Hey, viewers, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions is an explicit podcast about queer sex. Filter dirty words and unfiltered descriptions of sexual activities. If hearing about orgies, anonymous sex, kink, fetish, and more offends your sensibilities, you might want to skip this. Viewer discretion is advised. It's definitely not for kids. So gay, yes, Chris, Do you ever think about the future all the time?
Okay? It makes me deeply anxious?
Okay, In the back of my head, there's a little voice that's like, the world is slowly slipping toward fascism and we need to stop it correct, which is like kind of objectively true. What I can do about it is quite limited, but there are things we can do
about it. So I have like lost faith in the future, But I do I worry about like complacency, and you worry about people not thinking critically about the things that we are taught and told and the values that we uphold, the images of your fed Yeah, and I do think about like some of the progress that we've made over years, and like what kind of progress you could.
Make, which is like undeniable, right, Like we definitely have been making progress over the years, like we are in somewhat of a better place, but there is like you're saying, like there is a lot of work to do.
Chris, do you think about the future very much like you? I am hopeful.
I think that this generation is really questioning everything in a way that like we weren't afforded that luxury. We are in some really difficult times and we are facing some really difficult things, and I do pray for a better future. And I think about the young people that I'm encounter that I encounter in my day to day life, and I see how they show up in the world and how they look at the world, and like, these
kids are going to do it right. You know, they're not gonna stay with the status quo, and they really are going to start to question things. And that brings me a lot of joy.
Question people in power, question where the money comes from, where the money is going truly, And if anyone tells you that an institution or a government is above criticism of approach, that probably means we.
Should be looking into what's what's going on.
Right that said, I do think it's easy to talk about what we don't want in the world, right, Hate, discrimination, corruption, violence against our communities. But what kind of future do we want to see? On today's episodes, we're doing things a little differently. For the past ten episodes, we've welcomed extraordinary thinkers, kinksters and queer minds. We've talked to coumdumps, poets, filmmakers, sex workers and other really horny people just like you.
And at the end of every interview we actually asked them a follow up question that you never got to hear, but today you.
Will the question queer utopia? What does it look like? What could it look like? And what would it look like? In twenty sixty nine, on the hundredth anniversary of the stmar Riots that ignited a global queer rights movement and paved the way for some of us to have some freedoms that we enjoy today, Welcome.
To Stiffy's Cruising Confessions.
I am Gabe Blonsilers, I'm Chris Patterson Rosso. Each week weeks for the Sublime World of Queer Sex, cruising and Relationships.
Will be talking to queer folks of all kinds, ask them questions, swap sex.
Stories, share intimate revelations. A lot of us are discovering ourselves in cruising spaces.
This happened to me at this toilet stall, in the library or the airport.
I feel like everybody's gonna fuck a little harder here, damn.
So I've been like the neighborhood flat and I took pride in that.
I was so afraid but yet so intrigued.
And the more I gave him, the more people think, if you're having sex on Sniffy's, you already have a moral deficit.
First of all, Gabe, what does queer.
Utopia mean to you?
When I'm thinking about the idea of queer utopia, there is one name that immediately comes to mind for me, and that's Jose Munos. I first encountered his work in college, and I was like, okay, work like a queer Latino talking about queer shit and an academic setting, like getting hired to do this, Like I love this, And also I was like, what is the cheat code to enter
to get this job. So, in his second book called Cruising Utopia, the then and There of Queer Futurity, described as part manifesto heart love letter to the past in the future, he frames queer utopia as this potentiality or sort of longing like it's an ideal that is bound to the future in a way that has to reject the very stagnant or normative present. The short term solutions that we find to cope or survive are what Munno's
call straight time. Right, We're like operating in straight time in the present.
It's like we know very familiar exactly right.
So queer utopia is something that we're constantly moving towards what is just out of reach, right. It is something that necessitates the activation or the reactivation of queer imagination and sometimes involves looking toward the past to reimagine the future, which is a theme we'll also hear about from many of our guests today. That is not to say that we can't experience glimpses of what queer utopia could be
in our own social interactions. We get closer to utopia when we tap into our collective ability to imagine what.
It looks like.
