User:I.zamfir/sandbox/cruising

LGBTQ+ people in Romania during Communism and in the 1990s had little on which to build their identity and relationships and cruising spots were one of the only options gay men had to meet one another, after being used to living in fear and secrecy and lacking self-confidence. Although, men’s same-sex relations often left them feeling desperate at the situation they were living, they found an escape in those cruising spaces in Bucharest. Romanian homosexuals had little on which to build their identity and relationships and having few places to socialize made it very hard to not only build a collective identity and community, but also stable romantic relationships. The majority of Romanian gay men led a double life and hid under the mask of a conventional family, which made them abandon the idea of having a queer life whatsoever. Many chose the difficult and dangerous options of going to meet sexual partners in public places–parks, train or bus stations, public toilets and public baths, which ensured their anonymity.

Oftentimes, lacking options, gay men ended up in parks, from Cișmigiu to Carol Park. This happened largely because people did not have the courage to go to someone's place or simply did not have that possibility, as they could fall into a trap set by the Morality Police (Miliția de Moravuri), get beaten up, or be denounced to the authorities. Those caught by the militia risked being sent to conversion therapy, which included castration and electroshock, imprisonment under Article 200 of the Penal Code (that criminalized homosexuality until 2001), or blackmailed to become an informant.

Many accounts of queer lives during and after Communismare being made public, such as A Space of Our Own: LGBT Stories and Homoistorii: Exit from invisibility, among others. A Space of Our Own is an anthology of queer love stories from Romania, which includes accounts from people who experienced lqueer life during Communism and/or after Communism in Romania. There are various accounts such as Victor's that describe the environment queer people lived in: "[...] gays were reduced to their sexuality; to be gay simply means to have sex with someone of the same sex as you. No one told us that gays are people that fall in love, who have relationships like anyone else.”

Oana, pansexual herself, explains in the same anthology explains that “Heterosexual relations were ‘serious relationships’ and we ignored other types of desires that we might have, since that’s how we had been taught.” Heteronormative values ruled the day as the only acceptable form of an intimate relationship. Ana, another contributor mentioned that “sex between two men is discussed in high school, but sex between two women, never.” To explain Romanian puritanical views towards sexual issues in general, multiple factors need to be considered such as: widespread heteronormative cultural values and conservative views towards the institutions of family and marriage, the influence of the Romanian Orthodox Church (responsible for censuring queer acts and relationships) on public opinion, and the relatively short period of time that has passed since the decriminalization of homosexuality (2001).

Adi P. who did not have a chance to hold a long-term relationship before he left Romania, explains how “it’s very hard to have a real, true, and authentic relationship without your own space. A relationship needs a space where to develop and grow. It was a problem during communism, but it remains to a certain extent a problem today.”

The vast majority of Romanians were and still are homophobic. In 2000 more than half of Romanians attested to the fact that the did not want a homosexual neighbor and in 2012, 53% of a nationally representative sample for a survey noted that homosexuality should be outlawed, and 79.4% declared for the same year that they would not like a homosexual as a neighbor, despite a decade that passed between the two surveys. Gay men especially were seen as a threat to the nation and to masculinity as Romanian nationalism, especially during the nineties, was rhetorically based on the traditional Romanian life, which alluded to a more modest and reproductive femininity. Meetings between homosexuals must take place clandestinely. Through the grapevine, they learn where to socialize, often in parks or in cafes whose owners are unaware of their clients' inclinations.

= Places = The police constantly patrolled places where gay men met, harassing them indifferently of whether they were looking for a sexual partner for the night or whether they simply wanted to meet other people like them. More often than not, gay men that were found by the secret police, were blackmailed into becoming informants for the secret police. Anonymity was key and most people did not reveal their names when they met in the various cruising spots nor when they engaged in sexual relations, because giving out their names was too risky.

