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Blanche spent some time in Sydney recently and found a publication there called When You're Hot, You're Hot. This booklet is a guide to public sex establishments such as bathhouses, sex clubs, and backrooms. A lot of the material inside is helpful but prosaic: how to put on a condom, types of sexually-transmitted diseases, tips on hygiene, and the like.

But more striking was a long section which describes the body language of attracting and rejecting attention at sex venues. Most guys who visit such places absorb at least some of these normally unspoken rules. When You're Hot sets out to make them explicit.

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t's an interesting challenge, because these rules aren't just unspoken, they govern communication that's essentially nonverbal. Unlike at a bar, in a bathhouse or sex club you "chat someone up" only with body language. Such places often also have some "chill-out" area, perhaps with the dulling drone of a TV, where it's fine to sit and chat. These areas are often more like bars, with casual conversation mixed with some cruising.

But the general rule of silence in the main areas of a sex venue means that most sexual negotiation is conducted with eye and hand. As When You're Hot advises, to cruise someone, you generally maintain prolonged eye contact with him or touch yourself in some sexual way. If the other guy wants to accept your offer, he'll return the gaze and touch himself (or possibly you!). To reject your offer, he'll look away from you or perhaps fold his arms across his chest.

Blanche suspects that the reason these signals work lies in their departure from the ordinary body language of the surrounding culture. In Australia or America, heterosexual men don't normally maintain eye contact with each other for more than a second or so. Eyes locking longer sends a signal. Similarly, in public, nonsexual situations it's taboo for guys to stroke their dicks or pinch their nipples; doing so broadcasts a message that at least those interested shouldn't have trouble decoding. To reject attention from another guy, just revert to the normal codes of body conduct and treat him like someone on a bus.

First break the glass...

Another part of the language of offer, acceptance, and rejection comes from body contact and touching. The general rule in nonsexual situations is that your body shouldn't touch a stranger's. Random passengers on an elevator will endeavor to avoid brushing against each other and will apologize if they do. In sex venues, again, a violation of the normal taboo on touch can be a clear signal of an offer or its acceptance. If a guy is sitting in the hot tub and his foot rubs up against another guy's, then the ordinary rule in a nonsexual situation would require both guys to move their feet away, followed by an apology.

If the first guy violates the no-touching rule by failing to move away or apologize, this will flout the ordinary rules of body language in the culture, so gets interpreted as an offer. If the second guy also breaks the rule by failing to move away, this constitutes an acceptance. On the other hand, if the second guy follows the usual rule in nonsexual environments and moves away, then this is a rejection.

So body language normally has a kind of grammar that regulates the movement of the eyes, hands, and body in public. In cruising settings, the language of offers and acceptances works through violation of the normal rules; the language of rejection works through following the normal rules.

This way of thinking about the problem also points out the perils of trying to interpret sexual signals in another culture. If you go to some unfamiliar country, you may not know the rules and so interpret nonsexual behavior as an advance. Does that Arab guy looking at you want to fuck you or sell you something? If we want to know what other guys are saying to us, we have to master not just their tongues but their bodies.