HOOK: E-zine By, For, and About Men in the Sex Industry

Keith Griffith: I am Keith Griffith. It’s the legal name my mother gave me.

HOOK: So you are not embarrassed at all?

KG: Why should I be embarrassed?

HOOK:: So you’re proud of the stuff you are doing. It’s amazing when I mention it, how many people know it.

KG: CruisingForSex is as comprehensive a site as you can find when trying to find where to go to meet men for sex. It has two essential elements: one is a listing of physical locations — be it a beach or toilet or sexclub or bookstore — and another component, which is actually more popular than the sex listings, is the messageboards where guys can instantly post messages for one-on-one. Usually, that is, sometimes they arrange orgies and so forth. If you want to find sex with a man, your odds are pretty good there.

HOOK: How many guys go through?

KG: Daily, I get 50,000 visitors. It is in the top 1.2% of all websites, not just adult sites.

HOOK: Sex or chocolate cake?

KG: Shall I be honest? I’m on a diet, so chocolate cake is out. But given a choice at this age in my life, I’d choose chocolate cake.

HOOK: Why would you say that?

KG: I think that I experience the same phenomenon that a lot of people in the sex industry experience is that sex becomes a business. Most of the people I know in the sex business have less sex in their free time now. I’m no different.

HOOK: Why do you suppose that is?

KG: Because it is a business. It becomes associated with your work. It is the same reasons I spend virtually no free time on the Internet. The last thing I want to do is spend time on my computer enjoying it. I want to read a book or go for a walk. Something old fashioned.

HOOK: So are you still having sex?

KG: Absolutely. Oh please. It still happens. I have to. I have to write about it.

HOOK: How do you go about having sex when it doesn’t interest you so much?

KG: I have very specialized desires. My home in New Orleans has a private gloryhole and guys come over for that. I have always enjoyed anonymous, no small-talk sex. I get lots of people coming over for that. They appear to be straight guys. Frequently, they have a wedding ring on. Frequently, they are in their 20s. Sometimes, a little older. That’s a primary method. I really enjoy park sex, but I don’t have it very much anymore. I really enjoy bathhouse sex. We have a great bathhouse in New Orleans.

HOOK: How do you know these guys are married?

KG: They have wedding rings on. From the gloryhole, you can see that. I make a point of looking. It is part of the fantasy. I love sucking off a married cock.

HOOK: How important do you think sex is to gay men?

KG: For gay men, I think it is an extremely complex thing. Some of us are in such strong denial about our sexuality even though we claim we are so gay. The essence of being gay is your sexuality. The movement as a whole has cut that off. We are in an odd place. It is like having a civil rights movement built around race and not discussing skin color. We have a movement built around gayness but not discussing sexuality, which is our only common link really, as people is that you like to suck cock or whatever you like to do with a man. That is the one thing you and I may have in common. We come from completely different worlds otherwise, but you like to have sex with a man. If we won’t allow ourselves to have that discussion, what is there to discuss? What do we have in common as a movement, as a political movement? I say a lot of gay men are in serious denial about their sexual desires. They want to be something that they believe is ideal. In American Beauty, I thought it was very interesting that the most boring people in the film were the gay couple that lived next door. The straight people were having the good time, being promiscuous and perverse. It was a brilliant statement about the state of gayness today.

HOOK: We should be more perverse?

KG: By our nature, that’s I think what we are. We are perversions. We are not the norm. Most people are not gay, right? It depends on whether you believe perversion is bad. It is a loaded word. Perversions are just a different take on things. Instead of polishing boots, I like to lick boots.

HOOK: There is a good thing about perversion? What do you get from it?

KG: Lots of pleasure. I think it’s hard to answer because perversion is an extremely loaded thing. When you talk about perversion, you color your argument, your conversation instantly with preconceived notions about what the word means, what society feels about.

HOOK: What does it mean to you?

KG: What it is that I happen to like to do that my mother doesn’t like to do. I think that is a good indicator.

HOOK: Sex or Cher?

KG: Sex. Cher can be in the background. There is no need to choose.

HOOK: What you are saying is that sex is the thing we don’t talk about, but it is the primary mode of congregation for gay men…

KG: For all people. It is a fundamental thing. The species preserves itself by having this built in mechanism to want to propagate. It’s how we survive. Gay people are no different. We just don’t actually make babies.

HOOK: Do you think it has to do with more masculine desires?

KG: I get a lot of email from women that wish they had it. They want to know where it is. Straight guys send me a lot of mail. I don’t believe there is one for either. I find the more sexually liberated people, the one’s least shocked by my website, are straight people. They get it. They understand it. They are sometimes envious of it. The only hate mail I have ever gotten has come from gay men. I have never gotten hatemail from a right-wing lunatic or religious fundamentalist. It has all come from what I would term self-loathing gay men.

HOOK: How deep do you think that goes in the community?

KG: It is pretty serious. It is very serious because our leadership is doing very little to promote a healthy attitude to promote sexual expression. They don’t want to talk about sex. That’s not what this movement is about. This movement is about adopting children and getting married and serving your country in the military. That’s what this movement is about. Over the course of the last year, I wrote an editorial on the site where I announced that I would no longer waste my energies fighting an uphill battle with this movement to return it to its roots of sexual liberation. I wanted to be a part of the movement of sexual liberation and gay people can fit into that if they wanted to, but they were not the fundamental reasons for its existence. If you to get me involved in something politically now, my heart would go into sexual liberation. Which would have presumably gay men and lesbians there, but it would not be gay specific. Gay men have been taught by our movement, in spite of our denial of sexual expression, to think of everything in a political way and that includes escorts who might think “wow, you know, I shouldn’t be afraid to organize.’ That is a benefit that has come from gay liberation. It has taught many of us that there is power in organizing our lives. I don’t think straight men have learned that lesson. You don’t have to learn that when you are the majority. I heard the writer Sarah Schulman speak and she said, “It is ironic that in our culture, the people who are the most knowledgeable are the ones least empowered.” It is because they are the ones who have to know what people in power are going to do to you as well as to know how to survive. The people who have the power only have to know what they need to know and are least knowledgeable. They don’t have to know about you at all.