Enchanted Forest

A man takes us behind the tropical bushes into the land of gay cruising, where two worlds coexist without ever touching.

By Reed Hearne

Mar 11, 1998 | Lions and tigers and bears, oh my? How 'bout muscle-daddies, fats and fems, not shy? This is Maui, where hidden worlds lie just beneath every glossy travel poster. Destination to sardine-packed 747s, Bruce and Demi, Dustin and Denzel and home to a growing sovereignty movement that allies itself with the PLO and believes the U.S. government is responsible for genocide of the Hawaiian race and culture.

Another secret land lurks here too -- although the directions to it are remarkably similar everywhere in the world. Follow the path to the end of the beach, park, promenade, pier, mall, tracks, tunnel. Cross, climb, duck under, hop over, go around or through the boulders, trees, wall, hedges, dunes or caves. You've left behind the gated resorts, tour buses, families, children, world. Coast on your instincts, scope out the action.

Certain tourist-trampled places have become world-renowned in gay circles. Such a spot on Maui is next door to Little Beach, one of the few places in the islands where "aloha spirit" wins over an archly conservative moral mind-set (forget about all that gay marriage folderol) to allow nude sun bathing. The "enchanted forest," a dense thicket of Kiawe trees wrapped around the leeward side of Puu Olai, an ancient volcanic cinder cone, is an endless maze of footpaths through waste-high grasses, the quintessential, sylvan playground for queers.

If you're gay and don't get it, you probably can't be taught. One theory is that the degree to which you need directions is proportional to the absence of knowing what to do when you get there. Straight men learn early to hide their primordial lust behind "lines" and strategies acceptable to women. Gay men don't have to. Whether they're highly selective, sport major attitude or discriminate according to rarefied fetishes, they always know at the most basic level how the other guy's clock is wound. The word, recently sanctified by Webster's, is gaydar: a powerful symbiosis etched into our collectively horny unconscious.

Gay Arcadian sex coexists with small towns and big cities alike. The furtive realms originally (and still in much of the homophobic world) filled a bursting need for queers to connect, where, other than public bathrooms, no buildings stood to shelter their meetings. Now men choose them over safe and acceptable bars or clubs in cities as liberal as San Francisco or West Hollywood. There is something undeniably primal about a pastoral hunt.

Where do these hunts take place? In the park, no more than 50 yards from the front door of Danielle Steele's stately Pacific Heights mansion. In the hedges near the Louvre. On the beach under the Golden Gate Bridge in the afternoon. At the end of New York's notorious piers. By the trees below the Hollywood sign. At these and hundreds of other sites, men "play" in proximity to what would be a very disapproving rest of the world. Fortunately, they rely on an instinctive understanding: If others are not looking for it, it can happen right under their noses and they won't see it or feel threatened.

Next Page: A seduction on the beach

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