I’d learned that anyplace people showed skin meant that skin was potentially open to being touched. I’d promised to give him lessons in cruising, having shared with him some of the stories I’d collected in the past. I studied histories of other queer spaces: molly houses in England (spaces where men met for socializing, sex, and the procurement of both) public lavatories in Paris (and everywhere else) and other in-between spaces, like the Christopher Street piers elegized by the science fiction writer Samuel Delany.
