outies

A Classy Place for Classy People

Bathhouses are possibly one of the grossest types of establishments I know of in the gay community. While bathhouse was a term used to widely refer to a communal place that provided amenities for personal hygiene for a small cost, in most Western countries it now refers to a place where men can go to seek anonymous sex with other men for varying costs, though some places do have women only nights. Unlike public restrooms, libraries, darkened parks, and other vibrant places where men have sought this type of quality time with each other, bathhouses have a loose legality to them as it's not public indecency if it's in a private establishment and it's not prostitution since no one's paying for sex, simply for the space to have it in. There are attendants, but they are only there for security and other mundane purposes.

Much like most dance clubs, there is a cover charge. One can also rent rooms with a bed or lockers for an hourly fee. Private rooms are not the only place sex occurs as most bathhouses also feature theme rooms and other options to liven up one's wholesome free time.

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So... have they done anything important?

If you like Bette Midler or Barry Manilow, then bathhouses have done much for you. These stars climbed the fame ladder by performing in bathhouses back in the day. Bathhouses actually were a form of venue for a while, though very unorthodox. If one didn't mind performing for a bunch of gay men in towels, then bathhouses were for you.

This oddly turned out to be the undoing of many bathhouses as popular acts coming through them started attracting a lot of straight patrons to the audience, which in turn scared away many of the core clientel.

So... what are they like?

I've never been so lucky as to grace the inside of a bathhouse due to various reasons, but spotting one on the outside is fairly hard. They're pretty innocuous, as if they're trying to hide something... hmmm. They typically display their address quite prominently, however, making it easy for potential users to find it, but the facades are rather generic. Entrances are generally limited to avoid messy complications and keep out psycho gay bashers. Customers tend to be pretty discreet about entering and exiting. Bathhouses tend to be open 24 hours a day.

So how do I find them? I'm asking for research reasons only, of course

Research purposes... sure. If you ever want to find one of these places, they're typically not that hard to look up. I severely doubt the phone directory has a heading for them, but you could always check. Bathhouses will usually run ads in many of the local gay newspapers. It's typically easy to figure out which ads are for them, though perhaps that 24 hour steamroom and gym featuring the guy in nothing but a towel sitting with his legs spead open almost enough to show you the promised land is just entirely innocent. (Never know when a 3am urge to work on your pecs will hit.) Oddly, a lot of places actually have a college student discount. If you're not the shy type, you could always ask your local gay bar bartender.

Anonymous gay sex for a nominal fee and in a completely legal way? Is there a down side?

Yes.


Oh? You want to know what they are? Well, if this is any indication, I came to know a lot about bathhouses through research for a project for my Literature and AIDS class. Cheerful thought, eh? Though bathhouses provide a somewhat safer forum for your free love expressions in the form of actual security systems, like in every sexual encounter, one risks the chances of contracting an STD or an STI. As far as I know, there's never been a proven correlation between infection rates in bathhouses and any particular disease, but sex is sex. Keep it safe. Use a condom. Most bathhouses will have condoms freely and readily available. Most should have baskets of the things laying around. They're not decorative. They're there for use. Looking into some interviews at bathhouses, there's a startling assumption in clientel. Not a lot of people ask about safe sex if the other person doesn't bring it up and some people assume if the other person doesn't provide the condoms, they're safe. Some people with known infections assume if the other party doesn't object to barebacking, they're already infected. Lovely logic, eh? USE CONDOMS. I cannot stress this enough.

Also, keep in mind people aren't there looking for something permanent. You're in a bathhouse. You'll be lucky if he waves to you on the street the next day.

Bathhouses can be pricey. If you find yourself in bathhouses more often then not, or missing work to go to them, you may want to ask yourself if you have a sex addiction.

When I was living in San Diego, my wife loved the San Diego Zoo. We paid for year-round memberships for our whole family, and would go four or five times a year at least.

