Cottaging (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cottaging is a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory (a cottage, tea-room or beat), or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere. The term has its roots in self-contained English toilet blocks resembling small cottages in their appearance; in the English cant language of Polari this became a double entendre by gay men referring to sexual encounters. Cottage is documented as having been in use during the Victorian era to refer to a public toilet and by the 1960s had become an exclusively homosexual slang term. The word used in this sense is predominantly British (a cottage more commonly being a small, cosy, countryside home), though the term is occasionally used with the same meaning in other parts of the world. Among gay men in America, lavatories used for this purpose are called tea rooms.Although the term is often associated with gay men, it can apply to anybody.