In the summer of 1987, I lived with my boyfriend Fabio in a two-bedroom apartment in Kingston, Ontario. We met as students at Queen’s University and secretly carried on our love affair before moving in together. We became boyfriends during the burgeoning AIDS crisis. One evening, we sat in bed and watched a panel discussion held by one of the American News Networks–I cannot remember which one. What struck me was the inflammatory opening remark made by a conservative Congressman, whose name I do not remember, who asserted that “perversion and promiscuity” were to blame for the AIDS crisis. That sentiment was shared through the 1980s. I remember the stand-up comic Sam Kinison, who screamed in one of his routines that AIDS became an epidemic “because a few fags fuck some monkeys; they got tired of their own assholes.” Jerry Falwell claimed it was God’s judgement on homosexuals and blamed the spread of the disease into the innocent heterosexual population on bisexual men. Yes, AIDS was seen as a gay plague. Fabio and I, like countless gay men in the 1980s, were concerned. There was uncertainty about how easily the virus was transmitted. Before the dawn of the AIDS crisis, our biggest concern as students in the 1980s was the risk of an unwanted pregnancy or getting herpes.

The comment on perversion and promiscuity among gay men stung. What little I knew of male homosexuality growing up was what I heard others say–that homosexuals were disordered, perverted and obsessed with sex, particularly with underage boys. The portrayal of male homosexuality in television series in the 1970s typically featured leather bars. I knew about bathhouses from news reports on police raids in four gay bathhouses in Toronto in 1981. I learned of a gay cruising ground in Ottawa, serving in the Canadian Army as a reservist in 1980 at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. A man in the transport company I served mentioned how he and his friends went to roll the faggots at Major’s Hill Park in Ottawa. MacDonald Park in Kingston was better known as “pervert park” by students. It was a cruising ground. As a boy, I remember using the public washroom at MacDondald Park and seeing the glory holes in the walls of the stalls. Naturally, I had no idea what they were at the time. Students I befriended at Queen’s University who were sympathetic to gay men as a demographic had no patience for men who used the washrooms in the University Centre for public sex, and frankly, neither did I.

Gay men had an image problem, and it made it difficult for me to accept that I was gay. I knew that I was not mentally ill or a pervert, and neither was I interested in bathhouses, cruising grounds and a life of tricking. Bathhouses and saunas still operate, and safe sex is encouraged. Plus, PrEP is a drug available to reduce the risk of getting HIV for men and women who are sexually active with multiple partners. It is okay for those who like to play the field, provided they avoid infection and infecting others. Cruising in parks and washrooms persists, but it exists on the fringe of gay culture. Most gay men find it gauche.

I strolled through Major’s Hill Park one evening to see if it was a cruising ground. Men were loitering along the path, and I did not linger. I never went to bathhouses and saunas, save for a weekend trip to Montreal in 1992. I went with my boyfriend Alvin and another couple. We consulted a gay travel guide, looking for a gay hotel and found one. We did not look thoroughly into the guide, as the hotel was also a sauna. We spent two nights barricaded in our room. Alvin and I went to Amsterdam in 1993 and dropped into various gay bars. Some were nightclubs where men danced and socialized. We stepped into a leather bar for a quick look. Alvin wanted me to see it, and we even had a beer in a boy bordello. Eastern European youths in the Netherlands illegally often took to prostitution to survive. Yes, there is a seamy side to humanity in sexual activity, and gay men as a demographic are not exempt. Fortunately, male homosexuality is accepted as an ordinary expression of human sexuality. Gay men are free to marry, as Mika and I live together in a Common-Law marriage. We will go out to celebrate twenty-six years together this weekend. How people choose to live is their business, and I try not to judge. Still, I am burdened by the lingering sense of shame I carried growing up gay when male homosexuality was reviled and homosexuals seen as sex-obsessed hedonists and a threat to boys.

Posted by Geoffrey