I mean, I could talk about Munos for hours. There's my quick little spark notes version very heavily paraphrasing, but I thought he would be a great way to kick us off for this episode, talking about his work and how his work can help us frame how we think about the theme of today's episode, right, utopia being something that we are moving toward but maybe cannot enact or live through. Ever in our present moment, it's like always always just right there.
Yeah, And I think, you know, New York City is my queer utopia. It was one of the reasons why I moved here, and definitely after my first visit at seventeen, I immediately felt safe and seen here in a way that I didn't experience growing up in the Pacific Northwest, you know, which is sort of known to be progressive in whatever, but it really isn't in so many ways, and especially as a black queer person, like I never really felt safe, and I didn't realize that until I left,
you know. And once I came here, I just seeing brown folks and seeing queer folks just like living their lives authentically just felt like a utopia.
And so I just have never left.
I think New York is probably the closest I've gotten to like approaching utopia. If I'm borrowing from Muno's because in his books, she talks a lot about like things like marriage or queers in the military are not utopic, They're they're the survival strategies and coping mechanistimes of now totally right. So it's like when I was in Florida, my parents would be like, oh, we accept you now, like you can get married, And I was like, that's
not utopic to me. Like to me, it's like I don't know, being in a massive bodies at like four am at a New Year's party where there's like one little skylight and they're all like whoa or like you know what I mean. Just like thinking about the way relate to people. So much of my life fundamentally changed when I found queer community here. Yeah, and I'm like, I love whatever this reimagining of the present is because it's it really is rethinking and reimagining the ways we socialize.
Yeah, And I think just like seeing queer people invisible roles in my day to day life was really amazing to me, Like going to the bank or going to the grocery store or just going to the bodega and seeing queer people just like live lives, which is like mind blowing to me because from where I'm from, most people we just hit until we went to the bars
and then that's when we saw each other. But outside of that we were very much living on straight time and just like assimilating and hiding and like just like not being able to hide, just like felt so impactful. All right, So let's turn to our first guests this season. Do you remember who our first two guests were? Scott Carsley, yes, two thousand load come down? Oh yeah, I do remember that.
And our second Yeah, our second guest was Leo Yessing, expert our historian. Yes, I love that. So do we get to hear what they had to say? Let's take a look.
I'm gonna set the scene for you.
It is twenty sixty nine, the one hundreds of anniversary of Stonewall. What kind of queer utopia would you like to see this world become by that time?
So you may have noticed that I appear not to have a face today, And to be honest with you, there are really important reasons why I have to protect my identity because it could impact my life. It could impact professional growth, it could impact people judging me, it could impact my social life. And I would laugh in the future for that not to be necessary for me,
because I don't feel shame about it. I'm proud of what I've done and I'm proud of my you know, kink life as a come dum, and I would love to be able to share that with people and people to know and be able to talk about it at any random party, you know, like, oh wow, you've done a really good job with that, And that would be my dream for the future. Do not have to worry about that so much. A bit of a gay history
here that you know, many people may know. And I'm probably not going to get this exactly right, but back in the early days of the gay rights movement, there was famously the Manachine Society that advocated very loudly to say, gays are just like straits and you should treat us equally because we're just like you, and that was a really important and valuable work that they did. But one of the founders of the Matachine Society said, you know what,
screw this. People are not treating us equally, and we are different. We are our own culture. So we're going to go create our own movement, the radical fairies.
I think you're talking about. Correct, that's it, that's it, that's.
It, and and you know, that sort of little movement into saying, you know what, we're not we're not actually exactly the same. I would love that to enter into the culturals like geist and people to be aware of you know what, maybe I don't have to understand every aspect of gay society, but they have a different culture in that.
So okay.
You know you were talking earlier about just like being able to be open as a cum dump and how it could potentially hurt your career, and I think it goes back to like representation, Like I for myself, I always say that, like I want the world to see all the different facets of myself and not have any of them diminish another.
Part of myself.
Right, Absolutely, I am a sex positive person, but I also have a nonprofit. I also am a performer, Right, I have all these things and none of those things diminish the other. And I think that like that career utopia you're talking about, those things can be true.
People talk about it a lot, especially like progressive companies like Bring Your Full Authentic Work. There's never going to be a moment where you're going to talk about explicit sex acts with co work, correct, But like you can say like oh yeah, I had a fun scene or I did a fun filming and be able to like mention that in a work situation. Yeah, that would be great.
