The biggest hurdle to exploring my sexuality was my own self-consciousness, that was the only work I had to put into having sex, especially when I was younger. Mostly.) Though usually flagrant with their hankies since only gay men knew what they meant, you’d also find a fair few of these butt flags flying at places like The Ramble in Central Park, or the Meat Rack on Fire Island, or the dunes on Jones Beach: notorious breeding grounds for public, anonymous gay sex.Ĭoming of age in the time of Adam2Adam, DList, and later Grindr, I never needed firsthand experience with things like the hanky code or bathhouses. It was a necessary game to play at a time where society sneered at Queers and the law enforcement breathed down their necks (in a non-sexual context. A man would put a bandana of the appropriate color in his back pocket (left if he’s a top, right for bottoms) to quietly declare his sexual proclivities and availability. This is a bit of what I know about the hanky code, a sartorial semiotic approach to cruising for gay sex that went out of style 30 or 40 years ago. Yellow means you’re into water sports, red signals an interest in fisting, robin’s egg blue pertains to 69ing, mauve is for navel fetishes, union jacks are for skinheads, black, of course, advertises BDSM.