The last time I went there with my family, we were getting ready to move to Colorado. My wife wanted to see the giraffes one last time. We picked a Saturday and piled in the car.

It turned out to be an very interesting experience. That particular Saturday was Gay Pride day, except the hand-made sign by the front gate shortened it to Gay Day. We were there early, and there was a huge line of folks waiting to get in. My family went in, while a large portion of the non-gay folks turned around and left. My son was too young to pay attention, but my oldest daughter noticed a bunch of guy-guy and girl-girl pairs with their arms around each other, and they were kissing. Being curious, she asked Mom, who quickly referred the explanation to me. I told her that they were in love. I had to do a little more explaining without going into the sexual nature (she was a bit too young at the time), and then she stopped noticing. My youngest daughter was giggling at some of the folks, because a couple were wearing outlandish outfits (like the guy in pink spandex and a feather boa). He noticed her giggling, and he had a good laugh too. I think he dressed that way to poke fun at those folks who assumed all gays dressed that way.

The day was very enjoyable. My wife had a giraffe bend down and sniff her head, then lick it. I thought it was odd, having a beast with a 21-inch tongue drooling on my wife, but she was in heaven. My oldest daughter learned that two folks enjoying each other's company was not unusual, even if they just happen to be the same sex. My youngest daughter discovered that people can dress weirder than she does. My son fell asleep.

We'll have a gay old time....

As much as I view them as annoying, stuffed, shallow, meat markets, I have to begrudgingly place the gay bar as an important social piece in the gay community and in the gay rights movement. Simultaneously the watering hole, the mating grounds, and the rallying point for various GLBTQ communities, gay bars are the cornerstone around much of what the gay world operates around.

It's not hard to reason out why: gay bars were one of the first places, and in many smaller communities the only place, that gay men and women can be open about their sexualities, and consequently openly pursue a partner, without the fear of judgment. With bars being a haven, it is no surprise that some of the biggest events in GLBTQ history center around bars. For instance, the famous Stonewall Riots in 1969, that some point to as the start of the modern gay rights movement, garnered its name from the Stonewall Bar where the riots started (it still exists and can be visited in New York City's Greenwich Village).

The close ties of the bars with the gay community has some unwanted side effects. In many areas, the bar is the only scene. The gay identity becomes entrenched in those areas with the negative aspects of bars, such as excess.

For those young GLBTQ people who are curious about the scene, bars tend to be very individualistic. There's not too much that can be said about them. Look at the bars depicted on TV and simply imagine them filled with gay people. That's pretty much how it is. While bars are a great way to meet people, they are still bars and most of the people you will meet there are probably not interested in something longterm. This is no different than most bars in the straight world.

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(place) by chaotic_poet (now!)(print)                                                    Marked for destruction.


Gay bar refers to one of the many nocturnal habitats of the species Homo erotica, though the species Fagus hagus occasionally shares the space. While each of these dimly lit caverns differs greatly in detail depending on local climate and the local species' habits, there are a few things that remain the same no matter what area these are found in.

Almost all feature a vastly smoky interior that is poorly lit with odd colored lights. Current research speculates that this has something to do with their mating rituals or with some kind of display of dominance, but there is no surety in this. The lights are thought to help make plumage more attractive, something the species seems to care much about. Most feature some kind of loud music. This aids in Homo erotica's mating dances which display their physical prowess in hopes of attaining a mate. While mating displays are not limited to these areas, it is probably one of the easiest areas to observe them in. Interiors in many gay bars will sometimes also feature small altars to mysterious idols. Whether this is actually some sort of religion is yet to be discovered.

The thing that attracts members of the species here, besides the possibility of mates, is the easy access to food and drink. In fact, recent observations indicate that the gifting of drinks is one of the most important mating rituals. Those that give many many drinks to their potential mates seem to have a higher success rate. While Homo erotica has been commonly observed having long time pairings, the particular members that flock to these locations seem to have shortened mating duration. Current research is focused on the differences to ascertain why.

