Swapping spit is an act of intimacy and connection in gay culture. It is the sharing of body fluids between two men. This act is both poignant and celebratory after decades of HIV, when gay men were taught to fear and avoid the exchange of body fluids. Saliva has never transmitted HIV, but for years the fear extended to any fluid exchange between men.
Intimacy through Exchange
This diptych recreates that act of intimacy by swapping the images of two single shirtless men between their original settings. A young man in jeans stands barefoot in a motel pool at night. An older man in striped swim trunks stands on a terrace above the sea with his two poodles. Each man is placed into the other's scene. That exchange is the only action.
The action creates what painting has traditionally called pentimento: traces of the former figure remaining in the original setting, partly covered by the new figure. Behind the older man in the pool, the younger man's arms, jeans, and bare feet remain visible. Behind the younger man on the terrace, the poodles remain.
The viewer is left to consider the intimacy of entering another person's space: how each figure is changed by its new environment, and how it stays the same.
Swapping has a long and celebrated history in American culture.
From the 1960s onward, suburban heterosexual couples held key parties, where married couples swapped partners for an evening. This activity was treated as harmlessly as a Tupperware party.
One of the most popular films of the late 1960s was Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), in which a wealthy California couple decides to try swinging and wife swapping and brings their best friends into the idea. It was an enormous success and showed that swapping in heterosexual culture had moved into the mainstream.
Ironically, gay men in similar settings were often raided and harassed for the same behavior, which continues today. In April 2026, Dallas police served a search warrant on a warehouse hosting a party for gay men, detained 48 people, and arrested the two promoters.
The deeper contradiction is that while gay men were condemned for swapping body fluids, heterosexual couples were swapping themselves. What is apparent is a lack of understanding and empathy in the dominant culture, and an inability to see its own part in behavior it considered unnatural or unsavory.
The diptych Swapping Spit is about making a connection where there was none, whether through a body fluid, a partner, or a setting, creating intimacy through exchange, popular with gay and straight people alike.
— Behan
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"; KWTX/KLTV, "Dallas police raid 'sexual encounter center'" (April 20, 2026).