“The bathroom? Oh, just down the corridor, next to the diffuser.” It was a perfectly civil interaction. Leaning on the faux-marble kitchen island of his penthouse, our illustrious host was holding court, pouring out a gin and tonic and offering guests his room as a makeshift coat check. If it hadn’t been for the Italian gentleman standing so closely behind him, you’d hardly have known he was ... multi-tasking.
“A chill out,” I thought to myself, sorry-excuse-me-ing my way around 30 or so islands of male bodies gyrating against Elephant’s Breath walls, “is an awfully casual euphemism for orgy.” I made it to the bathroom, shimmied off my jumper (university-branded, I hadn’t packed for the occasion when I left for a date 14 hours ago) and stripped down to my boxers (Topman, pink, XS, the elastic shot through).
I ended up loitering around the peripheries like some sort of Jo Malone-scented sex pest
These jockstrap-clad men were, according to most mainstream gay male metrics, far better looking than me. This is not to be self-deprecating — it makes no sense to compare myself with financial consultants who spend 75 per cent of their £245,000 salaries on artificial milk and, one tells me later, quite genuine steroids. It was clear, however, that the dress code was all Baywatch biceps and inverted triangle torsos. What did I bring? Christian Bale in The Machinist and the BMI of a MacBook Air. It was swiftly apparent that no one would be saying hello.
The agony, the ecstasy
But this is what I wanted! This is gay rights in action. This is sexual liberation. This is building Stonewall in Elephant and Castle’s green and pleasant land! The only schemas for a gay coming-of-age I’d had to hand growing up were paeans to the ecstatic freedom of partying and the odd hook-up in a sweaty nightclub. In Andrew Holleran’s novel Dancer from the Dance, the erotic potential of orgies is a potent antidote to the homophobic politics of late-1970s New York. And, finally, I was doing it. Sick of watching straight friends fall in love for an evening over a dinner party table, I had wanted something spontaneous for myself. Like most queer people, sex and romance were penned behind a screen, limited to two per cent of the population. So, I’d said yes to the date (Joshua, 27, doctor from the Highlands, flying home Monday), said yes to the club night, the afterparty, the “chill out”.
Pressing through the kitchen to the main dining room — which, incidentally, had a stunning view of St Paul’s — I felt, as far as 20th-century bildungsromans go, about as sexy as The Bell Jar. As for where Joshua was — have you ever seen that optical illusion where you can’t tell if you’re looking at a hare or a mallard duck? Imagine that, but with body parts.
Well, maybe we’d reconnect next to the four guys hanging out, to put it politely, by the Habitat shag rug. Over the course of three stilted conversations, I learned that guys had been chilling in this air-tight room for nigh on 24 hours, with no food breaks, and showers otherwise engaged. That view of St Paul’s was only possible because some Good Samaritan had wiped away the condensation on the window. Everyone was a little older than me: young enough to plan the event over Instagram DMs, old enough to discuss it via Bridesmaids gifs. They had already (literally) settled into their groups of two or three or seven for the night, so I ended up loitering around the peripheries like some sort of Jo Malone-scented sex pest.
There were more men from Portobello Road in that kitchen than people of colour. It is a stark reminder that putting a rainbow flag next to “Clapham” in your Instagram bio does not an activist make
Missing in action
There was, it’s important to note, no music. Hardly any speaking. Plenty else was missing, too. The population of this party was as diverse as it was showered. There were more men from Portobello Road in that kitchen than people of colour. It is a stark reminder that putting a rainbow flag next to “Clapham” in your Instagram bio does not an activist make.
Writers such as Christopher T Conner have produced insightful studies into the “no fats, no femmes, no Asians” mindset of white gay men on dating apps like Grindr — which only removed the option to filter out “black” on your preferences in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Physical beauty is not as democratic as Andrew Holleran might hope. It’s true that being surrounded by a lot of toned men who very much didn’t want to have sex with me was a little sad-making. It is also true that, for many, that feeling is compounded by intersectional issues that result not only in hurt feelings, but in very real physical violence. I may not have fitted the dress code, but I was on the guest list.
For most people there, abandoning themselves to naked romps among the soft furnishings genuinely was a way of connecting with their own queer identity. Joshua told me that chill outs (he’s been to a few) make him feel alive. In the Highlands, he said, there’s no queer community to speak of. For him, sharing that experience with me was joyous, euphoric even.
The thought stuck with me. Is it fair to condemn a practice that’s a historical part of how my community expresses itself, just because I was being a bit weird at a sex party? Followed by: How best to cultivate an organic sense of sexual adventure in a way that doesn’t subject me to the feeling of shame that those parties are, notionally, intended to eradicate? Followed by: In a post-PrEP Western world, where to be a white, cisgender, gay man is to be accepted as a viable consumer in a capitalist society, is casual sex in a room full of people who look exactly like you really all that radical? Followed by: f***, I’ve forgotten my jumper.
Ben Jureidini is a writer
