“Privy Privy,” by artists Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello, at 601Artspace (Courtesy of the artists; Photo: Zanni Productions)

On a warm Thursday evening, I entered a darkened bathroom stall, got on my knees, and licked. An ice cream cone, you sicko! What did you think I was eagerly lapping up?! Genuflecting devotionally in front of an oversized duct tape-encircled hole like I was praying to the spirits of toilet love past, I finally lost my glory hole virginity at Privy Privy, a collaborative installation by artists Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello at 601Artspace.

A Museum of Ice Cream for perverts, Privy Privy faithfully recreated the sights and sounds (mercifully minus the smells) of a queer club bathroom with a soft-serve twist. The installation replaced anonymous public sex with anonymous public ice cream eating, an alternate if not equally, erotic exchange with all that gaping-mouthed devouring. I mean, can you even consume an ice cream cone without looking at least somewhat obscene? I don’t think so (and neither, apparently, does Meta as Instagram has shadowbanned Privy Privy’s Instagram account). Yet, frozen fellatio is much less likely to land the artists in some pearl-clutching exposé in The New York Post. Even still, the installation has the potential to awaken some long-dormant food fetish in certain participants. Hopefully, anyway. Move over, cake farts! Ice cream glory holes are next.

“Privy Privy,” by artists Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello, at 601Artspace (Courtesy of the artists; Photo: Zanni Productions)

Past a black curtain that separated the installation from the gallery’s entrance, affixed with several signs that warned those unlucky enough to suffer from lactose intolerance or a nut allergy (tough breaks), Privy Privy looked like a club held solely in a john. In front of me was a bank of toilet stalls, illuminated dramatically by swirling blue and purple lights punctured by bursts of orange and mirror ball swirls. On my left, a person in a pluffy ice cream costume bopped on top of a go-go box to the throbbing beat of loudly pumped indiscriminate disco tunes. To my right, a man in Tom of Finland aviator sunglasses and a 1950s-style soda jerk cap—an ice cream daddy, if you will—watched me as I froze, stunned by the sudden tone shift from the white-walled gallery just beyond the curtain. After thawing out, I, a voyeur at heart, tried to peek between the slats of another stall where a couple entered, but the door closed. Iced out! Thankfully, ice cream daddy came to my rescue, dancing over and beckoning me wordlessly into my own stall. Once inside, he knocked on one of the stall walls and a gloved fist popped out, holding a fresh ice cream cone. I bent over and indulged. Mmm…strawberry. I felt distinctly uncomfortable but decided to lean into it. With every few slurps, the stranger’s hand turned the cone to prevent any unsightly drippage. Helpful! After I had enough, I wiped the cream that had settled into the corners of my mouth and shuffled out with my head down, much like, I imagine, most glory-hole-based happy endings. A little ashamed but mostly satisfied (and amused).

After attending, I gushed about the installation to various people, one of whom, my cousin, asked me what I think is a deceptively astute question: Is there some statement here or is it just for fun? Well, both! And that may be Privy Privy’s biggest achievement. Taking the more serious angle first, Privy Privy is organized with both an appreciation for the continued communal power of nightlife and a nostalgia for former queer nightlife incarnations lost along the way, disappeared mainly by the intersection of HIV/AIDS or gentrification, that some visiting the installation (me included) never experienced. The soundtrack, in particular, grounds the project, saving it from becoming yet another saccharine Instagram museum photo-op. While I couldn’t pick out any specific song in the disco soup, it all seemed familiar and stimulated some deep-brain heartstrings so I asked the artists about it. Patrick shared that the music derived from a box of cassette mixtapes he inherited that had been played in clubs from the mid-1970s to the 1990s in New York and Fire Island. The mind reels imagining what clubs Privy Privy participants may be reliving through the music—Crisco Disco? The Saint? The Ice Palace? The Toilet?—and what the denizens there were doing. Possibly cruising the bathrooms of those clubs as well! The soundtrack allows the exhibition to exist as a reclamation of the lost time and lost sexual possibilities (or here, pleasurable possibilities) that Douglas Crimp explains so well in “Mourning and Militancy” and a way to momentarily glimpse those ghosts of public sex that José Esteban Muñoz conjures in Cruising Utopia. Along with these losses queer theory has discussed at length, Privy Privy also resurrects the communal excitement barred during those more recent pandemic years of polite social distancing and KN-95 masks.

Artist Donna Oblongata takes a taste in “Privy Privy,” by Oblongata and Patrick Costello, at 601Artspace (Courtesy of the artists; Photo: Zanni Productions)

Yet, Privy Privy is not a melancholy memorial, the more popular angle for contemporary art engaging with queer nightlife. Most tend to be meditative, abstracted, mirror ball-lit tributes rather than inviting attendees to take their own bite out of public pleasure and consumption. Not that one is better than the other (I’ve written about many of the former on this very website!) and not to say there aren’t any precedents; I think of Gwen Shockey’s lesbian bar bathroom installation, No Man’s Land, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum and Nayland Blake’s glory hole door in an exhibition I co-curated, Party Out Of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980. But, as far as I know, neither of those were used for any drippy public exchange though I pray I’m wrong!

And this is how Privy Privy stands apart. It lets everyone in on the normally shamed, secret, hush-hush fun of glory holes for those, like me, who never experienced them or others disgusted by the whole concept. There is a strangely poignant exchange that can occur between strangers solely separated by a bathroom stall. When on my knees, I kept wondering about the other person holding the cone: Who are they? What are they getting out of this? Are they feeling anything? Are they turned on or on the clock? A stranger making sure you don’t get ice cream all over your shirt as you take big bites out of a scoop is a bizarre moment but an undeniably intimate one.

Go-go cone in “Privy Privy,” by artists Donna Oblongata and Patrick Costello, at 601Artspace (Courtesy of the artists; Photo: Zanni Productions)

It’s also not all that serious. And thank god! The installation is genuinely silly (a go-go cone!) and even with the delightful deviancy that glory holes represent, quite wholesome. It’s simply ice cream—and there is a universality to that enjoyment (other than, of course, the aforementioned unfortunates with allergies). In an art field that is beset with a rash of self-seriousness where even an installation that sounds as if it could be funny (*cough* Human Petting Zoo) is half-assed and pretentious as hell and where so much queer art has a tendency to fixate on suffering—not to mention the general woe of the world at the moment (the artists’ press release mentions the recent onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation), we could all use a little pick-me-up, a sugar buzz, and sharing in the communal joy.