gay bathroom sex
by
Douglas Messerli
It
is rather startling to suddenly perceive as I recently have, that although it
is a subject seldom mentioned in regard to LGBTQ cinema, one of the most
recurrent activities played out on the screen, particularly in male gay movies,
is sex in public bathrooms
Although bedroom sex, and sex in almost any
place other than a bathroom is far more common in queer cinema, it is still
prevalent enough that it stands out in relationship to heterosexual moviemaking
wherein such a subject very rarely appears, primarily because the two sexes are
separated by separate facilities. But
just scanning some of the movies I have written about by the date of this essay
took me aback.
No movie embraces sex in public lavatories
more fully Frank Ripploh’s 1980 film Taxi zum klo (Taxi to the Toilet),
wherein the central character is so fond of outhouse sex that he escapes from a
hospital bed to a public toilet in a taxi, just as the title suggests. Canadian
director John Greyson’s 1988 film Pissoir (aka Urinal) brings
together an entire assemblage of famous gay artists to study the history and
current problems in the Toronto and Ontario province’s public toilets with
regard to gay sex. William E. Jones’s Tearoom (2006) is a “found” work
of actual police surveillance videos of the Mansfield, Ohio town public
bathroom where numerous gays were arrested for having sex that recontextualizes
the original footage used for entrapment.
But far more telling is that that
location of sexual activities were central in gay films as early as Kenneth
Anger’s Fireworks (1947) and continued to appear regularly in gay cinema
in films made in numerous countries and cultures such as James Bigood’s Pink
Narcissus (1971 but made earlier), Rosa von Prauheim’s It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse… of the same year, Francis Savile’s Equation
to an Unknown (1980), Paul Morrisey’s Forty Deuce (1982)—wherein a
Penn Station bathroom is even described as one of the central figure’s
“office”—Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Eythan Fox’ Time
Off (1990), Constantine Giannaris’ Caught Looking (1991), Patrice
Chéreau’s Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998) (sex in a
train toilet), Simon Shore’s Get Real (1998), Kōschi Imaizumi’s Angel
in the Toilet (1999), João Pedro Rodrígues O Fantasma (2000),
Lawrence Ferber’s Birthday Time (2000), Welby Ings’ Boy (2005),
Pedro Almadóvar’s Bad Education (2004), Adam Baran’s Love and Deaf
(2004), Stephen Haupt’s The Circle (2014), Antonío Hens’ Doors Cut
Down (2017), and Sebastien Muñoz’ The Prince (2019).
Along with the ten films discussed in
this essay, mostly films from the second decade of the 21st century, this is
just a sampling of what I presume are dozens of the others I will eventually
encounter in my queer film viewings.
People of the same sex, many of whom are
interested in observing their fellow’s private sexual organs, are of a
necessity brought together in such public places, and the fact that given that
many such individuals cannot make use of their own homes because of their age,
the propinquity of parents, children, wives, and even husbands as well as other
family members, make these highly accessible public spaces a natural
alternative for sexual intercourse, despite and even because of their notable
restrictions by law and police surveillance.
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There is, moreover, the sense the
excitement of challenge of public sex behavior, which obviously brings out the
exhibitionism and voyeurism hidden within in various degrees in most
individuals. If one were simply to look over the vast lists of even Hollywood
stars, openly gay and closeted heterosexuals, who have been arrested over the
years for public exhibition of private body parts or for lewd behavior I think
it would attest to this reality, let alone the countless numbers of everyday
gay and “straight” men who have arrested and imprisoned for public sex.
And
then is the anonymity of such places. Even the back room of bars and porno
bookstores, most of which were closed down forever during the AIDS crisis,
would have more reason to recognize their regular visitors than public
bathrooms, where thousands of different individuals come and go during open
hours. Especially in large urban areas, such spots permit even those
heterosexuals who are afraid of being labeled as gay an opportunity to
experience queer sex.
Moreover, not all public bathrooms are
equal. Some gain underground reputations as being spots where gay men cruise
while others are generally bereft of such activities. Not every public toilet
is a cruising spot, surely a blessing for straight men many of whom want no
part in participating or even observing through the corner of their eyes such
activities. Yet, some such bathrooms are equally notorious for attracting
heterosexual men.
Finally, such locations are, after all,
dedicated to the release of bodily fluids, all which provide us some pleasure.
Yet beyond these general statements, I
cannot totally explain—without writing a long and researched tome that goes far
beyond the purposes of this study—why gay men throughout modern history have
been willing to risk such behavior in public cottages, toilets, WCs, bathrooms,
latrines, men’s rooms, comfort stations, pissoirs or whatever you want to call
them. And despite all the attempts to restrict, close down, and correct such
behavior in public places, sexual action has continued to take occur in these
public spaces so significantly that queer cinema obviously feels it is
necessary to portray it.
Eight of the ten films I discuss below
are from the second decade of the new century, and accordingly I have entered
this gathering under the year of the third of these entries, 2010, instead of
the first in 2006. As usual, however, I have listed all the films in red under
the year in which they were released to show their places within the context of
when they were created.
These films represent a wide range of
bathroom sex, from Argentinian director Claudio Bonelli’s wry commentary of an
unlikely young man’s encounter with a regular bathroom denizen In el WC (Restroom)
of 2006, the youthful explorations of teenage schoolboys in Brazilian director
Felipe Sholl’s Tá (Okay) (2008), an attempted arrest that ends
instead in a bathroom tango and the unfulfilled desires of the cop in Julien
Leyre’s Honeypot (2010), a police sting of bathroom sex in a small
midwestern town in Monte Petterson’s Caught (2011), a near-homophobic
scare-tactic pic against such sex in public park bathrooms in Jane Pickett’s The
Men’s Room (2012), something close to a panegyric of pleasure of the sex in
gay subway stations in Ashton Pina’s WC (2014), a satire about the
propensity of such activity of school and public bathrooms in Erik Clemensen’s two shorts of 2014, also
titled The Men’s Room and The Men’s Room 2, to the far
more-nuanced tale about a regular meetup of an outsider and security guard at a
factory’s public lavatory in South African director Chadlee Skrikker’s Arrangement
(2019), and another comic satire, this of opera bathroom queens in US director João
Dall'Stella’s Stalls (2019).
Los
Angeles, October 21, 2022
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2022).
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