Many gays and lesbians in Romania, particularly those outside the capital Bucharest, live in fear of having their secret discovered. The publication of numerous reports of police harassment in provincial towns and villages came out and have helped to understand how the threats and the terror that gay men endure at the hands of the police led many to see suicide as the only way to put an end to their misery. Nonetheless, says Daniel Iorga, a gay man in Bucharest, public attitudes towards gays and lesbians tend to be more tolerant in the capital than in the rest of the country. Gay men have also attested to the fact that public toilets were often visited from a strictly physiological point of view and that beyond toilets, cruising spots included movie theatres such as Timpuri Noi, or the trolleybus station at Universitate--University metro station.

Parks
Lacking options of where to meet partners, gay men oftentimes ended up in various parks around Bucharest, from Cișmigiu to Carol. A gay man told Vice Romania that going to these cruising spots happened because "[we] didn't have the courage to go to someone's house, [we]could end up dead or it could be a trap, [we] could be robbed, handed over to the militiamen."

Park Cișmigiu (Parcul Cișmigiu)
A known cruising spot was in one of the alleyways in the north-west corner of Park Cișmigiu, from the Brezoianu Street side, close to a larger square with a collection of amphoras displayed in the center. Ryszard Kiesel, a Polish gay man and activist who travelled around Eastern Europe during the communist era to find out more about gay life in the region, took some pictures while he was there but from a distance as he didn’t want people to think he was in the Securitate, Romania's secret police apparatus.

He recounts the ways in which cruising took place: “The pick-up technique they used there was unusual, I’d never seen it anywhere before. A group of men would get together in a tight group to analyze the scores of football marches, they’d share their own football stories. Basically they’d talk about everything that didn’t have to do with being gay. Everybody was excited–as they tend to be in the South–and waving their hands about and, at the same time, fondling each other’s crotches. Then they’d pair up and go off into the nearby bushes, in the shadows. … This gave the whole group a sense of protection from the intervention of the Securitate, that is, the Romanian security services. After all, tracking down those who engaged in a homosexual act was carried out by the militia.”

In an interview with the Museum of Communism in Romania, Adrian Newell Păun, Romanian queer activist and owner of the only queer archives in Romania, Arhivele Queer Adrian Newell Păun (AQANP), tells how certain benches in Cișmigiu indicated that “one had gone ‘fishing’” and was waiting for suitors to claim their due. Wearing a red tie, for example, indicated the same as did various mannerisms that the regulars recognized as a sign that it was safe to engage in conversation to reach the “essential question: are we putting it? Who’s receiving gifts and who’s giving them? And that was all.” Equally so, saying certain phrases such as asking for a “tigaretta” instead of a “tigara” (cigarette) were also an indication for gay men to recognize one another. Păun emphasizes that it is important not to forget that gay subculture has its own language, which in this case was wisely and subtlety used to a specific end.

Opera Park (Parcul Operei)
Opera Park, now Venus Park, was a place for meeting and cruising–especially around the horizontal alley that starts from Splaiul Independentei. At the Opera, the theaters, and at exhibitions, people would meet more "high-class" people—those who didn’t frequent the parks and the toilets. There were also circles of gay intellectuals, artists, and writers, who saw each other in a more intimate circle, into which you could get only if somebody brought you in, after you had won their trust. Creating these types of circles led to parties and canasta nights, usually followed by “games” in the bedroom.

The National Opera, very famous for gay people who were meeting there and hooking up with each other. There were jokes within the gay community like–“watch your ass when you go to the Opera”. Ryszard Kiesel, a Polish gay man who travelled to Romania in the 1980s to explore the gay life there, recounts how the park was described to him by a Romanian gay man as "the only place I really know about … I think, in a way, it was more interesting, because it was more forbidden and people were attracted to these more elusive kinds of things."

The presence of the police was especially noticeable in the Opera Park area. In 1994, organized groups of at least 12 relatively young masked people started pouncing in the park during the night, beating gay men with chains and sticks. Many of the victims reported to the Human Rights Watch that the apparent purpose of these groups was to push bystanders toward the police that was waiting at the other end of the park and refused to help victims who complain that they have been threatened or injured. The police checked the victims' ID cards and jotted down their names and addresses. The groups of aggressors and the police were seen by the gay community to be working together.

