Last weekend we had a BBQ dinner, fascinating I know. We went to our favourite BBQ-ing spot, which is located in a very pretty piece of semi-secluded forestry. It is also the place where we held Cormac’s birthday BBQ party. I am really into BBQs at the moment; at least the vegetarian ones. When I was preparing the invitations I Googled the park to see if I could find a handy little map for guests, given that the park is semi-secluded and all. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see the park come up on a cruising site that reviewed unofficial beats around Australia. Incidentally, our favourite BBQ-ing spot got a positive review, good for you little park: “A good mix of dicks”.
This time when we arrived we inadvertently rustled some of those dicks up out of the bushes, well their fully clothed owners anyway, and in my opinion it wasn’t a terribly good mix – homogenous even, I would have said. White, middle-aged, family types. Interesting to see that people don’t get particularly dressed up when they are heading out to have sex with strangers in the bush. OK sure, you wear something practical but possibly the man in the ratty shorts and thongs* was making too little effort even for strangers?
When they saw that we were a family they vacated for us. Thank you considerate beat-goers. The children were oblivious to the goings-on, though Lauca was somewhat curious – where are their picnics? In the meantime her father and I used the opportunity to make as many stupid jokes to one another as possible because the possibilities for innuendo are seemingly limitless in such a situation. Finally Lauca got offended by all the insider jokes she was being left out of and yelled at us to quit it, so we got on with having an actual family BBQ.
*Australian for flip-flops.
blue milk 
A friend told me about a library she used to work at which had a public toilet behind it which was a well-known beat.
When they were doing night shift on Thursday the staff would see all the men – um – coming and going. She said 3/4s had baby and booster seats in the back of their cars –
they parked in the library carpark.
I still can’t get my head around the way men can be so much more certain about their capacity to give consent in such situations and their ability to have their consent or otherwise respected. Just a completely different world to that of women. I find myself still thinking, aren’t you frightened of some of the other men you might find there? But of course it is probably homophobia they fear the most.
Hey Blue Milk, have you read Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas, or the Joe Orton’s diaries? Some of the consent issues are covered, sort of. i didn’t get too far into the diaries, i was hanging out with a bunch of actup activists at the time, quite enlightening.
They’re probably more worried about being disturbed by someone’s tantruming toddler 😉
I’m just trying to imagine the questions you might get – “Mummy what are those men playing?” might be the least of them.
Very topical given the turn (!) NSW politics has taken re. David Cameron and furtive gay sex.
Campbell, Campbell.