I'm really glad that you kind of bring up this historical historical perspective to it as well, because it's like you go back in time, like lavender scare fifties and sixties, It's like even identifying as a queer or trans person or a gay person could have gotten you fired from a job right like years later, being a sex worker or being porn could get you fired from jobs, And like the sort of culture surrounding.
OnlyFans is maybe changing that.
So it's like I feel like we are sort of at an inflection point where the stigma that we hold towards sex is sort of being dismantled and the fact that we can own that and talk about how sex work is work and we do all have sex and it doesn't have to dictate our lives, but it is a part of who we are, and it's a healthy part of who we are. I mean, I think having seen that change throughout history does kind of, you know, I think, give me a little hope for the sure.
Yeah, And I'm very curious to see if there's some aspect of that in culture more broadly, like I do feel like there's less stigma even in the straight community around casual sex. That being said, I do still think there's going to be a distinction, like it's never going to be one and the same because it's different.
Well, they call it sex and we call it baarbacking.
So I think, for me, a queer utopia is a group full of queer people who are one hundred percent comfortable with themselves and unaffected by a lot of the outside negative forces that we've had to deal with, like disease and the law, and have a space to just explore our own needs and desires outside of those forces, and to have a room full of people doing that same work and enjoying the benefits of that same work, And that could look like a party, that could look
like a religious ritual, that could look like a potla. For me, utopia always means us being comfortable in our own skin.
Are they saying the.
Same thing I think they are.
I think what they're pointing toward is a sort of queer liberation, but like a very holistic approach to that.
Right.
It's not just like queer liberation politically, it's like sexually, it's socially it's being able to build community without fear of violence for who you are. I do think there's some strong parallels between that. I am also interested in the language that folks use. I think Scott uses the word gay and lou uses the word queer, which I think, you know, I see those words used interchangeably, but I
also think they have different subtexts to them. I think they do identify as queer, And I also think that has a lot to do with my not binary experience, Like I just don't identify with gay because like I hear gay, and I think of gay white men, and like I am neither of those things.
Queer just feels more expansive and feels more diverse than gay.
Yeah, I've always thought of gay as a word to describe someone's sexuality, but queer as a way to describe like sexuality, identity and like personal politicians.
Ok, Yeah, Like yeah, to me, queer.
Feels like I'm like, oh, if you're saying queer, I'm like, I get an idea of who you are and what you believe in, And if.
You tell me gay, I'm like, oh, that could be a lot. There's a very wide range.
But yeah, it's like oddly gay is the broader umbrella term there. But like, yeah, so many of the people that we talked to envision utopias like a world where they could just be left alone, like where they are just allowed to live without judgment, and some of them felt like it was actually kind of happening. I think about Xavier Blanco who stopped by to talk about his life as a sex worker earlier in the season, and some of what he said about queer utopia, let's check it out.
I think actually my little brother and sister are living a little bit of queer utopia. My brother's twenty seven, my sister is twenty six, and my little brother as a gay friend and a queer friend, I should say, and I found it so strange, and he's like bro,
like he's a person. So for me, career utopia would be that where it's a place where our sexual endeavors does not justify or dictate how we interact with one another, as well as like having of course sex workers rights and just living a life where we're not really judging each other for what we're doing behind closed doors. Like so my career utopia would be like stop stigmatizing our sex lives, and.
Even if we're not doing it behind closed doors, it shouldn't be right.
We're saying, maybe we're dancing about a little box at Metropolitan is so.
Tiny, that box is so that box is literal. That's queer utopia.
Bigger, bigger, go go boxes and everything truly and stable ones.
Actually I'd rather stable big, like the stability. I feel the same way about my men.
Another Yes, the bars tic Dash expresses similar sentiment in his response.
I think we'd have to acknowledge that our queer forefathers who didn't get to see today would feel like we're in a queer utopia right now, even though right now does feel scary. A lot of my work is in, you know, advocating for queer and trans people of color and like equity in all spaces. And one of the kind of like quotes I guess I live by is
rising tides float all boats. And if we think about who the most marginalized people are in our community, it is trans people of color, and I think we need to focus on rising their tide.
Rising tides flow boats.
Yes, I love that sentiment because I feel like it like there is this notion that if like these people have rights, then I will have less rights.
