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The Unwitting Ethnographer: On Pride Flags and Plausible Deniability
I did not set out to do anthropology. I set out to have a beer. The other regular haunts near my flat skewed geriatric, and while I can happily talk to a septuagenarian about buses, I was in the mood for music that did not predate the Falklands. The bar I wandered into had a younger crowd, a decent playlist, and discrete details I somehow failed to parse until much later. Pride flags on the walls. A very large pride flag by the door. A clientele that could only be described as statistically enriched for men in nice shoes.
I was nursing a Tennent's when one of the patrons approached the bar and ordered what appeared to be a small chemistry set worth of brightly colored shots. The logistics fascinated me: he deployed some kind of carrying apparatus that locked under the shot glasses at the rim, allowing safe transport of the entire collection. The British have always been quiet pioneers of Applied Alcoholism, and the field has clearly advanced beyond what I learned in medical school.
"Hey handsome," he said, noticing my interest. "Sorry if I end up spilling any of this on you." I assured him this would be fine, since spilled alcohol represents free alcohol, which represents savings. "I wouldn't mind licking it off you, if you know what I mean."
I experienced a sudden cutaneous vasodilation, a blush, which I hoped was obscured by my facial hair and the ambient lighting. The complexion probably helps.
His companion laughed, but the interaction quickly resolved into a gesture of goodwill. They offered me one of the shots. Morbid curiosity being a powerful motivator, I accepted. The taste was not unpleasant. Upon turning to share this assessment with the group, I was met with expectant looks. "It wasn't bad," I offered. "I could see myself drinking this." "If you think this wasn't bad," a different member of the group replied, "then you'll probably like antifreeze."
I answered, mostly sober at that point, that I had not yet tried antifreeze but remained open-minded.
Etiquette required reciprocation. Also, heterosexual uncertainty suggested that free liquor in a gay bar might have exchange rates I was not qualified to negotiate, so I bought two shots and took them over. The bartender had hinted that the recipients did not like Gordon’s, which I could respect as a principled position. The group received the offering warmly, then kept me at the table as if a recruitable stray cat had decided to sit in their sunbeam.
Cast and setting
There were six of them, give or take my blood alcohol level. Most looked like ordinary men dressed for a Saturday night, with more piercings and better grooming. The one who had flirted at the bar was the outlier. Wife-beater, small tattoos scattered like confetti, a bull ring large enough to restrain mythological fauna. Call him FG, for Flamboyant Gent. His friend with the quick laugh was slight and balding. SG. The third I spoke with most was conventionally handsome and soft-edged in a way that suggests many women have fallen for him and then discovered the plot twist. HG, for Hetero-passing Gent.
I clarified my presence, attributing it to a combination of cultural unfamiliarity and severe myopia. FG gestured towards the numerous pride flags. I claimed to have interpreted them as generic contemporary decor. He then indicated the very large flag by the entrance, to which I could only plead a fundamental lack of situational awareness.
They inquired about my purpose in a city not famed for its nightlife. I gave my standard exposition: I am a doctor, recently relocated from a Small Scottish Town (SST). This news was met with uniform approval. My subsequent anecdote about drunken misadventures in SST was also successful, though their perspective on such small communities was predictably negative. A lot of them disclosed that they had grown up in nearly indistinguishable SSTs, and hadn't enjoyed it. The low-anonymity, high-surveillance environment of a small town is likely a suboptimal habitat for a gay man.
They were all locals. They were also colleagues, sort of. Not mine, yet. Two worked in the biochemistry lab at the same trust where I work in psychiatry. The third did something nearby in clinical science that I forgot as the evening progressed.
We found common ground commiserating over the state of the NHS circa 2025. FG complained about ill-conceived sample requests from junior doctors at inconvenient hours. I reassured him that psychiatry was a low-impact requester; my biochemistry screens were routine and rarely urgent. This professional courtesy earned me an offer of expedited service for future lithium level checks, which I noted for potential future use.
I was also offered, variously, two blowjobs, a rimjob, and a golden shower. I declined with gratitude. It is good to be desired. It is also good to have boundaries.
(As wise men have said: if you're struggling on the local dating apps, it might not be your fault and there's hope for you yet. But if you go to a gay bar and don't get hit on, it might be time to see if monasteries are recruiting)
At one point I unlocked my phone to show photos from Dover. This triggered knowing looks. “So, you are not gay, are you?” Correct. They explained that no gay man would casually open his gallery in public. Too high a risk of unexpected appearances. I learned something.
