Will Larry Craig's tap dance bring tearoom cruising back in style?

Will Larry Craig's tap dance bring tearoom cruising back in style?

Decades ago, before gay men began to come out, urinals were designed with no dividers between them. Men weren't afraid of other men checking out their stuff, I guess. But why? Is it because there was no out gay population, so hetero men were oblivious to male desire for dick?  Is it because men were more likely back then to let another man jerk or suck him, as long as they didn't talk about it?

Before you dismiss that as a preposterous position, know that every day in America there are plenty of otherwise straight men out there who will get together with another guy for dick pleasure. Many years ago I had a straight boss who, from behind his office desk with an open fly, outright asked me to be his cocksucker. He hired me because he knew I was gay and was hoping for that kind of arrangement. "Gay men are just really the best at it," he told me. I turned him down, but we were still buddies.

Even Homer Simpson declared his appreciation for the glory hole, a hole found in a wall between two stalls or booths through which you pass your member for service. In cruisy places like parks or restrooms or bookstores, married men (who are not gay and have never been gay) arrive to get a little help from another guy. Quick and simple, one man standing and another on his knees, pleasure is given to another through the glorification of the man's penis - mankind's most celebrated yet feared body part. After an orgasm, a quick zip, and a couple of "thank yous" later, both men are back on the street, ignorant of one another and the world clueless about what just happened.

I think otherwise straight and married men prefer these places to cruising online, because there is no data trail. Online guys want a "pic." Sending a .jpg of your official Senate portrait to an anonymous Craigslist e-mail forwarder will get you a post on Blogactive for sure. And e-mails never die.

Public restrooms with sex are called tearooms, short for "toilet rooms." They've been around probably as long as men have been sharing toilets. They were easier to find until just about the time that gay awareness took hold and dividers began appearing between urinals. They were found by word of mouth, at least until cruisingforsex.com began listing places over ten years ago.

Every man who has cruised in a tearoom has said to himself, "Well I'm not doing anything overt. I'm just waiting here in a stall... occasionally tapping my foot. If a gay guy sees it and makes a return gesture, I've found someone who is up for some cock play. If a straight guy sees it, well, I'm just slowly tapping my foot. If a cop sees it, well how can he prove anything? I'm only tapping my foot." And so Larry Craig finds himself in the loudest tearoom bust in history, testing every cruiser's fantasy defense, the "Whatchu talkin' 'bout?" defense.

For Sen. Craig, this is plan "B." Following direction from his arresting officer, the senator first tried to make it go away like many before him by pleading and hoping it would never be found. Sgt. Dave Karsnia typically used the gay angle of the occurrence to convince the Senator to plead. Karsnia says, "You're gonna get out of here. You're gonna have to pay a fine and that will be it. Okay, I don't call media, I don't do any of that type of crap." Karsnia lays it on even thicker with value judgments. "I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean people vote for you," he said. (Apparently, they don't have a problem with guns or narcotics in the Minneapolis 'hood. The problem is all that damn toe tapping and gay cocksucking.)

So now that the secret is out and the codes of tearoom cruising are part of popular mainstream culture, will more people look for the signs? Will more men participate? If it's been weeks since you've felt release and the guy in the stall next to you is tapping his foot, are you going to tap back hoping for a little action? Are more straight men going to discover what my old boss knew about male head? Sen. Larry Craig is leading the legal charge to make cruising signals constitutionally protected. If he wins, tearoom trysts might once again become downright fashionable.