Resurfacing: Race, AIDS, Sexuality, and the Politics of Mourning

Abstract

As a result of AIDS, gay male sexual culture has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Among the questions raised are those concerning the relationship between anonymous public sex and the development of a visible and politically engaged community. As part of an ethnographic analysis of a popular public sex site in New York City, the West Side Piers, the author documents how AIDS defines discussions of sex, identity, and community. As the changes brought about by the epidemic threaten to finally destroy the site, the piers have become objects of mourning and geographies of recollection. Included in these recollections are specific sexual encounters and a series of violent events that have, like AIDS, focused discussions on the link between public sex and community building. A review of two violent episodes on the piers illustrates how race emerges as one of the defining characteristics of the community, forming discourses derived from the site. An analysis of the commentary surrounding these events illustrates how sex and violence are occasions for articulating definitions of community that, in these cases, are implicitly White. These racially charged texts of violence and sex contrast with contemporary nostalgic images of public sex as free and unpoliced.