"Such a shame," FG added, "especially when you're dressed like that." My attire, a polo shirt under a pullover, was chosen for its extreme neutrality. I suppose this can create its own kind of allure through sheer demureness.
I was informed of some romantic tension. SG and HG both had crushes on each other, but neither would make a move. Were they both bottoms? I tentatively asked. Nah, one's a bottom, but the other is a verse.
When they heard FG explaining this to me, HG claimed that he had, in fact, tried to kiss SG, but had been rebuffed. SG was affronted and explained that it hadn't been a good time, he'd been chewing on a chicken tender when the former had attempted to tongue-punch him in the tonsils. They both laughed, and began making up for wasted time. Ah, young love, don't you love to see it?
By now the ethnographer in me, who had apparently decided to write this post retroactively, began asking questions. I apologized for being nosy, but they laughed it off. The answers, heavily paraphrased and possibly misremembered after several Tennent’s, were as follows:
Q1. Poppers
How common are poppers in actual practice? FG looked at me like I had asked how common forks are at dinner. The table consensus: some had used them, none were evangelists. They shared two cautionary fables about people who treated poppers as shooters or aerosolized them and died. The bartender volunteered that poppers slowed time and elongated orgasms.
An unexpected corollary was also disclosed: a high incidence of incontinence issues among the group, to the point where coffee consumption was a calculated risk. They then fielded a surprising counter-query: Does applying sugar to a prolapsed anus aid in its reduction? I admitted that while the technique was vaguely familiar from medical lore, if I tried to put it into practice on the wards, the nurses would have me up in front of the GMC or the police in short order.
Q2. Cleanliness protocols
Do people douche before anal sex? After some deliberation, the consensus was no, not routinely. Diet was preferred. Eat fiber, manage timing, accept that risk can be reduced but not eliminated. You get used to it. I shared that several heterosexual experiments of mine had ended with olfactory regret. They said that in a male-male context the polite response would be to send the man to the shower or call for a reschedule. I said that if I tried that with a woman I would be killed, slowly, and possibly correctly.
Q3. Closeted and bi men
How often do you encounter men who are closeted or who identify as bi? FG avoids them. Too messy, too much drama, too many norm mismatches, and in his experience too much reluctance to test for STIs. Others nodded. This was not about identity policing. It was about risk management.
Q4. Grindr
Grindr, yes or no? A unanimous no. The people on it were described as crazy in the technical sense. Word of mouth, mutual friends, and the bar network work better. I said I had expected at least one notification during the evening. I declined to explain how I know the sound.
Q5. PrEP and HIV risk
Are you on PrEP? Only FG. He is meticulous about screening and uses PrEP as insurance. He also thinks gay men are unfairly blamed for both HIV and monkeypox, and claimed that heterosexuals now acquire both at higher rates while gay men are just more honest and tested more. I had strong reservations about that claim, and made a note to check later. It was not the time for a literature review in a bar where I had been offered a golden shower five minutes earlier.
Q6. Bug chasers
Do bug chasers still exist? Only FG had even heard of them, and he is slightly older. He said the phenomenon is almost extinct, and was already rare when he came out. He explained the idea for the younger men, who reacted with the combination of curiosity and horror that usually attends bad Victorian surgery.
Q7. Baths
Do people have sex in the baths? Yes, says FG, wistfully reminiscing about a visit to San Francisco.
Is it hygienic? Probably not, he confides. But much like swimming in a kiddie pool, you have to have your faith in the antiseptic properties of chlorine.
Q8. Straight people in gay spaces
Is my presence in a gay bar objectionable?
Not you, you seem like a nice and open-minded lad. But in general?
They gave a quick lesson in ecological progression. A gay bar/night club opens and serves a mostly LGBT clientele. Straight women discover it is a space where they can be drunk and loud without constant male attention (they're very popular for hen-dos). Straight men discover that straight women are there. The venue drifts toward generic nightlife. Even worse, some of these men are alleged to be rather bigoted, and FG said he wasn't willing to take the risk of being socked in the face for merely kissing a partner on the dance floor.
According to him, the only reliable counterpressure is to make the environment clearly and unambiguously queer. Sex in dark corners and in toilets tends to discourage straight tourists and is conveniently hard to legislate away without awkward free speech arguments. They mentioned the only other gay bar nearby, owned by a man who is both gay and loudly hostile to trans people. They had taken their business elsewhere.