Public restrooms
Before the 1990s, in Bucharest, the cruising spots for most gay men were the public restrooms, from the center to the parks, to the suburbs they provided an underground space for the male queer community to meet one another. Many ended up in the public restrooms by accident and discovered it to be a cruising spot, which they would continue to visit. People were conscious of the risk, but curiosity and pleasure often overwhelmed the sentiment of fear and pushed gay men to go to public restrooms, despite the numerous risks that it might pose.

The Bermuda Triangle
Other notable cruising spots in Bucharest during the Communist period were known as the Bermuda Triangle, formed out of three public restrooms in the middle of the city. Those who wanted to hook up walked this triangle a few times a day. From there, however, many were picked up by the police, beaten or arrested and others found moments of intimacy in the steam of Grivița Bath or under the protection of the shadows at Feroviar Movie Theatre. In an anonymous response for Vice Romania, a gay man explains how the Bermuda Triangle was comprised of one restroom at University, another at the Palace of Telephones, and another one at Palace Hall. Those who wanted went around the Triangle multiple times a day.

Bucharest North Train Station Gara de Nord (Bathroom):
Gare de Nord was seen as a crowded place perfectly suitable for cruising, because militiamen could not accuse anyone of being in a gay cruising spot, as all kinds of people came and went to and from the train station. Nonetheless Dominic, a gay Romanian man, has commented for Vice Romania on the fear of gay men when they went cruising: “We were between the fear of being beaten, of being arrested or of being blackmailed. Because there were many extremely intelligent boys who could exploit, challenge you and finally... I know a thousand cases”.

People coming from abroad could use the Spartacus International Gay Guide, which recommended to avoid that location since the militia tended to carry out raids there. The militia raids consisted of an officer pretending to express an interest in gay sex. Essentially, these raids were pre-arranged “provocations”. Rareș, a young student explains for the Human Rights Watch that he had an unexpected conversation with a man at the public restrooms at Gara de Nord when he suddenly disappeared and two policemen came into the restroom and brought him to the police station where they interrogated and made of him for more than an hour asking him to denounce other people who frequently visited this cruising spot. However, because he was student and so a minor, the police could not do obtain much information from him and let him go after taking all the money and valuables he had on him.

From the HOSI-Wien EEIP report, the observer who went to Romania to assess the situation of gay men and lesbians there, explains how the toilet was the only well-lit place in the whole train station, but that sometimes an old lady would sit next to the first urinal selling toilet paper and keeping an eye on the comings and goings of those who used the stalls.

Palace of Telephones (Palatul Telefoanelor):
In 1977, if someone was trying to cruise in a public toilet near the Palace of Telephones, he could run into an undercover policeman, who took him to the police station. Some managed to escape a long and humiliating trial for homosexuality, but not all. According to many, the public restroom at the Palace of Telephones was probably the most important public toilet in Bucharest as there was a constant coming and going to find someone interested or out of pure curiosity. Many described it as a kind of lottery."

Public baths
Public baths were a common place to visit for a lot of Romanians during Communism as it provided a place to bathe when hot water at home was not a certainty. For gay Romanian men, however, it also meant a relatively safe space where they could observe or engage in conversation with other gay men. The Central Bath was a renowned public bath, which could be found near the University of Architecture and where many athletes often went to the sauna. The place was considered as a big draw for the gay men in terms of admiring the people that frequented the bath, but in terms of possible sexual relations, they got little out of it as it was a rigid atmosphere where few dared to attempt anything with another man.

Grivița Bath (Baia Grivița)
In a public bath gay men could meet men without nudity being used as evidence against them under Art. 200 P.C. Thick steams hid intimate touching, and the brave ones could find solace in the last shower cubicles. Despite some ability to cover same-sex relations, danger remained here as in other cruising spots; oftentimes, a day in Grivița ended with someone threatening to call the police. Public baths were appreciated for their eclecticism, bringing together people from all classes (peasants, proletarians and intellectuals). Florin Buhuceanu, former director of Accept and activist, has referred to the baths that "they were truly democratic from the homoerotic point of view." Encounters in the public baths frequently ended up in movie theaters and … as it provided the necessary cover and greater intimacy.

