My first encounter with cruising was completely accidental.

I was at uni, buried in some essay at the library, when I ducked to the bathroom for a break. It was dead quiet sitting in that stall; I just sat there scrolling on my phone.

I heard someone enter the stall beside me. I glanced down and noticed their foot inching closer under the partition, with a movement that felt like it had clear intent. The disembodied shoe tapped twice, and was followed by the sound of a deep throat clear from the other side.

Here’s the thing: I was a university student who was Horny with a capital fucking H. I recognised the tap as a sort of invitation. So, with my heart racing, I edged my foot toward theirs, hoping that the small gesture was enough to signal I was down to clown.

What followed was my first public sexual experience: an anonymous, mutual blowjob that gave me such an adrenaline rush, I replayed it in my mind every night for the next week.

Image: By author, Pablo Alfierri

After that, I became obsessed with learning about queer public sex. It was intoxicating.

This resulted in countless Google searches – queries I could never repeat for the sake of my own dignity. (Fine, you twisted my arm – I remember one specifically being along the lines of: how to find sex in toilets in Canberra but can you get in trouble.)

One term consistently appeared across my self-directed research: ‘cruising’, along with ‘beats’, which refer to specific spots where these hookups commonly occurred. I was genuinely shocked to discover so many local cruising spots, from public toilets I hadn’t known even existed, to more exposed locations in parks and near lakes.

Young and driven by nothing but post-adolescent hormones, I ventured to some of these spots in search of that same feeling I was bestowed from my previous bathroom encounter.

One late night, I had found myself in a public toilet filled with cobwebs and old wood, which was definitely asbestos-ridden. I sat in a cubicle that featured a large hole in the partition between the stalls – a gloryhole.

I sat there – terrified a spider would drop on my head – and waited for what felt like hours. Eventually, I heard footsteps shuffle in. The excitement returned, an intoxicating mix of fear and arousal.

I listened as the person closed the door and locked it. We sat in brief mutual silence. Then, I saw a finger poke through the hole, but the fingernail was long… darkened… almost black, like it belonged to a witch.

I panicked. I bolted out immediately and didn’t look back, convinced I was being chased by some demon of the night.

Aside from that one particular evening, I had many positive experiences in the world of cruising.

It would be difficult to recount the many (some hilarious, some incredibly hot) encounters I’ve had over the years, but at the end of each experience, I’ve felt more and more connected to my queerness. 

These experiences – equal parts thrilling and terrifying – have helped me really understand what cruising means. 

Cruising is a word that some of us in the queer community know intimately, but it might sound mysterious to outsiders.

The term started floating around in the late 1960s as a secret ‘code’, although the practice itself dates back hundreds of years. It allowed queer people to explore hookups without straight people catching on.

At its core, cruising has traditionally been about men seeking men by meeting up in parks, public bathrooms and gym locker rooms for anonymous action.

In the 1970s, cruising became a crucial way for queer people to explore their sexuality without risking their public lives, in a world that was actively hostile to the community. 

But this protection came with its own risks: the legal dangers of public sex, the threat of targeted violence and the constant shadow of transmissible infections.

Cruising is about queer connection and desire – two things society traditionally prefers to suppress.

As someone who has dipped their toes into the thrilling and sometimes surreal world of cruising, I’ve seen how it’s evolved firsthand.

Physical cruising spots have mostly migrated online. Apps like Sniffies, Grindr and even Tinder have become our modern cruising grounds, where getting laid feels like it’s just a swipe away.

While Grindr is practically a household name now, its more specialised kinky cousin Sniffies is still somewhat mysterious.

Sniffies is a map-based app that fully embraces explicit sexuality and anonymity. The interface lets users drop their location on a real-time map, browse others nearby, and even mark established cruising spots.

Going online has completely transformed how cruising works. 

In its prime, cruising was all about chance; you’d hook up with whoever happened to be there at the same time as you. In those dimly lit corners, conventional beauty standards and preferences often took a backseat to the raw chemistry of random meetings.

I’ve found there’s something beautifully democratic about traditional cruising – the darkness and anonymity working as great equalisers. But online platforms have brought an unprecedented level of pickiness to these encounters.

What was once about spontaneous connection has transformed into a highly-curated experience, where digital profiles are like bouncers to physical interaction.

Users now list specific requirements: age restrictions, body type preferences and presentation demands.

Even in old-school cruising spots, phones have changed everything. I’ve watched guys checking their apps while cruising in person – the thrill of the unknown replaced by careful screening.

The equalising darkness of these spaces now competes with the glow of phone screens.

Despite the convenience of apps, I still find myself drawn back to the ‘analogue’ world of cruising.

There’s a certain electricity to making eye contact across a dimly lit room – the subtle choreography of movement that signals interest without a word being spoken. These wordless interactions feel almost sacred in their simplicity: a language developed out of necessity that now carries its own kind of poetry.

What also remains holy to me is the transformation of ordinary spaces. A park bench, a bathroom stall, the corner of a gym locker room can become charged with potential energy when viewed through the lens of cruising. It’s a kind of queer alchemy, turning the everyday into something thrilling and subversive.

Our community has always excelled at finding beauty and connection in the margins, and in creating our own worlds within the dominant culture.

Without the filtering mechanisms of profile pictures and stats, we’re forced to engage with each other as complete human beings, responding to chemistry that can’t be reduced to a checklist of preferences.

As our community gains more societal acceptance and our digital options multiply, I wonder what will become of these sacred cruising spaces and rituals.

Part of me hopes they’ll persist as a reminder of our history – of the ingenious ways queer people have always found to connect with each other, even when the world denied us conventional paths to intimacy. 

In preserving these traditions, even as they evolve, we honor the generations who came before us: those who created these codes and spaces when they had nowhere else to turn.