What’s the best way to get sex on a Friday night? Should you wear a new shirt? Have a bath and douse yourself with the latest expensive after-shave? Put on a T-shirt that says “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me”? Actually, no. There’s a much easier option: go to a new bar.
Years ago, I came across a wonderful phrase from the realms of sociology: “the impulse to exogamy”. This is a posh way of saying “the desire to have sex with someone you don’t know”.
Exogamy is, according to a Greek-speaking friend of mine, simply “marrying outside your village”. It has its origins in the sociological observation that when a stranger turned up in a remote village, he would immediately be of particular interest to all the females (and presumably, though the sociologists don’t note it, some of the males).
If you and most of your relations don’t travel much, there’s an obvious biological motive for this: someone new has different genes, so mating with him will likely produce slightly “fitter” (in an evolutionary sense) children than mating with your second-cousin from the next farm along the road.
Although most of the time gay men aren’t involved in sharing genes for reproductive purposes, we’ve inherited this impulse from our ancestors. The practical implication is obvious: if you want to get sex, go somewhere where you’re a new face.
If you go to the same bar every weekend, there are advantages, of course: the barman will know what you drink, and, in the words of the song, “everybody knows your name”. The problem is that not only does everybody know your name, they also know who you’ve slept with, how good you were in bed, and whether you’re a bunny-boiler or a pussy-cat.
Anyone who might have been interested in you has long since either slept with you, or eliminated you permanently from consideration.
This is not conducive to getting a shag. Aside from the rare cases of a regular bringing along his cousin from out-of-town, or the tourist who’s wandered into your local by mistake, your chances of meeting someone who’ll consider you, either for a one-nighter or as the love of their life, are minimal. And notice this: your chances are all drawn from the ranks of the “new faces”.
If you want to get laid, it helps if you yourself are the new face.
It was with this in mind that I found myself sitting on the District Line this weekend, heading out to west London.
“IF YOU GO TO THE SAME BAR EVERY WEEKEND, NOT ONLY DOES EVERYBODY KNOW YOUR NAME, THEY ALSO KNOW WHO YOU’VE SLEPT WITH, HOW GOOD YOU ARE IN BED, AND WHETHER YOU’RE A BUNNY-BOILER OR A PUSSY-CAT”
I’m an inner-city boy, and I get agoraphobia if I go outside Zone 2, so it was an interesting experience just to find myself so far out. Did you know they have trees in the streets there?
With green leaves and everything! And if you breathe the air, your snot doesn’t turn black when you pick your nose. It’s also un-nervingly quiet – sometimes they have whole evenings where you don’t hear a police siren.
The boys in the pubs are different, too. For one thing, they’re better-dressed. They really do wear nice shirts with matching buttons and stuff, and they’ve ironed their jeans. Each one is accompanied by a classic fag-hag, wearing what she considers to be “outrageous” fashion, and delightedly clinging onto her “gay best friend”. It’s like stepping back to the early 1990s.
I’d arranged to meet up with a friend of mine, Eddie, whose local this was.
When I got there he was already propping up the bar, a double vodka and tonic in his hand. I got a beer, and we caught up on our news. It was still early, and at first the pub was fairly quiet, but as time passed it filled up. As a regular, Eddie was able to give me a running commentary on who was who and what was what as they came in.
“That’s Jason. You don’t want to know him: he got herpes last year, and it still flares up now and then. And don’t trust his friend Brian either: everyone he sleeps with loses his wallet.”
“The muscleboys are Andrei and Simeon. They’re from Eastern Europe, and very protective of each other. And completely monogamous, I’m afraid. You’d be wasting your time.”
“The redhead who’s just come in is Stuart. I shagged him once when he first started coming here, but he’s a bit of a bore, and only likes to get fucked when he’s very drunk. Which happens often.”
“That’s David. And the girl with him is his fag-hag, Tenisha. He’s nice enough, though a bit of a princess, but Tenisha won’t let him sleep with anyone. As soon as anyone expresses an interest, she gets in between him and David. David doesn’t realise that she really wants him herself, and she doesn’t realise that he’ll never be interested in her in the way she wants. Sad, really.”
After a while the music got louder and it became impossible to talk. Eddie gave up shouting descriptions of the punters in my ear, and I found myself listening to Kylie and admiring the monogamous Bulgarian couple – easily the hottest guys there – while some of the clientele bounced around in a sort of bijou dancette area at one end of the bar.
I looked around, and was surprised to discover that I was being cruised by several guys.
I recognised some from Eddie’s descriptions earlier: there was the redhead who drank too much, and there was the one described as a “princess”, sneaking looks at me when he thought his fag-hag wasn’t watching. I must be being paranoid, I thought, I’m even imagining the happily married eastern europeans are looking at me.
My “new face” status was clearly working well: over the course of the next couple of hours four or five guys came over to chat or to offer me a drink. There was nobody who really caught my interest, though there were a few entertaining moments. As anticipated, Stuart the redhead had too much beer, then came over and drunkenly explained that he was desperate for a cock.
Tenisha the fag-hag marched over while David was in the toilet, and aggressively told me to “keep my hands off” her gay boy, as he was apparently too innocent for the likes of me. Jason and Brian introduced themselves to me together – I got the impression no-one else wanted to be friends with them – and I got signs of interest from both of them.
Jason was sweet and rather shy, but explained that he would be going home alone because he “liked to get to know guys first”. His friend Brian was much more forward, at one stage feeling up my ass with a cheeky smile.
Fortunately, I’d moved my wallet to a front pocket when I saw him coming over, so a quick feel was all he got. Sadly, neither of the eastern Europeans came over – too wrapped up in each other, I suppose – though I looked over a few times, admiring their muscled bodies.
Eventually, the evening wound to a close, and I was rather disappointedly contemplating the night bus back to central London as I stepped out onto the street, when I felt a tap on my arm.
It was one of the Bulgarians, though I wasn’t sure of his name: would I like to come back for drinks with him and his boyfriend?
“Just drinks?” I asked.
“Well,” he grinned, “perhaps something more…”
A couple of hours later, as the three of us lay in a sweaty pile on their bed, I asked them why they hadn’t approached me earlier in the evening.
“Easy,” said Andrei in deeply accented English, “we could tell you were interested, but we didn’t want people to see what we were doing. You know how people talk…”
