Bathhouses

I was never a fan of bath houses and saunas. They are also known as Turkish baths, steam baths, etc. You could say that I don’t have the bathhouse blues. I have been to a few in scattered cities but they didn’t do it for me. I prefer t-rooms in parks, and other public places for my contacts, or street encounters. My first experience was in Cincinnati when I was about twenty-one, while I was a college student in Louisville. I went to Cincinnati with two friends to attend some concerts. They said, “There is a great bath house here, why don’t you try it?” I went with trepidation. I turned out to be the star of the night. With my muscular farm-boy’s body and good looks about six guys were all over me as soon as I lay down on a bed in the dorm. One immediately put his mouth to work, while the others caressed my body. With all of that attention, it didn’t take me long. Then another one took over. One whispered in my ear “You have such a fabulous body.” I can’t remember when my ego got such a boost.

About this time I discovered one of the last remaining public bath houses in Louisville near the small windowless room I rented on Second Street. For you youngsters, a brief description of public bath houses is provided. They were mostly in large cities for those families who didn’t yet have indoor plumbing. Their heyday was roughly between 1890 and 1950, although some survived until the 1970s.

The bathhouse I found was managed by an elderly couple, most likely on the public payroll. Each customer had to sign in and out. I can’t recall whether there was a fee, or whether towels were provided. Usually when I arrived, there were many names entered before mine. Yet the bathhouse was always empty or had one other person at the most. I found that I could actually make out at the bathhouse. I would take showers in a stall with a view of another two or three showers that had no doors or curtains. My bath would sometimes last an hour, waiting for a “victim” to arrive. Many times, no one came. But when I signed out, the register contained at least ten phantom persons who had signed in after me. The couple were obviously trying desperately to keep their job and were fabricating visitors. One wonders how long they were able to maintain this charade. Once, a teenager came in with the longest and skinniest dick I had ever seen. When hard, it looked like a pencil. I popped the question, and he accepted. Not wanting to do it in the bathhouse, I took him to one of my semi-private places for sex, to be described in a different story.

Louisville had one public steam bath, in a hotel downtown, with a separate entrance to the sauna. I asked about it among friends. No one I knew I ever been there, so I decided it must not be worth it and never went to investigate. In New York I tried the Everard Baths (a.k.a. Ever Hard Baths) perhaps twice. I didn’t have the patience for the games people played there. Another one was located near Pennsylvania station. I went once, but it was a wrinkle room.

The next I visited was in Amsterdam on my first trip to Europe. It had a more intimate setup than Everard, with a large living room where patrons could just chat, before or after visiting a private room. I went mainly to observe, but there was a tall Dutch guy there who had a giant dick. He lived in Rotterdam. I mentioned that I would be passing through his city. He gave me his phone number, but I didn’t bother to call him. I also chatted there with a German man who said the world’s greatest bath house was in Mexico City. I filed this information away for future reference. I talked to an American guy for a while, but he didn’t interest me.

Years later, I went to the baths in New Orleans. There I ran into the American I saw in the Amsterdam bath. It turned out he lived in that city, a great coincidence. When I eventually got to visit Mexico City I decided to verify the German’s rather extravagant statement. I found it the most disappointing of all. I thought, “If I could get hold of that guy, I would choke him with my cock.”

My bathhouse experiences stopped at that point, except for São Paulo, where I now live. São Paulo is probably in a class by itself. I don’t know how many saunas it has. I think they number in the dozens. They are divided by specialty. They range from cheap to expensive, and cater to every interest. My knowledge, with the exception of one, is limited to what I read in the gay guides. There probably are about eight that cater to older men chasing younger guys.

The one I know, and frequented many times, is like the eighth wonder of the world. It’s called Thermos Lagoa. When one walks in, he is met by dozens of nude, young, muscular, and great-looking guys, most of them well-endowed. Most of them seem to know one another, and spend time waiting for a customer by chatting with one another. The boys, as they are called, have a separate entrance other than patrons’. In those days boys had to pay R$10 to get in (about US$2.57in today’s dollars). This actually keeps out the riffraff. The boys are mainly there for use by the patrons, whom they outnumber by more than two to one, sometimes more. That makes for a lot of competition among the boys. Many evidently don’t score even once during a visit. I often wonder if some of the boys don’t make out with one another. They are generally lower-level, but trustworthy hustlers; the going price was R$150 (about US$39 in 2019) I haven’t been in at least eight years, so I don’t know the going rate. The boys are safe, because it is in the interest of the management to see there are no bad incidents. Any boy who breaks the rules is banned from the sauna. Most of them claim to be straight, but it is not known as a gay sauna for nothing. One even told me that he had a wife and two children. I almost asked him what he was doing in a gay bathhouse.

The sauna is like a private club. There is a gym, a swimming pool, TV room, and a bar-restaurant. Next to the restaurant are the showers and steam rooms, with glass from wall to wall and floor. The establishment always provides entertainment in the restaurant, either a drag show, a muscle contest, karaoke, or even bingo. The first few times I went, I draped myself in the usual towel, but I quickly learned that many patrons don’t do this. So I began to use my street clothes inside the sauna.

There are private rooms to retire to, which cost extra. I prefer to sit in the restaurant, where one can watch the parade. Some boys sit on the bar stools, nude and with a full erection, facing the patrons in the restaurant. They must all be Viagara-loaded in other to maintain it all evening. I learned early on to glance at any one only in the most oblique way, otherwise he would come running. If I saw something I liked, I gave him a slight indication, and he would sit at my table. Sometimes they asked me buy them dinner or a snack. I usually ordered a bottle of champagne, mostly for myself, but also shared it with some boys. I am told by others more experienced than I that only Brazil has saunas with such large numbers of available male young flesh.