While you can rent a private room, many members don’t seem to mind having sex in front of other guests.
Walking through this maze of sexual opportunity can be quite startling at first, mostly because every twist of a hallway and turn of the corner brings you to some new scenario: somebody masturbating to pornography on a TV, men engaging in sexual intercourse and moaning “fuck me” in the next room - it’s hard to know what to expect. I fondly compare the bathhouse to a dog pound, except you pick out your favorite type of man for sex or a blow job, then leave without him after a couple hours of fun. Whether your type is younger or older, skinny, muscular or fat, tattooed, white, black or Hispanic, just to name a few variations - he can be found here. Every pedigree of man can be found in this building, to fit anyone’s taste. Mind you, this isn’t some Queer as Folk imitation, where every man stands 6 feet tall, exudes raw sexual magnetism, and sports a six-pack and a rock-hard dick these are real people with real flaws. But even in the locker room, you catch a glimpse of sex I noted one man playing with his penis while talking excitedly to a friend about having sex that night. Complete nudity is optional most of the men keep their underwear and flip-flops on, perhaps to maintain an element of surprise, or due to sanitary concerns. They get undressed and put their belongings in a locker. In the locker room, customers are given a towel. Management is so determined to keep these rules intact that they got rid of the “glory hole” room (wherein a dividing wall is punctured with holes, through which men give and receive anonymous blow jobs) because customers were using the space to do drugs. These include: no fighting, no drugs or alcohol, and no participating in any foreplay or sex that includes urine or defecation. Once in the building (whose address I’ll refrain from divulging), I received a key for a locker and a list of rules by which customers must abide or face banishment. I recently visited, for the first time, a gay bathhouse in San Antonio. Now a modern underground institution, bathhouses can be found in most metropolitan areas, and they cater to any type of patron - straight or gay, male or female. On a less overtly sexual note, Bette Midler got her start performing as “Bathhouse Betty” in the Continental Baths of Manhattan, catapulting herself into gay icon-hood. Rock Hudson and Truman Capote were infamous for their bathhouse adventures. Frankly, if the gay community weren’t so afraid to voice these issues, everyone would be a lot better off.īathhouses, a part of mainstream gay community since the 1950s, are a place for men to go and have sexual encounters with strangers. If this bothers you, maybe you should get over it. Specifically, I’ll be discussing gay sex, bathhouses, condoms, and STDs.
Fair warning to readers of this article: It contains mass amounts of sex talk.