The Cruising Addicts
When Jessie’s friends asked him why he’d arrived to footy 30 minutes late, he lied. The bus was running slow, he said — a nearly constant occurrence in Melbourne. When Jessie leaves his friends waiting, he usually blames it on the bus.
On any given day, in public toilets around Melbourne, hundreds of men like Jessie come together for brief and self-contained sexual encounters. Perhaps you prefer to imagine that these things are only done in dilapidated, out-of-the-way toilet blocks of the kind you avoid. In fact, the only simple way to avoid passing through an active beat in a city like Melbourne is to use the ladies’ room.
The first-floor men’s restroom at the Collins Place shopping centre is about as smart as a public lavatory can be, with well-swept imitation granite tiling and lighting fit for a jeweller’s. There are no puddles of urine or darkened corners, holes drilled in the cubicle dividers or scatological anapaests scribbled on the walls. Collins Place, a placard near its revolving doors announces, is somewhere “people meet, planned [sic] or serendipitously, celebrating a truly Melbourne character in an unrivalled location.”
Enter the first-floor men’s toilets around 1:00 pm on a weekday, and you will find every single stall closed and locked. Despite its eight-plus occupants, the room stays uncannily silent. Approach the trough urinal lining the…
