Rich and Me went for a drive along the coast on a recent, unusually mild, Autumn day and parked up on the edge of a small seaside town not too many miles away; well, not too far geographically, but a million miles away in terms of social attitude. You can too easily get used to living in such a gay-friendly and cosmopolitan city (most of the time) and forget that this is a fairly unique privilege that ends at the city perimeter; I’m not saying that once you leave the sanctuary of the UK’s gay capital that it’s an inevitable countdown until you’re going to get queer-bashed, but you can start to feel a lot more conspicuous and different to the people around you.

Anyhow, it’s easy to get paranoid and we weren’t about to let any kind of awkward feelings spoil our walk in the sun. It was a lovely walk and the air carried that mix of warmth from the sun and cool from the breeze. We followed a path along the river and as we walked something started to happen; we began to get the feeling we might not be alone. At the sound of a bicycle approaching from behind I moved to one side to let it pass; as the man cycling drew level and overtook us he glanced back at us as he went, then disappeared round a corner. What was he staring at, I wondered.

A bit further along we came to a spot where a pair of swans were drinking from a water inlet; as we watched them I noticed that the bike guy was down at the water’s edge taking pictures. We smiled and he smiled back, then he started to tell us about some of the wildlife and birds along the water. Then he asked us some questions and as he did, I got the feeling that this older guy was quite into us!

We left the older guy to his photography and carried on along the path. We went under a bridge and on the other side Rich decided the view looking back were we had come was worth a pic and got his camera out. Rich is serious about his photography and a true perfectionist and while he set up his tripod and I stood idly by, a young lad wearing a baseball cap, sports top and tracksuit bottoms approached us in a manner that shouted out ‘I’ve got attitude’. He walked past us towards the bridge, then stopped right under it, watching Rich as he set up for the shot. Fortunately, he wasn’t in frame and Rich carried on regardless and we both tried to ignore him. The lad, who must have been no more than 18/19 had a real twitchy, sulky quality about him and as he put one arm up to the underside of the bridge and sort of struck a pose, I suspected he was more interested in us as a couple than the mechanics of photography.

This young guy continued to stand and watch and after Rich was finished we decided to head back to the car, passing him under the bridge where he made a point of not moving an inch and definitely checked us out as we went. I had a feeling he was following us but didn’t want to look back in case it gave some sort of encouragement. Back at the car Rich packed away his camera gear and I saw the young lad appear from the path we had just walked, stand and watch us for a minute and then disappear into the public toilet. In fact, when I looked around us I noticed one or two lone men sat in cars and other ones frequently pulling up and the driver disappearing into the men’s toilet – so we had inadvertently stumbled across the local gay cruising ground.

We weren’t ready to head back just yet, so we made a detour to the seafront and parked next to the beach. It was a lovely walk along a near deserted beach, and as we neared the car to got home we could see another car parked next to ours and a lot of movement. It turned out to be two very straight looking, buff surfers getting ready to hit the water; one of the guys was standing outside the car already in his wetsuit, but his sexy buddy was in the driver’s seat trying to pull his on discreetly, but with the advantage of shades and Rich taking his time unlocking the car doors I got a bit of an eyeful! Thing is, I don’t reckon I was the only one and this guy’s buddy was clearly eyeing him up too, but very coyly and trying to avoid detection.

So who knows what was going on there of if there’d been lots of drunken, surfer sex fun! Our day out did, however, bring home the fact that away from the pink lights of Brighton there was probably just as much homo interest, and while real progress in gay equality can be seen in the city’s large openly gay population, gay shops on the high street and loud and proud gay clubs right in the city centre, why is it that the hidden side of gay life is so much sexier?!