‘Do you want to write a dispatch from the fuck tree,’ texted this publication’s editor Charlie Baker, unprompted.
‘Lmaooooooooo,’ I responded. ‘Do you mean the fuck tree.’
‘I do,’ he sent back. ‘It’s fuck tree season.’
He was quite right, of course.
It’s common knowledge that Hampstead Heath is a popular spot for men to find sex with one another. What’s managed to elude public consciousness is the existence of the fuck tree.
I’d never visited the tree, but had known since trawling the proto-Grindr gay web as a frustrated teen that somewhere in Hampstead Heath’s 791 acres there was a tree that served as the centre of the woods’ thriving cruising scene.
I accepted the commission: I had always been curious to see the bark against which St George Michael himself might have been railed.
Hampstead Heath’s cruising happens well away from the tourist throngs of Parliament Hill, in a part of the park characterised by dense forest. Much of the hunt happens on narrow paths that cut through the undergrowth: as in straight nightlife venues, indicating interest is a matter of eye contact and body language.