In public transport
There were cases of people who met on the tramway or on the bus, by smiling at each other and noticing each other. One gay man gave a testimony for the Public Scandals report conducted by Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC about how he met a man on the bus, he asked to have oral sex, to which the other man suggested to go to his place instead. It turned out that the man to whom he had made an offer was a police officer, who ended up having him arrested, but as he was a minor, he could not be convicted under Art. 200 P.C. He was beaten up by the police on multiple occasions in one night and got a record for being a homosexual.

Feroviar Cinema (Cinematograful Feroviar)
The cinema no longer exists, in its place today stands a glass and metal tower. The hall was huge, with three balconies suspended above the screens, a perfect screen for prying eyes. The movies were bad to watch from the balconies, no one got there unless they were watching someone.

Dominic told Vice Romania that back then, in the nineties, at the balcony, when the hall was empty or almost empty, a way to signal to other gay men that you were interested in engaging with other gay man was to either sit at the balcony or lean on the wall there. He explains, however, that it was dangerous because like in other cruising spots around Bucharest, a lot of undercover agents or blackmailers looking to take advantage of homosexuals in a vulnerable position.

Cinema New Times (Timpuri Noi)
Timpuri Noi, along with Feroviar Cinema was one of the main cruising spots notably because it ran non-stop, which provided a good opportunity to meet other gay men at an affordable price in a semi-intimate setting where one did not have to worry about their identity being known. In the collection of queer love stories, Un Spațiu doar al Nostru: Povești LGBTQ, Adi P. describes the way in which, during Communism and after, gay men went to a selected few movie theatres to cruise and Cinema New Times “Timpuri Noi” because it ran non stop. At the minimal cost of 2.5 lei, they would stay there all day as the films screened one after the other. At the balconies, there was grinding and he describes how they "would kiss until [they] didn't have lips anymore." = Risks = The EEIP Report of 1985 describes the general situation in Romania for homosexuals as "dismal almost tragic." Surveillance was rampant and implied that policemen were posted in public toilets as agents provocateurs. This paved the way for blackmailing, denunciations, and having to play informer to career disadvantages and forced psychiatric therapy could go as far as shock therapy and castration. The Human Right Watch Report of 1997 describes how, from ample evidence, the police regard homosexuals as a special and suspect class, and justify surveillance by the argument that they are more disposed to crime. The report points out that, even after the end of Communism and the dismantling of the Morality Police, in the municipal and county police departments, authorities retained "morals" divisions under various names, most with a special brief to monitor homosexuals.

Queer people could only talk to others "like them" about their sexual orientation, their troubles and worries because they believed that if anyone else close to them, friends or family, found out, it would have been a disaster for them. Getting married and having children was conceived to be a solution by the vast majority of people and some gay men and lesbians did decide to lead a double life, which turned out to be hell for many. Getting kicked out or told to go get psychiatric help was another frequent response that many got.

Harassment
Attacks in parks by mobs of teenagers grew exponentially in the nineties with rising queer visibility in public and culminated in 1995, when groups of aggressors appeared in parks multiple times a week.

One gay man in the Public Scandals Report attests to an incident that took place at the end of 1994 and describes how eight men surrounded him and beat him over the head and face with chains. His head was bleeding so much that it went numb and could not see the blood. When he left the park, three policemen were waiting for him, asked for his documents, and uttered "Do you see what happens to people like you?"

Mobs often went to central parks where they knew gay men gathered to repeatedly attack them and them in the direction of the police that would inspect the identity cards of those caught in the park. These mobs were mostly comprised of 12-15 teenagers or around 20 years old, without masks.

Documentation collected by IGLHRC and Human Rights Watch in the 1990s in Romania shows that physical abuse of prisoners by the police remained common throughout Romania during that decade, especially instances of abuse targeted towards those suspected of homosexuality. In addition to mistreatment directly at the hands of police and guards, beatings and rapes by other inmates were endured, with the collusion or even encouragement of the authorities.

