it’s kind of funny that you wrote this. a couple of weekends ago when i went into central park to take photos i came upon a tableaux that had me thinking the same thing. i tend to follow a pretty set rout when i go shooting pictures that takes me along the waters edge. there’s this one spot which has all these really tall reeds, they make a thick wall with a tiny path beaten between them. once you step inside, next to the path down to the water, there’s a two foot circular nook, cleared, but totally surrounded by these thick reeds. i’ve gone through there quite a few times. this last time though when i started down the path i looked in to find, no joke, 25 used condoms, torn wrappers, little vials, etc. the place was always so pristine looking. think i saw a squirrel chilling in there once… i’ll admit i was sickened. it was so out of place. here i am looking for beautiful things to shoot and this is what i come across. it sort of pissed me off actually. you need to fuck in the park? fine, take your accouterments with you when you leave for sodom’s sake!
of course, to be fair there’s no reason to assume this was a “gay” spot. maybe christo and jean-claude were so worked up by all the swirling saffron they couldn’t help themselves and snuck away to “commune with their art.”
i’m not exactly a world traveller so all i can add to your map is “the ramble” in central park. my picture taking once took me through that area as well until the sheer amount of shifty eyed, solo dudes milling around there with no apparent destination put me off enough to steer clear.
my girlfriend seems to think this conception we have is strictly an american, repressed, puritan thing. according to her there are areas in paris and italy exactly like the ones you describe, but that the locals just say, “oh, yeah, that’s where dudes bugger each other” with a shrug. doesn’t seem to put them off them at all. i really don’t care, just wish they wouldn’t leave their cock socks laying around.
I wish I still had the clipping: the most awesome typo I ever saw was in the boston Globe circa 1979 when I moved there, and there was a feature article about the fens. You know how there will be a quote from the article in bigger letters in the middle of the page (help me out here: what’s that called? a pullquote? I worked at a little paper and I still don’t know!)
Okay, so the ‘pullquote’ from the article should have read, like the text from the body of the article: ‘the impersonal sex of the fenway takes place in a forest of ten-foot-high reeds.’
what typo could be better than that?
‘the impersonal sex of the fenway takes place in a forest of ten-foot-high needs.’
still true, oh so true.