Men are at their best in the city, and they are at their best in the city when they are alone. Whereas men in the country are often just boring, and men in groups are mostly just bores, there's something about a man, walking the streets of the city, alone, that makes him strangely attractive.
Edgar Allan Poe, the first writer to articulate the peculiar, particular attractions of the urban loner, tells us there is something arousing, startling and fascinating about this figure that gives us a 'craving desire to keep the man in view - to know more of him'. As a gay man I'm all for keeping men in view and knowing more of them (the more the better), and I plead guilty to being aroused and fascinated by men in the crowd all the time. I don't think I'm alone in this, and I don't think you have to be gay.
The city is the most impressive and enduring of our man-made achievements, and the useful thing about our greatest cities - London and New York, say - is that they're really big, big enough to get lost in, to hide in. The contrast between the lone individual and the vastness of urban sprawl, whether outwards or upwards, is with us all the time. In the face of so many millions of others, we will always be strangers; in the face of the city's monumentality, we will always be puny.
Despite its estranging qualities, there is something liberating about being made to feel so insignificant, and this may be something particularly important for men to experience. Being alone in the city leads to a kind of humility, and humility is something there is too little of in this male-dominated world.
One of the attractions of the man in the crowd is his unselfconsciousness. In walking the streets he lets his guard down. There's a letting go that occurs when a man is made to feel so atomised. He picks his nose freely, fixes his crotch, talks to himself or whistles (do women ever really whistle?). These are little acts of freedom, brief moments when self-regard and self-control don't determine the face a man offers to the world. In groups, men are different - gay men, straight men, all men - we compete and we perform for other men and women. Alone, seemingly apart from everyone else, our performances are less measured.
What strikes me most - and this is where being gay might matter a great deal - is the way men look at one another when they're alone. Straight men in groups don't look at other men in the same way because they're too busy looking at women (performatively, competitively). But men alone certainly do notice other men and often in ways we take for granted: on train platforms awaiting commuter trains, in parks soaking up the sun, or simply passing on the streets. We frequently forego the privileges of anonymity and seek out another's passing glance. We all have our theories about how and why men look at other men - I like to think men look at me because they're hopelessly, recklessly attracted to me and simply can't help themselves.
What I think is true is that there is a unique form of communication, a kind of social contact that takes place in the moments when men's eyes lock. It's an uncertain and ambiguous interaction, and it may not always be a positive or affirming moment. But it is a routine urban experience and one that is no less significant than other kinds of social contact.
In the gay male world we call this kind of contact cruising, but cruising is generally presumed to be about sex. I'm not as aroused, startled and fascinated by the promise of sexual contact as I am by the more simple, more impenetrable moment of contact with other men - the moment of mutual regard that somehow stands apart from sex and sexuality. These are brief encounters, fleeting rather than lingering. But such fleeting moments of ambivalence and questioning - why is he looking at me? Why am I looking at him? - are no bad thing for the man of the crowd.
· Mark Turner is the author of Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London (Reaktion Books)
