[This delightfully vintage Savage Love question was originally published March 22, 2001.—eds]
This question concerns both sex and etiquette: How much privacy can one reasonably expect while engaging in consensual sex in a sex club? While visiting one of those open-to-the-public establishments that cater to men who want to get off with other men, I saw an uptight but openly gay prig who is a member of my social circle. I shared this fact with a straight-but-gay-friendly woman while dishing the dirt over cocktails. She blabbed it to others.
This issue has turned a group of adult men and women into a squabbling mob of kids at recess. Three camps have formed on our little playground: (1) There is some kind of fag code of honor that nobody ever told me about that says that whatever deeds take place in these establishments stay there. (This is Mr. Prig’s position.) (2) One is free to talk about what one sees in a sex club but one should be discreet when sharing that information. (Telling a straight woman, for example, would be out of bounds.) (3) If you choose to rim one man while being sucked by another in full view of 30 people in a quasi-public place in New York City, well, you’ve really blown any expectation of anonymity. (This is my view.)
Your input as an expert on sex and manners would be greatly appreciated.
Blabber Mouth
I forwarded your letter to Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners, who regularly tackles etiquette questions in her very fine advice column. Alas, gentle reader, Miss Manners has not, as of this writing, done me the courtesy of responding. Therefore I shall, with your kind indulgence, wing it:
The gay man who cultivates a priggish persona—the type who makes an elaborate show of disgust when he hears of other gay men’s feats of sexual daring-do—must never allow himself to be seen in public engaged in a sex act that requires more than two dozen syllables and four languages to accurately catalogue, e.g., an exhibitionist homosexual ménage à trois featuring analingus and fellatio.
As for the amount of privacy a person can “reasonably expect” in a sex club, a prig may desire privacy in a public sex environment, hoping that others present will be as discreet as the prig is being indiscreet, but there’s nothing reasonable about that expectation. In fact, it’s thoroughly irrational. As for the first camp’s position—”[there’s a] fag code of honor… that says that whatever deeds take place in [sex clubs] stay there”—that’s news to me. Most gay men, as most gay men will tell you, are terrible gossips. If you don’t want gay men gossiping about your sex life, don’t have sex in front of a crowd of gay men. Likewise, the second camp’s position—gay men, as a rule, should be discreet—isn’t grounded in reality. If discretion is a “rule,” well, it’s one that gay men flout as aggressively as we do those “sexual conduct strictly prohibited” signs posted in the locker rooms of better health clubs everywhere.
While most gay men regard rimming and sucking as relatively vanilla, performing both at once in front of 30 men is a remarkably sleazy thing to do—and it’s Mr. Prig’s own fault his sex-club tableau was so remarkable. Had Mr. Prig refrained from misrepresenting himself to his social circle, then there wouldn’t have been anything remarkable about spotting him in a sex club with his tongue wedged in a strange man’s rump. If your friends knew him for an ass-eating sleaze-o-rama, you wouldn’t have had the dirt on him. That Mr. Prig’s public sexual conduct conflicted with his publicly stated beliefs about sex made his behavior remarkable and blabworthy. Mr. Prig is a hypocrite, now unmasked, with no one to blame but himself for his humiliation.
Finally, let me remind my gentle readers that rimming is not a first-date activity. While low-risk for HIV, rimming is high-risk for everything else, and if you don’t know how recently your companion has showered, rimming is in terribly poor taste. I believe Judith Martin disagrees on this point, but Miss Manners takes a more permissive position on oral-anal contact than I, which is her prerogative as a lady.
