Status Updates From Cruising: An Intimate Histo...

Cruising can be viewed as our need to connect with one another […] out of the necessity all marginalized groups have: the desire to be with one's own kind. Somewhat similar to ways in which many immigrants […] reshape and reimagine entire neighborhoods and essentially re-create the towns and Villages they left behind, gay men have taken […] anonymous locations and transformed these for the survival of the group

Aaron Betsky writes, “The queerest space of all is the void, and AIDS has made us live in that emptiness, that absence, that loss… It is not a queer space any of us would want to inhabit, but many have been forced to make it their own.”

Tom Rasmussen examined its legacy and impact: "So why do we 'do what we do? Cruising […] is born just as much out of need as it is out of want!”
When your identity is forbidden, there is a need beyond physical desire, a human need to be who we truly are if only for a moment. For centuries, the only way to satisfy this need was through cruising […]