Public sex is a thrill because it can happen anywhere. House parties, gay bars, parked cars, single-use restrooms, leather parties, the Wendy’s near City Hall, the hotel bathroom at a gaming convention. Each of these locations is loaded with memories. Maybe the encounters there were spontaneous and completely unexpected, like running into a friend at a queer bookstore and fucking after drinks.
Spontaneous public sex is a way of life for many queers across genders. It’s also risky as hell. One misstep—fucking in the wrong bathroom, going too fast for your partner, hooking up in a gay bar that’s more “LGB” than “LGBTQ”—can spell disaster.
Then again, simply being in public can be a disaster when you’re queer. Having sex in a public place almost comes naturally when your body is hardly welcomed to begin with.
Public sex has lost some of its popularity over the years thanks to the internet and modern cybersex, but its taboo nature—and, ironically, increased privacy away from home—still renders it popular. Still, there’s an ongoing culture war within the queer community between those who advocate for public sex and those who believe it’s abhorrent.
As radical queers go toe-to-toe with burgeoning purity culture, issues of class, race, gentrification, sexual consent, and the long-term legacy of the AIDS crisis merge together to create one of the most complex issues the LGBTQ community deals with.
So what’s the deal with having sex in public? In the age of cybersex and police surveillance, that answer is complicated.