Spotting a gay bar can be quite difficult. A similar species, Hetero breedsalot competes for similar spaces. Homo erotica tends to mark their territory with rainbow colors. Hetro breedsalot seems to be less selective about what kind of music they use for their mating displays. What further confuses the point is the fact that the females of Hetro breedsalot seem very similar to the species Fagus hagus, commonly found in the Gay Bar environment. The latter, however, displays a lack of interest in attaining a mate and a high pitched laugh. Their typical plumage also tends to be more vibrant.

If one should find one's self in a gay bar, the best thing to do is stay calm. Neither Homo erotica nor Fagus hagus are particularly territorial. Strange colors or odd materials may attract their attention and warning cries, but for the most part, the creatures are docile and focused on Homo erotica's mating displays, which Fagus hagus seems to find intensely interesting. It is a mystery to why this is, given that Fagus hagus typically displays no interest in its own mating. It remains a mystery as to how this species reproduces. If approached by Homo erotica, sudden movements, loud noises, or fake fabrics are not advised.

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In response to jessicapierce's note on December 21, 2005 on gay bar being an empty topic.

Understand that if you read this writeup, you'll get details you may not want. If you want the story or the movie to be a surprise, please stop reading now. Want to read the story? Scroll to the bottom for a link.

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Brokeback Mountain is a short story written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx. It was first published in The New Yorker magazine in 1997 and anchored a 2000 compilation entitled Close Range: Wyoming Stories.

It is a love story. It is a story about love. It is a story about love between two men. The men are cowboys.

It sounds like a punchline until you read it. Then when you do read it, it burrows somewhere deep inside you where unshed tears and other lost things live.

The prose is spare. It is deceptively terse. The spaces between the words are not silent; they are crammed full of longing. The dialogue is sparse and pitch-perfect.

It is a love story. It is a story about love. It is a story about loss and regret and the fleeting moments that make life worth living.

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Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar are two young men who, at the age of nineteen, are hired to work as sheepherders for a summer. It's 1963, and both men are a notch or two short of being drifters. One's engaged to be married, the other is living job-to-job, hoping to hit the rodeo circuit one day soon.

They start their summer together on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming tending sheep. They become friends - drinking buddies first of all, but a deeper unspoken connection takes place. They become friends, then they become lovers.

They go separate ways into expected roles - husbands, fathers, workers. Jack becomes a rodeo rider; Ennis works as a ranch hand. Four years go by. When they meet again, they come back to life.

Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and daughters, little darlin.

More things happen, but that is the center of it all.

The story isn't long, but it lingers. It lodges in your gut. It has a bittersweet aftertaste, and you savor it. You love the hurt it gives you. It feels like a benediction, an absolution.

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It's a film now, directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay is by Larry McMurtry, also a Pulitzer winner, of Lonesome Dove fame.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jack, and Heath Ledger plays Ennis. It's due out in the US on December 9, and the early reviews are overwhelmingly positive. By all accounts it is true to the story's soul, true to the author's intentions.

"Friend," said Jack. "We got us a fuckin situation here. Got a figure out what to do."

It recently won the Venice Film Festival's highest honor, the Golden Lion award. It's currently blowing people away at the Toronto Film Festival. It was snubbed by the Cannes Film Festival, but everyone says that's because those guys have issues with Ang Lee. I think they'll feel stupid in a few years when this film is a classic.

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I saw a trailer for the film three weeks ago. It was a crowded theater in Meridian, Idaho, a suburb of Boise. Idaho is next door to Wyoming, where Brokeback Mountain is set. Many men in and around this area work as ranch hands in country that's remarkably similar to the settings in the film.

I was thrilled to finally get to see the clips - the story had haunted me for years, and I was looking forward to the film version. I settled in and concentrated on the screen.

I could feel the audience relax into the familiar images - the Rocky Mountains, the horses, the shotguns, the two men camping alone in the wilderness.