And like, no, babes, that's how that works, not how that works.
We're not actually taking anything away from you. You will still have the access to all of the things that you've always had.
We will just also have access to this things.
I mean, we've seen these connections so often, like in the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement and the queer rights movement. It's like, if systems of oppression are being used to oppress one marginalized group, they will be used against other groups and other groups until finally
they're used against you. Yes, and so understanding that helping other people succeed, survive, and thrive in this world will only help all of us do It is like a lesson you'd think we would have learned from.
Like an elementary school, or maybe truly one of the most basic ideas.
And yet it's like, oh, well, like trans people want special rights.
No, trans just want to exist.
Yeah, Like they just want to go to school, they want to use the bathroom, they just want to like live. I love the idea that my tax scholars could go to help someone afford healthcare that they can't afford. Like I don't understand why people are so mad that the government would spend money to port the livelihood and safety of people of the nation.
It's like, when you look at.
Our budget, the amount that we spend on weapons and war like far out paces what we spent in education on health care.
All right, let's hear.
Two more answers to the questions from our two amazing guests from our episode about cruising with trans Guys, filmmaker Jules Roscombe and King Punk's hosts Santo's Jay ars.
I loved this episode. It was great.
So I actually did a project on utopia in twenty thirteen. The conclusion I came to is that for me, utopia is actually always fleeting, not unlike what Munno says. In a way, for me, utopia is relational. So it's about actually these fleeting moments of like amazing sex where we transcend our bodies and we merge into one another, or you know, even sharing a meal with someone or something like that. It is like these these utopian moments as
opposed to place. But now my queer utopia is like really like an anti racist, anti capitalist, feminist state, So it's really that's that's the place I want to be. I want the downfall of the of the US colonial empire. I want all of the genocides around the world to come to an end. I want trans people to not be, you know, constantly battling legislation that attempts to write us
out of history. I want the US to actually acknowledge the you know, the settler project that it is and make reparations.
Like this is my career utopia.
So let's picture It's twenty sixty nine. What does creery utopia look like for you? What does it feel like?
I love to take it from the poster like fully automated luxury space communism. Okay, so that's that's that's my ideal. You know, everybody's got good language in terms of consent, there's no R word, and folks are just chillin and fed and housed and you know, fucking as they please.
I want that too.
Imagine feeding people and housing them and having amazing sex.
Wow, in a fully automated role.
Two of those things the government could provide us very easy. The third is still gonna take a little work, but it's always worth putting in the effort.
Yeah, yeah, I mean.
We talked a lot about imagination and how it relates to We did the trans experience of that episode, and I think trans folks have already had to reimagine everything. Yeah, the boundaries we put around gender, the way we envision
sex and sexuality as it relates to gender. And so it's like I think everyone's always like, oh, I want trans women to run the world, but like I really genuinely do because, like I think trans people in general, non binary folks, women, men have have already had to like tap into an imagination and a potentiality in the.
Future which we talked about. Yeah, totally.
I'm like, like, you're really like doing the work. You're you're a step ahead of us in envisioning this co utopia, and like I really want to follow that need. All right, when we come back, we're ready to hear about some of our guests ideas for a future that might look a lot like science fiction more a cruising Confessions after.
The break, Welcome back.
Now.
Not all of our guests were content with imagining a queer future where we all had our material needs met and we're treated with respect and non judgment by society. Some of them had some more outlandish but very fun ideas to accompany the more political ones. So we'd like to share with you author and dom Daddy Dale Corvino regarding his vision for a queer utopia.
I think we are, you know, a queer people were defined by like this need to find each other, to seek each other out. And you know, we've been talking a lot about how like our digital context helps us in a lot of ways to find that find us out. But I'm almost like on a sensey tip for twenty sixty nine where we just have like extra sensory intel. I mean I think we already do.
Right, what are those orgasms?
Like? Yeah?
Like hello, she's as a even as a young, you know, sexually confused teenage boy. I my nose was working. I found you know, I found the queer cruising grounds. I found the queer authors in the library. So I think we do have extra sensory perception to find each other. But I'm picturing a sixty nine twenty six where it's just so enhanced, it's just so elevated and enhanced.
Any flying cars, sure, okay? Yeah?
And then what my what might like a gay bar look like? Interesting?
