What happened to public sex?

"Why do you think the sex clubs all shut down?" I asked.  We were on a driving trip and somehow got onto the subject of sex again.  Kevin's had a really colorful past, full of sex clubs, alcohol and debauchery.  I couldn't really understand it sometimes.  I was a serial monogamist punctuated with some wild weeks in-between boyfriends but nothing like the stories he can tell.  Sex on the balcony because his best friend was fucking a trick in his room, sex right next to his best friend cause bed space was limited, trolling the sex clubs, passing out on the beach...  Then he met me.  And although I'd highly encourage him fucking a guy in front of me, he's not interested. That part of his life is over.

"It's because all the people that lived there got tired of all that shit.  I wouldn't want to walk the dog one night and have the dog chasing half naked guys or cleaning up the condoms every morning in my own front yard."

I'm not sure if that's really it.  Yes, the places he went to were in Silverlake.  It's now hipster central.  Great music scene and indie rock couples all tatted up with a stroller walking their kid down the block.  Silverlake, though, used to be different. It was largely a latino community mixed in with some really hardcore gay leather daddy crowd.  When I was coming out, things were kinda conservative twinkish, so being in silverlake meant you were a real hardcore sex pig.  Then the housing market boomed and the music scene took off and it just became cool to live in silverlake.  The leather bars started closing, the sex clubs started closing...

Then I think of the documentary Silverlake Life, which followed a couple as they battled HIV/AIDS.  And I sorta wonder if the gentrification was only a part of the story.  Sadly, I think a great many of the crowd passed away.  And the others all went online.  I don't think we meet guys for casual hookups in sex clubs anymore.  We somehow think that's way more dangerous than finding a hot body online and fucking at someone's house.  Or maybe it's something else.  I dunno.

"But I do have to say," Kevin continued, "that as sad as it may sound, it's the sex clubs that kinda built up my confidence.  It was the thrill of the chase and me knowing that I can bag a hot guy.  You know how I was when you met me.  I wasn't some worked out, gym god.  I started going grey and my hair started thinning early.  But man, sometimes I felt like I was hot as shit."

And I know the guys he goes for.  And he doesn't really settle for something less easily.  I must have had a good hair day when we met cause I'm the bottom of his scale.  Ha!

So I knew what he meant.  And I dig it.  I love the way he fucks with confidence.  He does it to mark his territory, to conquer, to make me his.  He controls and gets off even more when I get turned on by it.  When I'm looking up at him hovering over me, it's that intense look of predator taking what he wants and thriving on the victory.  All I gotta say is, thank god he was a slut!

And I think of now.  How everything is removed.  No longer the non-verbal cues and the dance from cruising but flashing pics and friending and liking.  Maybe I'm wrong and flirting has become more of the norm instead of the overt sexual gestures.  Maybe it's wit that's prized as we move less toward direct contact and more towards online encounters.  Maybe the delicate dance where guys silently express their desires and they magically sort themselves out to tight tongue and groove match of wants... maybe that has been superceded by the art of the flirt where a colorful flick of a phrase that brings out the smile or the artfully posed pic that makes a guy chub up and want to fuck.  But I somehow feel like I missed out a bit or at least something has been lost.

In theory, I wouldn't mind watching guys hook up in the dark in front of my house, but yeah, after awhile, I'd get tired of slipping on a used condom on my way to the car.