"I doubt there's nothin now we can do," said Ennis. "What I'm sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain't her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can't hardly be decent together if what happened back there" -- he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment -- "grabs on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead. There's no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me."

Then the trailer's tone shifted. Suddenly, the men were in one anothers' arms. They were embracing. I felt the audience stiffen and prickle as one - men shifting restlessly in their seats, women fidgeting with their fresh buckets of popcorn and tittering incredulously.

As the musculature of the story revealed itself, I felt the audience clench and resist.

The trailer faded to black, and there was a moment of stunned silence. Suddenly a man three rows ahead of me spoke up. He spoke in a conversational tone, his words blurred by a thick Western accent. He spoke plaintively. He spoke to no one and to everyone.

They shouldn't a made that movie.

That's exactly what he said. They shouldn't a made that movie. And the audience around him rustled and murmured its approval like a congregation responding to a pastor's sermon: Yes, Lawd, yes. They shouldn't a. They shouldn't a made it.

I felt as though someone had doused me with January creek water.

The blood rushed to my face as it occurred to me that this place, this seemingly friendly place, is only a narrow strip of land removed from the University of Wyoming, Matthew Shepard's alma mater.

It took me several minutes to lose myself in the film I'd come to see. I kept thinking of those two men on the screen, those beautiful boys.

I thought about the halting poetry of Proulx's spare dialogue. I thought of Matthew Shepard. I thought about what it means for a man to love a man. I pondered the complex calculus of what that means out here, out West. And it took me a long time to feel warm again.

"You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you."

I don't know what this film will do in terms of box office, but I can hazard a guess as to what it will do to people out here. I think it will polarize people. Not because it's a gay movie, but because it is a betrayal. It's a betrayal of all the things that men out here are trained to think and do and be and feel.

It's a film about the things that made people - made young Western men - kill Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena.

It's also a film that might change things. It's one to watch, not just because it's a compelling story but because it's an important one. It's amazing to me - incredible to me - that a film that's set in 1963 can be so shocking to a modern audience.

I wonder if the man who was in front of me that night will ever see it. I wonder if it might change his mind. I wonder if it might break something open inside of him. I wonder if he's willing to be broken, to be changed, to be haunted.

It's going to be interesting to watch what happens when people start watching this film.

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Italicized quotes are from Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, Copyright © 1999 by Dead Line, Ltd.

The short story Brokeback Mountain can be found in its entirety here. You can watch the trailer to the film here. I encourage you to read everything Annie Proulx has ever written. I think that once you read this story, you won't need to take my word for it.

"One doesn't choose to be gay any more than one would choose to be straight."
--Conventional Wisdom

In 1978 I was thirteen years old, and experienced a feeling that, at the time, I described as "being impaled on the horns of destiny". This rather florid and melodramatic simile was, I'm sure, inspired by my love of comic books. Stan Lee was often given to such over the top sayings, and I often described life's events to myself in the same fashion.

Being thirteen was a heady time. The first rush of puberty had set in. Sexual impulses and desires become more physical in nature. I, of course, had begun to notice girls in a different way. However, I'd also started noticing boys in that same, different way. While I knew that some of the thoughts I was having about Farrah Fawcett-Majors and The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were being felt by my male peers, the thoughts I was having about Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS or Tommy Shaw of Styx were not, to the best of my ability to discern. I figured that these feelings that I was having toward other boys, so similar in nature to those I was having about girls, were simply a result of all the chemicals being dumped into my body by my pituitary gland, and that they'd eventually go away once puberty had done its work upon my body.

Then I went to the bathroom at The Galleria in Houston.

I was there to visit the local B. Dalton bookstore, and had to answer the call of nature where one has to sit down. Being somewhat self-conscious, I chose the stall furthest from the entrance, locked myself in, and prepared to do my business whilst reading the new book I had just purchased.

