Reading cues from a potential hookup in a mask can be tough. But over the years, queers have found creative ways to communicate desire\u2014and to stay connected<\/p>\n\n \n\n
I<\/span> love face masks<\/strong> for saving countless lives, but they are seriously messing up my game. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I\u2019ve started taking long, leisurely strolls (masked, of course) around the Castro<\/a> District, San Francisco\u2019s historic gaybourhood. As an internationally significant queer mecca with a robust history, the Castro is also <\/em>an epicentre of unrelenting male cruising.\r\n\r\nSuch was the case on a Sunday in early July, when I spotted a handsome masked bear in the neighbourhood walking his dog toward me. As his dog stopped to say hello, I offered a good-natured smile. \u201cYou\u2019re cute,\u201d my eyes flashed. He stared sternly back. Or was he smiling too? No\u2014I\u2019m sure he was just staring. And so was I.\r\n\r\nAnd that\u2019s when I realized that, without the bottom half of his face, I was unable to interpret our prolonged eye contact. I couldn\u2019t detect that familiar smirk signalling a curiosity or mutual interest. What\u2019s worse, my facial cues were also obstructed. In the game of queer cruising, I was unarmed.\r\n\r\nAs the bear continued walking, I couldn\u2019t help but feel that, because of our masks, we\u2019d lost a point of potential connection; that, in the time of COVID-19, it feels like queers are starting to lose an age-old cruising language.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m not alone: Other queer men tell me they\u2019re struggling with misreading the signs of pandemic cruising, too. \u201cFolks don\u2019t really get the full \u2018desire\u2019 face, so I look a little longer than I normally would,\u201d says my friend Paolo Lopez, who I met on Grindr while visiting New York City. \u201cLike, we\u2019re not supposed to touch, but now we can\u2019t even acknowledge we\u2019re both cute either?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re just working with so much less information now,\u201d adds another friend, Andrew Shaffer of San Francisco.\r\n\r\nAdd that mystery factor to the difficulties of cruising right now. With our collective shaming of Ian Frost<\/a>\u2019s shirtless \u2018rona rave<\/a> house parties in NYC to unmasked partygoers densely packing July Fourth Fire Island sex parties<\/a>, there appears to be a broad consensus that now is just not an appropriate time to meet with people. (Though, if you decide to partake, we encourage doing so as safely as possible\u2014by getting tested regularly and being honest and forthcoming about your results<\/a>.)\r\n\r\n \u201cToday, cruising may just adapt to become a simple look: Conspicuous, attention-grabbing eye contact floating atop a sea of mouth-and-nose-covered masks\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\r\n\r\nBut it\u2019s not our out-of-control pandemic horniness<\/a> that\u2019s causing queers like me to continue cruising publicly despite the obvious health risks. Jaime Woo, Toronto-based writer and author of Meet Grindr<\/em><\/a>, says it\u2019s deeper than that. \u201cWe need to understand that people\u2019s sense of self<\/em> is also at risk,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re isolated at home, and a lot of your life touchpoints are lost because of COVID.\r\n\r\n\u201cMaybe going to the Eagle in Toronto is part of your identity. I haven\u2019t gone to a cafe in months, and it feels like I\u2019m losing my sense of self,\u201d Woo says. \u201cIt\u2019s that physicality, to touch someone, to fuck someone, that reminds us of who we are.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn a queer community that privileges sexual capital, some of us are choosing to risk their personal health to cruise and feel a sense of validation and belonging in one another.\r\n\r\n \u201cQueers persist\u2014and they will continue, even with the unanticipated new obstacle of face masks\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\r\n\r\nInspired by hanky code, lesbians later developed the key code<\/a>. Following hanky code rules, lesbians carabiner-clipped their keys on their left belt loop to indicate top, or on the right to indicate bottom. The key code is said to have stemmed from<\/a> butch womens\u2019 attraction to the blue-collar masculine aesthetic, and continues to be depicted<\/a> in popular media today.