A Manifesto on "Going Out"

It is late in the afternoon on a Monday at Fire Island Pines in the middle of summer. Hundreds of feet from the ferry dock, the pulsating beat reverberates through the trees and rattles the boardwalk planks. "Low Tea" has begun at the Blue Whale. The bar is open, the music is blaring, and cliques of gay men are accumulating on the deck. In two hours, the ability to freely circulate about the deck will have all but disappeared due to the number of bodies present. At this time, this bar will abruptly stop serving and the music will shut off; instead, music will emanate from the pool deck and the poolside bar will open. "Low Tea" will have graduated to "Middle Tea". After another two hours, "High Tea" will begin on the upper deck of the Pavilion, superseding "Middle Tea". After two more hours, "High Tea" will officially end; however, the unofficial understanding is that participants will continue to drink and dance, sometimes until 4 AM. Come back tomorrow to do it all again.

This daily, up-to-12-hour engagement is a continuous build-up of energy, sexual tension, alcohol, and frivolity. This is arguably the zenith of what "going out" as a gay man means.

The relentless cycle of inanity curtailed my need--even my desire--to "go out", and it has not returned since.

I'm not sure why my experience at Fire Island was the breaking point for me. Countless other times I had gone out to gay bars that offered similar environments: loud music, crowded spaces, overpriced drinks, awkward dancing. But that trip put the nail in the coffin of receiving fulfillment from going out. Perhaps it was that I didn't go with a group of friends. Perhaps it was that there was nothing else to do on the Island at night if you were not drinking and dancing. Perhaps it was that the Tea dance sequence in itself seemed to be the aspiration of every guest on the Island. ("I'll see you at Tea." "Want to meet at Tea tonight?")

By contrast, "going out" has rarely provided value in itself for me. The purpose of going out has generally been to find a means to an end. The desired end would be the formation of relationships with other people, whether platonic, sexual, or both. The more people who were also out, the more probable such a connection would be, my theory held. Therefore, weekend nights, especially during festival weekends (e.g., Pride, Folsom, etc.), were prime opportunities to go out that should not be wasted, despite the fact that placing myself in such environments fundamentally contradicted my introverted nature. Until Fire Island, the risk of missing potential connections or conversations--the "what if" scenario, the fear of missing out, or FOMO^TM--many times won out my internal battle of deciding whether to go out.

But let's be real. Many environments associated with "going out" discourage meaningful connections. Whether or not this is intentional is up for debate. The music is too loud, the lighting too dark, and the spaces too crowded. It is not cute to say "what?" after every sentence uttered by someone else and to put your ear inches away from someone else's mouth to hear them. Tone of voice is lost when cracking jokes or puns. Facial expressions and body language are difficult to read amid the reduced lighting punctured by beams of color. A tickle develops in the throat after several attempts to talk over the music.

Perhaps other people truly do find intrinsic value in the activity of going out. But if going out is treated as a means to an end, as it was for me, then a lot more becomes at stake. The entire evening amounts to a complete waste of time if the desired end is not achieved. Going out becomes a gamble that did not pay off. When framed as such, I'm actually surprised that it took me until Fire Island to stop going out.

Of course, it is not as if I will never go out again. Rather, my inclination to seek opportunities to "go out" have remained near zero since Fire Island. If someone wants to meet up at a bar, I am likely to suggest a quieter location that facilitates conversation.