note: this newsletter lightly discusses sexuality.

🔥🔥🔥

Now that summer is peeking over the horizon, I feel drawn to share a literary essay that I wrote for Sixty Inches from Center. Though it was published in January, I conceived of it last summer, and for me it lives in that season. 

The piece discusses the history of (gay men) cruising within Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary (among other things). For those that do not know the term:

“Cruising is when two people look at each other, know they are going to have sex, and then have sex.”
- Leo Herrera in “Cruising 101,” Sniffies Cruising Confessions

As I dip my toes into the gay man niche of the queer world (though comfortably on the outskirts), I am enthralled by reading about anonymous gay sex - specifically cruising. But not just for the smut - there is something intriguing about connection, flowing, history, and fracture within this story. Of course, cruising does not happen only among gay men, but the documentation of that culture is much stronger among gay men than, say, lesbians. And it is even less documented among trans people.

As I am a bibliophile by nature, I want to share a few fiction titles which, in my view, do an accurate job of representing cruising’s utopian essence (and maybe potential). A recent read of mine, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, follows a shapeshifter journeying in the era of ACT UP. Not only does the main character (Paul) literally cruise, but also the narrative is exploratory, undirected, laced with aspects of magical realism, and inconclusive – these all being affective characteristics of cruisy space. The narrative structure and form help create a sensory outline of an emotive condition required of cruising (demonstrative of the old adage “show don’t tell”).

In most of Samuel Delany’s novels, cruising is present. Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, though, stands out to me in particular. The book takes place in some distant future, in a multi-species society, on the planet Velm. There, many of the city layouts include tunnels which are primarily transportation mechanisms, but also containers for sexual encounters. I am enthralled with the way Delany uses this imagined infrastructure as both a means of transportation and a sexual environment for the inhabitants of Velm. It is funny, smart, and imaginative – in true Delany fashion. 

I would not call any of these books a vision of a static utopia. Yet, they express of some essential atmosphere dislocated from any specific time. So frequently, the conversation of cruising is relegated to some pre-epidemic past, but that is not true. People have always cruised, to some extent or another, and will in all likelihood continue. These narratives are timeless because they are an expression of liberational relationality, always moving, always cruising (thank you José Esteban Muñoz).* 

So what is it that I am searching for in books, histories, and crowds? Something essential that has been fractured - not just from the fallout of the AIDS epidemic, but the following wave of connection sequestered to digital telecommunication. Smart phones. Apps.

What I mean is heat! Sweaty, dense, sticky heat. What glues us to each other and pushes us away. As I wrote, in that essay in Sixty: “In the silence of digital space, you cannot feel the heat of another’s body. The immeasurable, maybe mystical, energy that passes between bodies in physical proximity is not only absent, but nullified.”

And it is almost May Day - Beltane - Hurrah! Kiss your friends. Fist your enemies. Touch each other as acts of care. We are what we have.

🥵emrys

* Some may balk at the association between queerness and sexuality, as a method of hypersexualization and the stigma associated. To that I would say “ok, virgin.”

Non-fiction book recs on the subject, for those who want more (alphabetical by author's last name):

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel Delany (part memoir, part political essay, focuses on NYC).

Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime by Alex Espinoza (part memoir, part pop-social-science discussion, focuses slightly in LA).

Park Cruising: What Happens When We Wander Off the Path by Marcus McCann (part journalistic account, part political analysis, focuses on Ontario).

Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Esteban Muñoz (part queer theory, part manifesto).

 

sent 4/30/25