\r\n\r\nWith sodomy criminalized<\/a> and nowhere to hook up, public parks<\/a> and restrooms<\/a> became common cruising grounds where interesting signals like \u201ctapping\u201d took root. Also known as \u201ctea-rooming<\/a>\u201d in the U.S. (derived from \u201ctea,\u201d British slang for urine<\/a>), \u201ctapping\u201d is when a cruiser occupies the stall farthest from the door and taps a foot under a shared stall divider to draw engagement. If the person in the next stall reciprocates, the two swipe their hands under the divider before eventually exposing themselves, or sharing a stall. In 1970s Manhattan, men cruising Bloomingdales restrooms would share stalls and cleverly conceal their feet<\/a> by standing in a pair of shopping bags. The \u201ctapping\u201d tradition led to the creation and proliferation of glory holes<\/a>\u2014pierced holes in stall dividers through which men could engage in oral and\/or anal sex. Since the B.C. Centre for Disease Control recently endorsed glory holes<\/a> as a safe pandemic hook-up method, gay Twitter has seen a dramatic resurgence of #GloryHole<\/a>, to complement the existing spike<\/a> in \u201chorny on main\u201d social media posts<\/a>.\r\n\r\nFlash forward to 2020, and cruisers have largely transitioned to hook-up apps like Grindr, where desire is upfront and there\u2019s much less need for coded language. Regardless, public cruising lives on, with \u201cname-and-shame\u201d police stings occurring regularly<\/a> in major cities. Nevertheless, queers persist\u2014and they will continue, even with the unanticipated new obstacle of face masks.\r\n\r\nMy NYC friend Paolo jokingly suggests hand gestures to get by\u2014a throwback to the days of hanky codes and tapping. Others, like Andrew in San Francisco, take in stride the awkwardness of cruising in a mask. \u201cSomeone on the street was making eyes at me, so I made eyes back,\u201d he recalls. \u201cBut when we got closer, I realized we\u2019re already friends, and that\u2019s why he was smiling!\u201d\r\n\r\nFor generations, queer people have been gallant and creative. We have developed ways to share safety, connection and joy in the face of harrowing obstacles and overwhelming hostility. And if history is any indicator, our collective determination to get some will not be stymied by a thin veil of fabric.\r\n\r\n\u201cQueer cruising is not going away,\u201d says Jaime Woo. \u201cAnd neither is our need to connect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reading cues from a potential hookup in a mask can be tough. 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\r\n\r\nT<\/span>his same sense<\/strong> of validation, connection and belonging has at times been perilous to seek. We\u2019ve seen, in our often virulently homophobic world, that queerness can beget violence. So, through the ages, queers have adapted, forging creative and clever ways to connect with, affirm and validate one other via pregnant subtext and plausible deniability. Today, cruising may just adapt to become a simple look: Conspicuous, attention-grabbing eye contact floating atop a sea of mouth-and-nose-covered masks.\r\n\r\nIn the 1950s, for instance, British and American queers employed the Polari language<\/a>\u2014a hodgepodge of 16th-century Italian, Mediterranean Lingua Franca, Romani and British and nautical slang once used<\/a> by performers, sailors and social outcasts in the 1700s. Queers invoked Polari to dog whistle to other queers in public spaces without being detected by straights. Fluent speakers often conducted full-on conversations\u2014asking, for example, \u201cCharper charver<\/em><\/a>\u201d (Wanna fuck?)\u2014while others casually dropped Polari terms like bona<\/em> (good) and blag<\/em> (pickup line)<\/a> to covertly alert others to one\u2019s queer identity. The language was replete with camp and irony, allowing queers to crystallize a shared fortitude and buoyant morale at a time when homosexuality was subject to derision, violence and arrest.\r\n\r\nQueers of colour also developed their own tongues to codedly communicate. Scholar Martin F. Manalansan IV speculates<\/a> that Swardspeak<\/a>, <\/em>an English and Tagalog amalgam, originated with beauty parlor workers in 1970s Manila. Scholars William Leap and Tom Boellstorff also found<\/a> Javanese queers developed an even more esoteric language, wherein phrases like \u201ckopi susu\u201d (coffee with milk), doubled as \u201c(ko)ntol (p)anjang (i)tu (s)angatk(u) (su)ka,\u201d or: \u201cI really like that big cock.\u201d\r\n\r\nWith our keen fashion sense, it wasn\u2019t long before cruising became encoded in dress. Queer leathermen in the 1970s developed the hanky code<\/a>, a sartorial method of signalling queer identity and sexual fetish. \u201cThe colour of [one\u2019s] bandana was associated with a specific sexual practice or fetish,\u201d explains American historian J. Ra\u00fal Cornier<\/a>. \u201cThe wearer\u2019s sexual role was indicated by which back pocket the bandana resided in (tops wore bandanas in their left pocket; bottoms wore bandanas in their right pocket).\u201d Red was the first hanky colour, sported by fisting practitioners, while other colour associations\u2014like black for S&M and yellow for watersports\u2014were later added.\r\n\r\n