queer masculinities

Michael Sibalis: France 219
the Rond-Point. 37 The banks of the Seine (as yet unpaved) drew
sodomites not only after dark, but also during the day when they ogled
and picked up the men who swam naked there in defiance of police
ordonnances. An official complained in 1724, ‘It’s a horrible scandal
that a large number of libertine men swim in the nude in Paris in sight
of so many people, principally of the opposite sex. … They also
commit abominations with those of their own sex.’ 38
Men habitually urinated and even defecated outdoors, which offered
them frequent occasions to expose themselves and gauge reactions. In
May 1784 in the Champs-Élysées, for instance, a policeman arrested a
40-year-old postilion ‘whom he saw prowling about in a suspicious
manner for a long time, then going from tree to tree pretending to
make water.’ A man might fondle himself while pretending to urinate
or make some inviting comment, like 43-year-old Jean-Baptiste Lefevre,
arrested on the Quai des Orfèvres in January 1785, because ‘he told an
individual who passed by while he was in a posture to make water that
he couldn’t [urinate] because he was too hard, which was true.’ 39
Another sodomite showed more wit than discretion in 1723 when he
saw a young man (who was in fact a mouche) urinating and asked him
‘what time it was by [his] cock, and [said] that by his [own] it was
noon.’ 40
Then there were the more subtle ways that sodomites indicated a
mutual interest. One informant reported in 1737 that Bernard Girardot
‘stared at me rudely [sous le nez], giving me the usual signal of the vile
creatures.’ 41 A report about a patrol in the Champs-Élysées in 1780
explained that ‘Mr. Noël and his men … know the signals of these
debauchees, consisting of the placement of the hat, spitting, two successive
blows of the cane against a tree, etc.’ 42 Verbal contact could
begin with a claim of prior acquaintanceship. In May 1788, the police
arrested Pierre Corby, a 50-year-old upholsterer, after he approached an
inspector on the northern boulevards, ‘telling me that he thought we
knew each other, a means used by pederasts to make a pick up.’ 43 Or a
sodomite could strike up a seemingly innocent conversation by asking
the time, commenting on the weather or requesting tobacco. In 1723,
one sodomite, asked by another if he had any tobacco, responded with
a gesture toward his genitals: ‘I’m sure that you prefer this to a pinch of
tobacco.’ 44
Once they had made contact, two men might have sexual relations
on the spot (in the parks or along the riverbank) or go elsewhere for
privacy. Cabarets and taverns provided rooms to customers who
wished to eat and drink in private, but some owners were leery of