A flying car gay bar?
I mean a mobile bar. It's your crew.
I'm going to go whatever you want to go with a I'm going to go with a flying car.
Barkay, the easiest way to It's like.
Attracting gaze to a singular spot. It just comes and gets you.
Yes, great, oh my god. Yes, all those for kids in Indianapolis.
First stop, They're our first stop there. It is funny.
It's almost like where people are required to have that little sixth sense to be like, do I send someone in my community near me?
Do do I find a queer thing here? Like? Is it around?
And I think it's like, you know, we do have to be more observant and more vigilant, but it's like it is almost hypersensory. I love the flying gay bar idea too.
You know.
He was talking about those kids in Indiana that came to his book signing, and like, I think how radical would be for them to have that experience for a night, you know, and how liberating it would be.
All right, next up, we've got Donald Shorter.
I am curious what sort of new technology do you think we might see in queer scenes, specifically in the leather scene.
Teleportation? Oh oh yeah, because you've got your long distance partner again like that, what again? I want to telephone myself.
Yeah, yeah, teleportation so I can go see my daddy whenever, and vice versa.
Let's build some high speed rails so we can go see our daddies, please, I would love infrastructure, infrastructure.
I love this idea of teleportation.
I do too.
I think it would make hooking up so much easier because like half the struggle is the travel time.
You know, you would you would really have gays out here teleporting from Brooklyn to the Bronx though, you know what I mean?
Yeah, two hour train ride.
Let me just yeah, you know, like imagine what like sex parties would look like if you could have people teleport in to attend them.
Ooh that would be wild, interesting, a lot of fun. Yeah. I would never be sleeping, yeah, oh absolutely not.
I'd be like in Toronto and then go to LA and then come back to New York.
I would pop to Europe. Yeah, oh absolutely yeah.
I also do love this idea of teleportation because it kind of like obliterates boundaries and borders, being able to see how other folks live, having other folks who might live in oppressive places be able to leave those, Like I'm curious to see what the world would look like when bridging distances between people so much smaller. Would we be able to like stand in solidarity with each other if we could just like tell you to be there, and so.
It'll be like, oh, what is it actually like on the front lines? For lack of a better term, Yeah, yeah.
I'm a little like if you're on the science of it, like if I have to be disintegrated to be rebuilt, I'm like, okay, maybe not okay, yeah, no, I don't know. Are we being like launched through a fast tube or is it like Star Trek where we're like and then we come back.
I'd rather blul and come back, because then going through a fast tube.
Okay, So you want to be like obliterated at a molecular level and then reconstructed. Yes, baby, we can barely get Boeing airplanes to fly correctly. You're like, yeah, I would love to then going through a fast tube if that's my other option. Well, at least the fast tube keeps your body intact. I love that we're debating, like what type of teleportation technology we need right now because we're not getting it.
Okay, we're not getting it. No, imagination. This is no this is I.
Am working toward teleportation. Teleportation is a longing, but it is just out of got it. Okay, fantastic. On that same episode, Chipper, Our Puppy Trainer and Your Dear Friend drew on the work of two legendary artists to form his idea of what queer utopia could look like.
Marcel de Champ in the Afternoon Sessions. I think it's what it's called. It's a book of interviews, and he talked about doing a lazy house, and this relationship to like laziness is something that I'm really really all about. And the premise is that there's always a place for someone to go if you don't want to do anything, you know, and that you can only exist there as long as you do nothing. And immediately once you want to start doing something, you got to go. But you're
completely taken care of. So there's like changing the capitalist grind, like into just like choosing to opt in and out of like how we care like life, but like how we care for ourselves. I would love for that to be just a normal thing.
Okay.
Number two would be in Samuel Delaney's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue he talks at the end. I can't remember which of the papers it was, but this idea of like a brothel in every neighborhood or like a place that's run by I think he proposes women, but it's pretty much anyone who is like the most vulnerable population,
like run by four. But that's completely inclusive. So there's always a space to like have sex, right to go to to have shared space where you don't have to take someone back to like your apartment or do anything like that, and it's just available a few blocks away wherever you are. I think that would be amazing.
That sounds amazing, very healing and also really sexy, like the lazy house with the brothel on the corner.
Yes, seeing the world coming together like this is it?
