Before the age of online dating and social networking apps, gay bars were the go-to place for gay men to meet other gay men and potentially hook-up. Nightclubs, community centers, and other social events where hundreds of thousands of gay men felt a sense of community have also been important venues for meeting and hooking up.
I have to include bathhouses too because these establishments played a huge role in our history of socializing. Bathhouses offered an earlier generation of gay men a place to be safe to be themselves, not only to hook-up and have sex, but to also meet others who were gay. The movement to secure civil rights for gays even got help from meetings held in bathhouses. How gay men meet to be social or to have sex will change from generation to generation but in today’s modern era something is being lost, anonymity.
Gay men today don’t have to leave the comfort of their living rooms in order to meet other gay men or even hook-up which could possibly be the reason I no longer feel a sense of community at some of the bars I used to go to. The energy I once felt when I went out is now non-existent. It seems guys are less interested in connecting or meeting others and are sometimes freaked out by a simple “Hello.”
When you think about it, why would our next generation of gay men go to a bar to meet other gay men when they can do it using a social networking app. This is similar to a question I received years ago from an older gay man at a bathhouse. He asked me, “Young man, why do you need to come to a bathhouse when you can freely go to a bar and meet someone there?” I didn’t understand why he was asking at the time but now I do. When I came of age, bars were the place to meet, for this gentleman, bathhouses were the place to meet.
Years ago, if I had met someone in a bar or at a club and I didn’t want him to invade my personal space by bringing him home, I kept our conversation or other activities where we were. I could maintain a sense of anonymity. My reflecting about the history of socializing and sex among gay men has made me realize we’ve lost the ability to be anonymous.
Can we be anonymous anymore? I think the answer is, No. Years ago, you could have a one-night-stand and you were in control of what you revealed to them and you could decide whether or not to take them home and if you did, when they left, you might not ever see them again. Today, everyone wants your number or to connect on social media. Our anonymity is being stripped away by the changing manners in which we connect.
Just think about it. When you exchange cell phone numbers with someone, your number is stored in their phone. Your cell phone number, which a unique identifier to you, is now in their contacts database. If they have any social media apps on that phone granted access to their contacts database, such as the Facebook app, a digital footprint is established and voila, that one-night-stand you thought was long gone is now seeing your Facebook and other social media profiles and is sending you a friend request. So much for laying low.
