50 Shades of Gay: Finding Love and Kink in Your Back Pocket
Blooming conversations in the dark, clandestine affection in beautiful rooms, and illicit erotica driving home on roads less traveled is masterminded by three seams of the back jean pocket balanced with a simple, yet crucial handkerchief deliberately arranged in the left or right pocket. The marriage between the handkerchief and its placement is a visual way to communicate and encourage love, kink, preference, and sex. This exhortation and entreaty are known as the handkerchief code, hanky code, or flagging.
In the 1960s and 1970s, finding thrill and passion for men seeking men couldn’t be found by kissing in cars outside downtown bars. A private non-verbal language only to be understood by those who spoke it was crucial for surviving cruising for a lover and fulfilling shared intimate intensity without callous assaults and arrests during this era. Reducing the risk of wearing injustice indignity like a red wine-stained white dress was pivotal. When there is a will for love, there is a way for love. The hanky code was devised. The hanky code is a system of colored-coded handkerchiefs or bandanas for non-verbal communicating a man’s interest in sexual desires and fetishes, and which role, dominant or submissive, they will play in consensual activity. The color of the handkerchief or bandana identifies the desire or fetish, while the placement in the left or right pocket signals if the man is a “top” (left back pocket) or “bottom” (right back pocket) during sex. Pairing the colored handkerchiefs in a back pocket like artistry, flags the one – the one to first caress the back of a stranger seeking affinity, the one to spark whispered conversations in a darkened room, the one to break the ice between prospects over cheap cocktails, the one to match the deepest sensual desires, and the one who accepts the role they will play when twisting in the sheets.
Basic and tamed examples bonding the meaning behind color and pocket placement are black: S&M, dark blue: anal sex, light blue: oral sex, grey: bondage, pink: dildo play, red: fisting, yellow: water sports, white: masturbation, purple: piercings, military green: military men, orange: anything and everything is fair and consensual. A man wearing a dark blue handkerchief in his left pocket signals he is looking for anal sex and he is the “top” in the activity. A man wearing a red bandana in his right back pocket defines he is seeking a male partner to participate in fisting and will play the submissive role in the activity. The devil is in the details.
While stuffing a colored bandana in the back pocket of jeans was popularized by the gay community, the idea of using colored bandanas as a coded language is neither historically unique nor gay, unfortunately. The origins of this captivating cultural occurrence date back to circa the 1850s during the Gold Rush era in San Francisco. Most of the gold miners were men who left behind their wives and home. Imaginable, the stress of the backbreaking work and the lonely life being away from their women took a toll. For socialization, the men met at saloons to square dance. Because of the lack of women, each man had to take on the role of the male lead, or the female follower for the dance. To signal which role the men were willing to play, the miners wore a colored bandana around their necks. Blue bandanas marked men as the lead and red bandanas indicated the men who would be the follower.
Over a century later, in the 1970s in New York, a similar non-verbal system of communication between gay men in gay bars was implemented. Instead of bandanas, men created a secret language system to find lovers, by wearing keys on their belt loops to gesture sexual position preference. Men who wore their keys on the left meant he was a dominant “top.” Men who had their keys on the right signaled he was a submissive “bottom.” A journalist in the Village Voice, an unconventional newspaper in New York, wrote an article where they joked gay men should resort back to flagging lovers with bandanas, but enhance this coded practice by adding more colors to signal a wider variety of sexual desires and to place the bandana/handkerchief in the left or right back pocket to indicate dominant or submissive roles. The joke landed well, as the gay community nationwide was serious about embracing the witty proposal. As a result, the detailed-oriented modern hanky code was born, flourished, and expands evermore with over 65 colors and fabrics paired with placement combinations for flagging lovers. The kinky meaning behind colored handkerchiefs bled onto other sexual articles like colored bondage rope, leather harnesses in full or trimmed in color, sex toys, electrical tape, clothing, and more. The tale is as old as time, gay people design everything to be fabulous, inviting, and inclusionary.
Underground leather bars, a prevailing place to find an ocean of gay men wearing colored handkerchiefs, provide a safe harbor for straight men who don’t have nor want vanilla sex. Gay men proudly flagging in leather bars catalyze for straight men to attend underground gay leather bars to show they too do not fit in the tasteless box of having predictable sex. Straight men usually are not interested in flagging male lovers, but rather to be in the company of other men who share the desire for kink and non-conventional sex. Straight men participate in dressing in leather, some in full color signaling a particular kink, others dappled in whispers and shades, establishing a kink-loving commonality across the sexual orientation spectrum.
In 2023, it is common to see leather harnesses, armbands, and other fetish equipment trimmed with color derived from the hanky code inside gay bars and stores. While many queer people of newer generations may not feel the necessity to wear a colored handkerchief to announce personal taste and preference, it should be recognized and honored by those who do, as it is a declaration of queer identity, visibility, and representation. Understanding where the color-coded secret language came from and why it was significantly created is a vital thread in the fabric of the LGBT community story of love, lust, dreaming, and survival.
We deserve the intimacy we crave. Live and love in blinding color, my friend.
