"It's not really about the sex act itself," said a third-year USC graduate student who declined to give his name. "It's more about the fulfilling of a fantasy."
The student was talking about "cruising," the practice of men meeting and having anonymous sex in bathrooms or other public places.
Cruisers, facilities management employees, law enforcement officials and Web sites dedicated to cruising confirm that multiple bathrooms at USC are consistently used for cruising.
One cruising Web site lists 66 cruising locations in Los Angeles - including eight at USC.
"My wife and I have a pretty good sex life. … I don't identify as gay," said the cruiser, who is married and has a child. He called cruising, which is a misdemeanor, "an adventure."
Cruisers said bathrooms in Bovard Auditorium, Doheny Library, Taper Hall and the Student Union are all common spots for cruising and all have seen recent activity.
USC employees said sexual rendezvous have been taking place for years at Bovard, STU, Mudd Hall, Social Sciences Building, Von KleinSmid Center, Olin Hall, Waite Phillips Hall and Kaprielian Hall.
Janitors at UCLA said Royce Hall and Haines Hall are also popular cruising sites at the Bruin campus.
Law enforcement
Cruising is a misdemeanor and violates California Penal Code Section 647(d), which outlaws loitering in public bathrooms to solicit "lewd or lascivious or any unlawful act."
While cruising goes on at both USC and UCLA, the two campus police organizations have different stances on enforcement.
USC Department of Public Safety Chief Carey Drayton said unless someone files a complaint, DPS does not take action.
"We're here for the community," he said last semester. "So would we patrol bathrooms, or indoor offices, for that matter? Unless we were called, no."
But in a university statement released Sept. 2, Drayton wrote, "The University monitors all areas of campus and fully enforces applicable laws and codes of conduct."
Witnesses of illegal activity should contact DPS or the Los Angeles Police Department, the statement said.
Though Drayton said he has dealt with cruising on three of the four college campuses he has worked for, he said he hasn't heard of any such activity at USC since arriving on campus in November 2005.
The graduate student cruiser said he's never seen DPS officers at cruising locations.
Aaron Drake, DPS captain of operations for the Health Sciences Campus, said DPS and LAPD have been aware of cruising in the past. It has been three years since he worked on the University Park Campus, he said.
"It happened quite a few times that (DPS) got reports of," Drake said.
Last semester, LAPD officers responded to a call from a juvenile who said a suspect attempted to look at him under a stall divider in a Bovard bathroom, according to a Feb. 15 DPS log.
The suspect grabbed the juvenile by the collar as he attempted to flee, but he escaped and reported the incident to police, according to the log.
Several years ago, LAPD conducted sting operations and detained both students and nonstudents, Drake said, adding that no staff members were detained.
Detained individuals who were not students were put into a database and released, and student cruisers were referred to Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards, Drake said.
Repeat offenders could be arrested, he added.
Senior LAPD lead officer Gary Cantu said vice officers conducted operations two years ago to stop cruising at USC United University Church because it was the "most prominent (cruising) location" at that time.
Officer Michael Sanchez of the LAPD Southwest Division said the department was not currently investigating cruising on the USC campus.
Nancy Greenstein, director of UCLA Police Department's Community Services Division, confirmed that University of California Police Department officers have confronted cruising on the campus.
"People call us if they are uncomfortable or feel that it's inappropriate," she said.
She added that UCPD's policy is to post signs and have uniformed officers patrol cruising locations, adding that they do not want to "trap people" with sting operations and plainclothes officers.
"You want people to know that it's being patrolled," she said.
Greenstein, who heard about cruising while working for West Hollywood city government, said it is a "big issue" in Los Angeles.
"LAPD has had meetings and task forces on this," she said. "It's all over."
The process
Sex acts performed by cruisers range from mutual masturbation to anal intercourse.
To initiate a sex act, some cruisers stand at a sink and wash their hands, eyeing other men in the restroom, looking for signs.
Others stand at a urinal and look around, sometimes making their genitals visible to other occupants, the graduate student said.
Cruisers then leave the urinal or sink and go into a stall, he said.
The cruiser said some people use toilet paper to write messages to the adjacent stall.
Others peer through cracks or holes in the stalls, using eye contact to solicit sexual activity, he said.