Yes? Yeah? Please can we make that happen? If every coffee shop or a brothel, what would your journey have been like? I think it's such a good example of again, let's go back to Winnos.
But we hear this from a lot of our guests, and we read this in Winnos as well, that sometimes, like you know, in looking toward the future, it doesn't hurt to look back at the past and borrow from ideas, concepts, even things that failed or were maybe ahead of their time, And so I love this right that like maybe we can look back to people like Douchamp or Delaney to be like, oh, these ideas seemed far fetched and very theoretical, yes, but like maybe there is a future.
That we're approaching where that could exist.
One of our favorite guests from the season was right Or Brontes Parnell, and his approach to the question of utopia was a little different.
I don't believe in utopias, like fundamentally, like totally, Like I think the idea of a utopia is something that is kind of like exclusive, Okay, you know, I feel like capitalism always sells us the idea of utopia, or even sometimes when I like, I'll even say it, when I watch the Sniffys ads and it's like these muscular boys and jockstraps in this house like all like hooking up, when in the reality, I'm like fucking a drug dealer that has a gun by my big you know, Like
they're always selling us this idea of something that's just beyond reach, which I think is kind of the point. I believe in the hero's journey. I believe that our queer legacy, our queer rights, is an active fight that we are always we're always going to be engaged in from here on in forever. Utopia is just this metaphor that kind of puts the care for the donkey. So I think right now is probably as utopic as it gets.
Unfortunately, and also thank god.
You know, if this was even thirty years ago, someone like me would probably be did so any I know it seems like really hard, but these actual, these incremental, the incremental gains that we have just kind of the thing that that's what's I think it's what makes life worth living. I don't need everything to be perfect or the idea of all hall or whatever. I just need Wait, okay, so I'm a Southern Baptist girl, so this is my
favorite quote. God, don't move my mountain, just give me the strength to climb.
Period.
I love that. That's amazing. Yeah, okay, let me suddenly I'm the voy.
Wait.
Oh my god, I just got top feelings.
In your bottom of your turning someone into a top. This is wildful.
Oh my god, Like, am I really about to be guts right now?
Oh my god? Bronte what a fantastic answer.
Yeah, I love And you know, as he was describing it, I was like, this makes sense. Yeah, I can understand his point of view. So clearly I.
Loved it because there are moments where he like starts off from where Munho starts, or like kind of dovetails with Munyo's. But it's funny because I think he takes a slightly more pessimistic but pragmatic approach to the idea of utopia.
Which felt like home because my mom was like that. My mom was too, Yeah, you don't know what's coming.
All you can do is today, and I'm like, but I want to think about the future, like I need to control everything. Munyo's does talk a little bit, and there was a talk that he gave a little bit after cruising Utopia came out where he talks about the two extremes regarding utopia, how like the idealists or like utopia is closer than ever and it could be here now, and then the pessimistic people that are like, it's always going to be an idea and a concept and will
never reach that. And it's interesting because I think some of our guests were here and some of our guests were Bronte is right and un Jo's is like right in the middle, maybe leaning a little bit more toward Brontest, but it really just shows the full spectrum of like how queer perspectives on the idea of utopia can really be so different.
Yeah, this has been really fun.
Yeah, I've had a blast with revisiting all of these interviews as well as your iconic outfits. I think you really you served.
Not the interesting.
The ons were really good, but like you served does some of those looks.
I really loved it.
We also want to thank our guests from this entire season. Oh my gosh, so many incredible folks.
Scott Carslake, Leoi Herera, Tom mcdash Dale, Corvino, Brontest, Pernell, Jules rosscom Santos, ja I Say, Xavier Blanco, Chipper, Donald Truter, Junior, Jonah Wheeler, Come On, Doctor Joshua Gonzalez, Doctor Evan Goldstein, Bobby Box, Dominion, Onyx, The Bay Bandit and Leo and Jordan. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions is a production of outspoken podcast networks from I Hard Podcasts.
It's directed by Adam Barron, produced by Stevie Williams. And Cameron Femino and executive produced by Eli Martin.
Cruising Confessions is presented by Sniffy's, the ultimate map based cruising platform for gay by and curious people Ready Dacruz.
Check out the map.
At Sniffy's dot com and follow Sniffy's on socials at Sniffy's app.
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