Arrests
In addition to fearing social isolation, homosexuals faced the threat of the Morality Police (Militia de Moravuri) who went undercover in places known to be a gay cruising spot and arrested those who made a pass at them. In A Space of our Own, an anthology of queer stories from Romania, MCM attests to the brutality of the police: “It happened a lot that the militia caught gay men. They arrested them, beat them, and made them tell everything about their partners and their encounters.” Not only was there fear of the political system in place, but more importantly, it affected personal relationships into the nineties as sexual partners frequently did not trust one another. Voichita Nachescu explains how homosexuals were deemed “inexistant” and were rejected from society; the only way in which they were invoked was through criminalization under Art.200 P.C. or through blackmailing that enabled the police to arrest more people suspected of engaging in same-sex relations. The denial of the existence of homosexuality throughout the communist period had a long-lasting effect into the nineties as conservative political elites and the ROC characterized non-heterosexual minorities as a foreign product that had no root in the Romanian society, and which had been brought by capitalism, along with drugs, AIDS, and unemployment.

Adi P. explains how he was kicked out of school for one year for having been arrested under Art. 200 P.C., but no legal consequences ensued as he was a minor when it happened. He explains that he did not even know of the existence of Art. 200 P.C., which criminalized homosexuality. During the 1970s, in Communism, young Adi P. just thought that sex with foreigners was forbidden, since any contact with foreigners was, to a certain extent, prohibited. Through his arrest he that he was "not only special, different, and sinful, but also criminal." He decided to stop going downtown to avoid cruising spots, out of fear that he might go there again.

Denunciations
In an interview with Vice Romania, a gay man tells the story of once being called to the police station after one of his classmates was denounced and in his apartment the police found a notebook listing the names of all the guys he had had sex with along with their phones numbers and their occupation (student, officers, professor, etc.). The interviewee recounts to Vice how, just at the thought of being discovered, he considered suicide because he foresaw being fired, thrown out of the Party and, most likely, his own home. During the interrogation the interviewee was told by one of the officers that he was a psychologist who was looking to prove that gay people were not hurting the state and that they existed in all layers of society, but then proceded to show documents and pictures from stakeouts so that the interviewee could identify who was in those pictures. Essentially, the militiaman just wanted to find out more names of people they could pick up in the public cruising spots of Bucharest. The interviewee denied knowing anyone.

Blackmailing and bribes
The police constantly patrolled places where gay men met, harrasing them indifferently of whether they were looking for a sexual partner for the night or whether they simply wanted to meet other people like them. Often, homosexuals caught in such places were blackmailed. Militia officers during Communism and police ones in the nineties would go in plainclothes to the public restrooms and arrest anyone who made a pass at them. The repercussions of getting arrested included having their wife divorce them and being on the "pink list," which meant unavoidable social alienation.

The militia presence in Opera Park was divided in two - half belonged to ward 3, and the other half belonged to ward 17. The police patrolled the area and, for gay men who did not give them bribes or did not get along with them somehow, the officers ended up writing a statement to the ward. They often beat or abused homosexuals to get money. In Bucharest, plainclothes policemen regularly patrol gay cruising areas and entrapped men who were forced to pay large fines on the spot to avoid being taken to the police station.

As reported by HOSI-Wien in Eastern European Information Pool Report of 1988, beyond receiving money, through torture, the police was able to get the names of gay friends and partners of people arrested under Article 200 of the Penal Code.

Imprisonment
Aside from facing social alienation, homosexuals continued to fear imprisonment which, among other consequences, entailed violent abuses such as rape or torture. At a press conference concerning the abrogation of Art.200 P.C. in 1993, referring to the “abuses by the police, prosecutors, judges, and the penitentiary system,” Razvan Ion asks rhetorically “whether normal convictions for theft endure the same [abuses] as homosexuals do.” Scott Long and Razvan Ion, editor-in-chief of the first queer Romanian magazine Gay45, interviewed gay men who had been imprisoned under Art.200 P.C. and stated that they realized “that almost all of them had been tortured by the police [before being convicted].” The gay men imprisoned under Art.200 P.C. described being a homosexual in prison as “horrible, humiliating, and degrading.” Prison guards attests to how “detainees who knew that ‘passives’ had touched dishes or worked in the kitchen refused to eat and conflicts could arise between detainees and us [prison management].”