Newquay

Newquay's significant to me because two important 'firsts' happened there.

The first 'first' took place when I was eighteen and my mates and I visited the town for a few days to try our hands at a bit of surfing and to see how many girls each of us could pull in the evenings. It turned out that we were all pretty equally inept at both, and the trip would have been very unmemorable were it not for something that happened on our last full day there.

We'd got to know a few other surfers from Manchester who were far more agile with their boards than any of our group could ever hope to be. One of them, a guy called Carl who was probably one of the best surfers in Newquay that week, was gay and made no secret of it. While the rest of us were drooling at some of the fitter girls on the beach, Carl would working out who, among the other male surfers, might be up for 'turning a few tricks' with him as he put it. At first I'd thought he was referring to other guys who might have the ability to surf a wave alongside him, but after he and another guy had gone off back to on of their hotels for a couple of hours, I'd realised what he'd meant.

The rest of Carl's group accepted his sexuality with casual humour. While some of them were sharing twin rooms, for example, Carl had his own. I assumed that it was because the rest of the guys didn't trust Carl to keep himself to himself while sleeping in the same room, but one of them, a lad called Jason, said it was simply because whoever was to share Carl's room wouldn't get much sleep as he'd strike lucky on almost evening out. Guys are a lot easier to pick up in nightclubs than girls are, or at least that's what Jason would tell himself.

Anyway, there were odd jokes about Carl sneaking off to the 'east beach' in the evenings. Carl would laugh and make some response like, "Well, you know how it is when you've got a few rubbers left over and you're lookin' for somethin' to do with them...", and after a few comments like that I realised that the area must be a gay cruising ground. 

I was pretty instantly fascinated. I'd heard about parks and picnic sites near to where I live at which men supposedly met other men for sex - there was a nature park about five miles from our house that had a pretty seedy reputation along those lines - but I'd always been too scared to go and take a look in case I was spotted by someone I knew.

The 'east beach' seemed like it might represent a chance to go and check one out with virtually no risk to myself.

Over the following days I became obsessed with finding out what went on there. I'd imagine scenarios I might stumble across if I wandered through it, fantasize about possible encounters I could witness, desperately wanting to pay it a visit.

At the same time, I felt guilty for becoming so interested in it. I had a girlfriend back at home and my mates had come away with me so that we could all have a good time together: it would be totally wrong of me, on both counts, to go wandering off like some gay peeping Tom.

But persistent, nagging thoughts as to what might be going on there kept sneaking their way into my mind.

In the end I decided I'd have to pay the place a quick visit, just to satisfy my curiosity. Nothing would happen; it would simply be a brief, cursory scout through the place for educational reasons; almost a research trip. I kept telling myself, "I'll just go there, have a quick wander around, see what goes on, and then get out of there..." The visit would be so brief that you could hardly call it a visit; just a quick glance around as I happened to walk through. It was out of my way, but what the hell. Sometimes guys go out for walks on their own in the evening. Nobody had directly said the place was a cruising ground; how was I expected to know?

I chose the last evening of our trip to visit the 'east beach' for two reasons. First, Carl was taking part in a surfing competition that day and he was going to the pub with his mates afterwards. That meant there was no way I could bump into him and have him broadcasting my presence there to all of my friends later that evening. Second, if anyone else from the beach happened to recognize me as I walked through, there'd be little chance of their reports getting back to my friends since we were heading back home the next morning.

I planned my getaway from the rest of the group meticulously, and it went very well. I started mentioning, casually, that I was feeling a bit sick at about lunchtime and kept making odd references to it throughout the afternoon. By six o'clock I was saying that maybe I wasn't going to go out for the last night's drinking session as I was feeling pretty groggy, and at eight I was making that more definite. I said, "Look, guys, I'll get my head down for an hour's kip when you go out, set my alarm for ten, and if I feel better I'll come out and find you..."

They seemed disappointed but it was a good enough compromise for them. In fact, I intended to take a quick walk along to find the area Carl supposedly visited, have a five minute glance around just to see what was going on, and then walk back and find my mates who would be in one of three possible pubs.

As it happened, though, it was about midnight before my five minute glance around was finished.

So my first 'first' at Newquay is that it was the first place that I went cruising for gay sex.

It took me ages to locate the area. Initially I took the references to 'east beach' literally and walked eastwards along the clifftops, looking down at the various beaches trying to see signs of potential activity. I soon gave up on that: unless dog walking was in some way a coded sign men were using to convey their interest in each other, the beaches were pretty much desolate.

I walked so far out of Newquay that I left the town itself. The high cliff paths gave way to a vast open area of sand dunes and small beach huts and I thought it possible that things went on in the evenings out here. The dunes offered a lot of shelter, both from the wind and from onlookers. I walked along the beach for a while, wondering at first if I was being evaluated by other men hiding among the dunes and worrying that, since no-one was emerging from them, I was clearly regarded as an unattractive proposition. But then, as I walked up into them and looked around, it became clear that the place was empty.

So I headed back towards the town, surprised at how disappointed I was starting to feel.

I found the real cruising area almost by accident. Walking past rows of run-down hotels on the way back into the town, I noticed that a sign pointing towards what looked like a wide alleyway read 'East Beach Car Park'. That made me perk up a bit. On investigation, though, in the broad concrete expanse behind the hotels, I found none of the renowned hallmarks of a cruising ground I'd been allowing myself to hope for: there were no parked cars with figures sitting in the darkness inside them, no squalid-looking public toilets and not even any graffiti on the signs or litter bins offering meeting times and bemoaning stand-ups. Disappointment began to turn to annoyance.

Maybe the comments about 'east beach' had really been just a joke. Or maybe the place I'd been looking for was known as East Beach but it wasn't to the east of Newquay; it might be to the east of one of the small towns nearby.

Just as I was giving up my last few vestiges of hope, I noticed some gates leading into a small park at the far end of the car park.

By now, it was quite dark and I wasn't keen on exploring such an uninviting place. I could quite easily imagine myself getting mugged or beaten up in the darkness among the trees and bushes: apart from the shock of it happening to me, how would I explain it to my mates?

As I was leaving the car park, intending to walk bitterly back into town and find my mates, a guy walked past me in the opposite direction, heading into the car park even though there were no cars nor anything else that might reasonably interest him in there. He was a little bit older than me and, on seeing me, he grinned. I guess I just looked a little taken aback to see someone else because he said, "Alright, mate?"

I nodded and continued walking. Then, in the entrance of the car park, I stopped and watched what he was doing. He walked through the car park, through the gates and disappeared into the blackness of the park.

And then I thought, "Ah..."

I wasted no time and followed him in.

The park was dimly lit by a few ancient white sodium lamps, the insides of which were encrusted with the remains of thousands of moths and other insects. With the cold light thrown out by those, I could make out people in the darkness among the trees. Odd solitary figures, walking and watching, a few couples and one group of three.