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Great write-up as usual. I'm surprised at how stereotypically gay these lads were, you really got lucky from an ethnographic POV.
Wouldn't this also be affected by Pride celebration? Where I live even the burrito place will be covered in pride flags for a good two months in summer, and a big greasy burrito full of beans is probably not the kind of food you'd want as a gay man looking for a hook-up.
I'm grateful that no gay man has ever been this crude with me in person. At worst they've just asked me to go home with them and the rest was implied, or made suggestive innuendos.
You could just have said you had a gay roommate or something like that. Declining just invites more questions and idle speculation.
Closeted men is perfectly valid, but bisexuals? That's not risk management, that's bigotry (pun intended?). And they contradicted themselves anyway, they were offering to hook-up with you despite you having clearly stated you were heterosexual from the get-go, so they were hoping you were at least a little bi-curious.
But from your description of these gents I do get it in one sense. They basically want someone of that's "culturally gay" like them, for whom offering a golden shower to a stranger over a couple of drinks is normal behavior.
As far as I know sex in a public lavatory is illegal in the UK regardless of the sex of the participants. I would assume a pub (i.e. a public house) counts? I know straight people who've had sex in a bar toilet, so there's no argument to be made that it's an exclusively homosexual act.
In any case, your talk with these gents made me understand the perspective of some more intolerant people. That "gay culture" seems to be purposefully designed to be repulsive. I understand that being a pick-me isn't helpful, and that loud gays were the ones that paved away for LGBT rights while the polite, respectful homophile movement accomplished little... but still I feel like I've had the most headway with conservatives when I explained that deep down we just want to be free to live the same lives straight people do. Popper-inhaling, incontinent, promiscuous people who go to bath houses and have sex in the corner of a bar where anybody can come in and have a drink, well, I have little defense of that beyond my general liberal principles.
I think that can be the case if they're applying to everyone, but a lot of people who call themselves bi are like barely bi. Heck, a lot of people who call themselves bi are basically not bisexual at all outside of "shrugs, I'd do a guy/girl if I found them attractive I guess" types who also can't name a single same sex person they've ever found attractive. I imagine a lot of them are way less comfortable with sexuality and a lot more "boring" to sleep with.
But definitely going after a straight guy to see if he's down for a lay as well comes off as an odd contradiction here.
Eh, I think a lot of that is just because it's two men involved and they tend to be a lot more openly sexual in general. Women complain all the time in a similar manner about straight guys, so it tracks that two guys together are gonna be pretty nuts.
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It’s very gay-coded in the UK because it’s associated with cottaging. If you complained about going to a gay bar and finding two men having sex in the loo, people would laugh at you. If you persisted they would call you a bigot.
This and the IRA (who put bombs in them) are the two reasons Britain doesn’t have nearly enough public loos.
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I'm intrigued you feel that way. My understanding is that the same suspicion is even more common among trans women, and that bisexual men are seen as flaky, exploratory sorts whose bisexuality is a fig leaf, who are trans chasing, and would never be caught dead actually dating a trans woman in public. Actually, I'm intrigued in general that you've talked a lot about your concerns about dating and chasers have never come up.
There's many different kinds of bisexual men and you can't paint them all with the same brush. Some are mostly into women and occasionally will top men, some will only bottom for men but top women, some are 99% attracted to women but there's this one guy that takes their fancy, some are just hypersexual and will do anything with anyone. I've known chasers to be bisexual, straight or gay (the latter being into trans men), and I've known bisexual men who didn't want anything to do with trans women. I think trans women would avoid a lot of heartache if they stop being obsessed with dating 110% straight masculine guys and went for the guys that are fine meeting them for a coffee date in broad daylight instead.
My experience with chasers has been that they make themselves known in the first 5 minutes of conversation so it's never been an issue I guess?
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To answer both your and @urquan 's question:
I know the Grindr sound because of a prank video I saw somewhere online. The prankster would clock someone as likely gay, and then play the matching notification sound standing close to them. I think they used women in some scenes, to minimize the assumption it was them. You'd see a lot of men jump and pat their pockets. Including quite a few who definitely didn't look it to my untrained eye.
Possibly. I wasn't keeping track, but since this happened literally this weekend, I guess some of the decor might have stayed up.
The majority of the offers came before the phone gallery bit. I'm sure that FG still made more moves, but they were clearly in the "haha, just kidding. Unless...?" tier.
His explanation covered both clubs and bars. I think the sex in dimly lit corners applied more to the former.
While sex in a loo might be illegal, I sincerely doubt anyone ever gets charged!
FG was by far the most forward. The rest of them, beyond the usual compliments and offers, seemed normal, for lack of a better word. In other contexts, I might have suspected they were gay, but I wouldn't have strong confidence in that notion. They seemed to act like anyone else out for a drink with friends.
I am generally liberal, and I think that's enough here. If they want to do all of that, with other consenting adults, then it's none of my business! As a straight man, if I could get away with the sex bit, I'd definitely go for it. Sadly women don't seem quite so keen. Gay sexuality is male sexuality, without the constraints of needing women to indulge in it or to provide the civilizing influence.
The poppers and incontinence? Not as pleasing to my sensibilities, but I will defend their right to do as they wish.
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I don't believe that it was "designed" to be anything. It's simply male sexuality in its most natural and unrestrained form.
Do you know how straight men would act if women were as DTF as men are? Hooooo boy.
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