He said he prefers to watch the activities rather than participate, and both the chance of being caught and the unpredictability of each encounter are part of the thrill.
"I tend to be pretty discreet," the graduate student said.
He said participants range from USC students and staff members to individuals with no connection to USC. They range in age from 18 to 70 years old, he said.
A USC employee, who also declined to give his name, said he frequents cruising locations just to watch.
Describing himself as a married bisexual man, the employee said he has concerns about sexually transmitted diseases.
He said some cruisers become angry when he refuses to physically participate.
The "fascinating" part about cruising, he said, is while cruising has been happening for many years, the general public is unaware.
"It's so established and yet so secretive," he said.
Asked about the appropriateness of the activity, the graduate student admitted it was "technically illegal," but he drew a sharp distinction between cruisers who disturb the public and those who utilize empty locations.
"When a reasonable uninvolved third party is taken aback, you have to re-examine yourself and what you're doing," he said, calling it "obviously inappropriate" to solicit sex when noncruisers are in the restroom.
He added that he would never visit Bovard on Sundays because he is aware that families use the facilities for church services.
Evidence
Facilities management employees said they have found semen stains, used condoms, pornographic videos and magazines, sex toys and graffiti.
Etchings on walls and stall doors include initials, phone numbers, graphic artwork, obscene language and other cruising locations.
"We find stuff all the time," said one Aramark employee. Aramark conducts custodial operations for USC.
Aramark employees said the findings are common knowledge among custodians and supervisors.
But they added that evidence of cruising activity is never reported to DPS because custodial employees view it like other trash.
Along with disposable evidence at other cruising locations, second-floor bathrooms in VKC, SGM and WPH have square sheets of metal covering parts of stall walls.
The graduate-student cruiser said these are likely covering "glory holes" - holes used either to make eye contact between stalls or to allow men in neighboring stalls to perform sex acts on each other.
Stall doors in bathrooms in some former cruising locations, including WPH and SOS, have been entirely removed.
Harry Ambrose, who has been a janitor at UCLA for more than 17 years, said he has also found semen stains, used condoms and gay-themed magazines in UCLA restrooms.
He said he attempts to disrupt cruising activities.
"We're the ones trying to stop this thing," Ambrose said of himself and fellow custodian William Arnold.
He said he bangs on stall doors to disrupt cruisers.
Both custodians said both Royce Hall and Haines Hall are popular cruising sites on the UCLA campus.
Ambrose said bathroom sex at UCLA happens five days a week and multiple times each day.
"These are the two hottest ones, Haines and Royce," Arnold said.
UCLA campus police knows about the activities and patrols the area sometimes, he said.
When the patrols go up, cruising goes down; and when the patrols stop, the activity resumes, Ambrose said.
Cruising on campus
"(Cruising is) on every college campus that you can name, even the most religious college campuses," the graduate-student cruiser said, adding that people cruised for sex at the "hardcore Baptist" campus where he spent his undergraduate years.
Many cruisers are "straight-acting" men who feel they can't be openly gay, said Julie Albright, a lecturer in USC's Department of Sociology and an expert on relationships and sexuality on the Internet. They might be in a "very masculine environment" such as an athletic team or fraternity, or live with others - a spouse or roommate, for example - who wouldn't accept homosexual activity, she said.
David Salter, an openly gay 2006 graduate, said college campuses are "the most appealing" locations for cruising because of physical attraction to young college students, he said.
Salter said he has visited cruising Web sites but does not participate in cruising activities.
He said he has an overall negative opinion of cruisers and doesn't want to be associated with that group.
Salter said he doesn't cruise because he wants to screen his partners.
For him, he said, "the person you're doing it with takes precedent over the act."
While cruising for sex in public bathrooms is largely a homosexual activity, anonymous sex is prevalent everywhere, including within the heterosexual community, said Vincent Vigil, a graduate student and director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center.
The only difference, he said, is the location.
"If they're not out, they can't go to a gay bar," Vigil said. "When people talk about cruising for sex or anonymous sex, they automatically gear it towards the gay community.
"That's all that people think about, in terms of the gay community, is about sex," he said. "(But) it's about love and getting equal rights and finding (a partner). It's not just about sex."
