BijouBlog

I read with undue relish an article called, “The Chicago Bro Is Coming to Ruin Your Neighborhood.” Not that I am thrilled that the beer swilling, lawn pissing, stereo blasting jocks have taken over great areas of the city, but finally someone pinned down what I have been saying for years: most young white guys (not exclusively, but there is some truth to the stereotype) are jerks, and their fathers were probably jerks, and their fathers were the ones who slammed sissies into lockers and grabbed girls (or boasted of grabbing them).

I used to call them spoiled brats. Now, like the article, I think word douche applies. (Hmm … sounds like our Harasser/Douche/Vulgar Boor in Chief.)

The area by Wrigley Field in Chicago is now “bro” central, because of its proximity to a sports arena, but the area has always been bar heavy, but it was more like bars one would go to listen to bands, not scream and yell over monstrous TVs blasting “the game,” whatever it may be.
 

But it seems like the exodus into the city from suburbia to have more readily accessible sex (one of the reasons many LGBTQ migrated to cities as well) that began with the yuppies in Lincoln Park in the eighties is in full swing, and the bros are now infiltrating areas west and south of Wrigleyville, such as Logan Square.

I must admit, yes, they exude like sweat the hotness of youth, physically attractive in the most overt way without trying to be. Think manspread, which one really notices in those sloppy shorts and T-shirts and overall lack of clothing that conceals the bro wears. He looks hot even in rags.
 

And all those gay porn videos with straight guys, or at least ostensibly straight. And all that cuddling and bromance.
 

But if that attraction is welded together with narcissism, as the article claims, “the rules of common decency don 't apply to him,” and the usual “boys will be boys” smack of approval … we might as well run the country like a fraternity house and its worst excesses.

What disturbs me is the overt homophobia and misogyny this culture, but something that happened the other day in Toronto is another disastrous result. A driver of a van mowed down several people, resulting in casualties.

He expressed anger towards women in social media posts. He resented being “involuntarily celibate,” that is, he could not be with a woman and thus be a “real man.” Essentially, he was upset because he did not fit in with what he called, “The Chads and Stacys.” Take that to mean, in some ways, the bro culture.

Toxic masculinity. It's obvious here. Horrifyingly obvious. But are gay guys exempt from participating in this dynamic? That another question. But it's clear that gay guys have been the victims of this culture in its various forms for a long time, perhaps since the beginning of time.

Whatever the case, I am not going to let these bros wreak havoc on me or mine. Grow up, or get outta here. And guess what? You will grow old, and your hotness won't cover up the fact that you are, and always will be, jerks. We all need to make sure, in whatever safe and productive way possible, that you don't raise another generation of jerks.

I used to see when I was traveling by car (including places with my parents when I was a child) places with signs like XXX, adult, bookstores, Girls! Girls! Girls!. I was blissfully ignorant, being more concerned at that point in my life with Star Trek and J.R.R. Tolkien, but I do remember now that we lived down the road from a notorious strip of what used to be called go-go joints. I later found out they were owned by the Mafia, and what looked like apartments above them were actually places where the johns could take the girls.

This underworld really invoked no curiosity, until right after high school my friend Nancy expressed an interest in going to an adult movie theater. Nancy's mother, far more hip and liberal than my parents, warned us that people might masturbate in there. The place itself, in the suburbs, didn't look much different than a mainstream movie theater. It was clean, physically, and the clientele wasn't the scuzzy people Nancy's mother thought would be whipping out their dicks. In fact, the people in there I noticed were more my parent's age. And the movie of course was heterosexual, but I saw oral sex for the first time (I was shocked at the size of the erect cocks, not in my experience at all), and an orgy scene. I was disappointed the guys were not doing it with each other. I also asked the ticket taker if they showed any S & M movies. He was cute, bearded in a kind of shaggy seventies style, and he said “No.” So, that was it, I guess. For now …
 

When I moved to the city, like many suburban gay guys did, to explore sex, I discovered gradually a deeper, more physically threatening underworld. The XXX adult bookstores prevalent at that time on Rush Street band State Street north of the Chicago River beckoned, and I even went to one during my lunch hour. I bought three of those pulp jack off books we sell on our website, all with S & M themes. About that time, I also remember going with Nancy again (by the way, she is now a doctor, interpret that development as you wish) to one of those stores. I was shocked by the titles of two books, Carol's Strange Choice (the family dog) and Widow Loves Farm Animals. Yikes! Moving on …

At this point I was feeling both titillated and shocked, but never really comfortable, like I was where I belonged. I graduated to a couple of places called bookstores which had peep show booths and glory hole booths, but I didn't actually do anything in them. The back room of a bar called Touché (the old one at Lincoln and Diversey) was the first place I actually fooled around with a guy in public, and it seemed like the places where I was exploring my sexuality were becoming more and more “divey” in the physical sense: dirty wooden floors, spilled beer … that unique scent of a bare cock and balls, skin and sweat and funk. Subsequently, I got to know floors quite well … the AA Meat Market, and several leather bars in New York City.
 

But the gay adult movie theater was still an unexplored place. I finally made it there, most unfortunately, long after its halcyon days, the Bijou Theater on Wells Street in Chicago. I went on a tour with the group Masters and Slaves together (it seemed clean and quiet, and I didn't make it to the upstairs maze. Yet. That happened a few years later when I went to a leather event at the theater, and I was one of those people (albeit dressed in leather) Nancy's mother warned us about. I do wish, however, that the event continued in my apartment.
 

Now that sexual exploration begins and ends with the Internet and social media apps, those secret XXX places can exist in one's phone and in one's home, but I think, overall, one loses some of that complex reaction to a physical place where the most physically powerful and also vulnerable of acts takes place.