The article is located at an intersection between gender studies and urban anthropology. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2012 and 2014 in João Pessoa, State of Paraíba (Northeastern Brazil), we present the agents and spaces that make up a circuit homoerotic sociability known to locals as “pegação,” i.e., cruising for erotic and sexual exchanges without emotional ties or financial interest by men who do not necessarily self-identify as homosexual. Findings indicate relations of permeability between people and places, as well as the tensioning of identity models through an experience marked by fluidity and eventuality, generating a continuous process of reinvention of space and of those involved themselves, while subjected to mechanisms of social control.
dissident sexualities; masculinities; sex in the city; pegação; Ethnography
