
Speaker 2: haven't changed, right in our culture and our experiences that
Speaker 2: our experiences are very they're unique, but in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways they're very similar. Right. That we all grow up,
Speaker 2: you know, facing the potential for stigma, for rejection, right,
Speaker 2: so it's no surprise that the advice that I that
Speaker 2: I would give my younger self is similar to the
Speaker 2: one that I would give to someone else now.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of hope in young people leaning
Speaker 1: on older queer people for those answers and for that
Speaker 1: advice exactly. But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan
Speaker 1: Can Solve This. New episodes drop every Wednesday. A tiny
Speaker 1: note will be going on a small break for the
Speaker 1: next two weeks, but we'll be back in September. If
Speaker 1: you want to write in to tell your story, email
Speaker 1: us at Buttweloved at gmail dot com or send us
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Speaker 1: We are a production of the Outspoken Podcast Network and
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Speaker 1: Our producers Areshena Ozaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey
Speaker 1: patt Our. Executive producers are Me and Maya Howard. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bohone. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis. If you loved
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening. I'll
Speaker 1: see you the first week of September.