My new friends left early. Sunday shifts wait for no man. I stayed until closing and fell in love at a distance with a woman who was almost certainly a lesbian and possibly autistic. Short hair, noise-cancelling earphones in, a single beer, a one-handed game controller, a dog’s full attention, an older man attempting conversation and doing no visible damage. I did not ask for her number. In a Hollywood version of this evening I would mature, learn a lesson about acceptance, and end with a chaste coffee. In the realistic version I walked home slightly drunk, slightly wiser, and extremely grateful that a bar full of men who had no reason to be kind to me were kind anyway.
Methods, such as they were:
This was opportunistic qualitative sampling. The ethnographer was three drinks in and had accepted a blue shot of unknown pedigree. The participants were friendly and practiced at explaining themselves to outsiders. There was music. There were interruptions. Recall bias is certain. Social desirability bias is probable. My notes consist of the phrases I kept repeating to myself while walking home and the sentences that reappeared in my head the next morning like uninvited guests. If you want preregistration and a codebook, you will be disappointed.
I find this pretty interesting. I have kind of a retrograde idea of sexuality. When I was young, I was very pretty. Something of a Twink I guess you could say. Looking like this colors your psychology. I used to be called Angelina behind my back as a kid because I had big lips. And as I got older, I realize that there was some small part of me that was interested in men. But it wasn’t the same way that I would obsess over a girl. It was the idea, always in general terms. It was never romantic either. But I never ever took the effort to come out in any way - because functionally I never did anything that was gay. Of course people around you have a ‘gaydar’ but to this day, I’ve never explicitly and publicly mentioned it. I would even say out of principle I’ve decided not to publicly describe my sexuality at all. As a side note, It’s pretty infuriating that historians get to decide some dead person’s sexuality. It’s very, very complicated. I still don’t like calling myself bisexual (even if objectively true) because I feel i am more nuanced. it feels like when people anthromorphize animals to make some point about human behavior. Yes there is real world evidence I did these things, but can’t I choose how I define it?
To a significant other I might mention my experimentation in my teen years - and while that goes over pretty well with liberal women, it’s an eye opener. I never thought about it as the primary motivating factor behind hiding it, but it is real that women think of bisexual men as less than (especially if you are passive). I think women are off-put by the idea of man acting in the feminine role - and have a hard time really processing that, especially when it involves the person you find attractive.
But all that said, I always acted ‘closeted’ - and that’s the way I liked it. I’d get horny in bed, get my fantasy over with, and go back to normal. It was just this little part of myself that I indulged every once in a great while. I did wind up having gay sex a few times and I enjoyed it. I had a tryst in Milan with a guy with a boat.
But that was when I was 19 and now I’m 28. I’m a man with a job and a 401k. I’m not smooth and beautiful anymore - and the whole thing felt like a facsimile for the feminine.
It’s awful but some part of me wishes for community around this. I am at a point where I can build a life and get married, but this old part of me still exists - disconnected from what I am now. Protestant conversation therapy shouldn’t exist probably, but why not have programs to assist me in choosing to live my life as if this didn’t happen? Why tell people this essentialist idea that they are something forever and always - when, at least when you have two genders you are interested in, you can always neglect one? There’s always a chance that I wake up like Phillip morris, but I don’t think I will. I want to actively choose to never indulge in it as I grow old. Can my gay experiences not be a fun teenage experience à la the summer of love? Doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for that in the culture that’s been cultivated over last 15 years ish.
This is a podcast about being gay with your dad
This is not a podcast. Did you copy that post from somewhere?
That's a joke, like saying "thank you for coming to my TED talk".
Yeah, but people that have listened to cum town will know exactly where it comes from. I genuinely think listening to that podcast helps me contextualize how non-serious this stuff is
I for one didn't. Write like everyone.. something. There's a rule. Sorry, phoneposting.
But not every cultural reference needs to be explained. You understood his post, except for one reference tacked onto the end. And that's fine.
That's quite true. And I think my pointing out that here's one for whom it's a complete dud isn't exactly a problem either.
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Fair enough. I guess I wrongly assumed that there was a pretty big intersection between people who’ve listened and forum readers here, especially since it was so transgressive during its early run.
From morbid curiosity, I browse /r/redscarepodcast on a regular basis. Very interesting specimens on that sub.
That means I know as much about Cumtown as a well-adjusted person can through sheer cultural osmosis. I don't really do podcasts in general.
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I'm a cum boy. I think there's at least 5 other regular posters that are too.
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Maybe there is and you're right. I'm just one data point, as it were.
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I keep hearing about it, but I refuse to try it out because the name is so gross.
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