I was, instead, exposed to something that made me realize that there was another world out there, one that had been completely hidden from me. One that contradicted everything society, family, school, and religion had told me was "right".

The walls of that upscale bathroom stall were covered with graffiti of a gay nature. And I mean covered. There were full-length homoerotic stories. Crude, and some not-so-crude, drawings of male genitalia and nude male bodies, homosexual acts, even a more-than-four-panel comic strip that described in detail how two (or even more) males could meet for the purposes of having sex together.

I sat in that stall for hours, reading and absorbing every single detail, committing every scribble, every detail, every drawing to memory. Impaled on the horns of destiny, indeed.

I saw in my mind's eye a fork in the road ahead of me. Down one path lay the life I had always figured would be for me, even resigned myself to having ... one of a wife, and children. Church. Eventually, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Down the other path lay my thoughts of Tommy, Gene, and Paul. Down the other path lay these drawings, so ... exciting, so much more enticing and real and right than any of the thoughts I had ever had about girls or women. Farrah was just a poster that every boy had hanging in his room. The representations I was viewing here on these walls were more than just right. Every cell in my body was screaming that they were RIGHT!!!!!

And I felt angry. I felt betrayed. I felt that everyone in my entire life that I trusted had lied to me, by not giving me the whole truth. I was utterly transfixed by this information overload presented to me on the walls of a public restroom. I couldn't believe that no one that I trusted had told me that, apparently, there was another way to live one's private life. A different world, a new culture. I was disgusted that I had to find out for myself, in a smelly restroom, about these people who obviously shared some of my thoughts and feelings.

That day in 1978 was the first step in a long chain of events that we call the coming out process. That chain of events began with a choice. I chose that day to start investigating the things that the bathroom graffiti represented. I chose that day to begin rejecting what society was telling me was the right, indeed, the only way to live one's life and be happy. I chose that day to accept these feelings that I was having as normal for me to have, even if I never acted on them.

I continued to make choices as I learned more about homosexuals and homosexuality. At first I chose not to tell anyone because my feelings, as I began to discover, were reviled by the majority, and that I was wrong and evil for having them. This particular choice was made out of self-preservation, but this choice also led to continued feelings of confusion, anger and betrayal. When my mother informed me of the facts of life later that year, she augmented her discussion with a book entitled Where Did I Come From?. This book presented only heterosexual information, as did her "talk" with me. The subject of homosexuality never came up, and I was too scared to bring the topic up myself, as I had read of the awful things that could happen to me if I did.

In 1981, I chose to fully admit to myself that I was gay. I had fallen in love with both a boy and girl that year, but the feelings I had for the boy were why I ran away from home. The feelings I had for the girl didn't inspire me to do anything like running away. Thus I chose to admit to myself that the feelings I had for males were more correct, more right, for myself.

In 1990, I chose to start telling people that mattered to my life that I was gay, instead of leading a double life. The first person I told was a woman and dear friend who had made it very clear to me that she wanted to pursue a relationship that would end in marriage with me.

I could have chosen to accept her offer, and continue to deny my true nature. I could have, and often did until that day, chosen to pass as straight. It was an easy choice to make until that day. Again, self-preservation was the motivating factor. AIDS and paranoia about it made it easy to make the choice to act straight. I also felt I was paying people back for lying to me by perpetrating my own lie upon them.

But I couldn't betray her. Her feelings for me were genuine and she wasn't lying to me by telling me about them. I couldn't find it in myself to lie to her, even if lying to her would have spared her feelings in the short term. So I told her, and while it hurt her feelings for a little while, she also appreciated my honesty with her.

So, yes, I chose to be gay. I chose honesty with myself, and eventually with people I cared about. I chose acceptance over denial. I chose truth over lies, happiness over sadness.

Straights, to the best of my knowledge, don't have to make choices like this. Society makes it easy for them not to have to. However, I'm puzzled when gays say they didn't choose to be the way they are. When one realizes they are gay ... and it happens to homosexuals at all points in life ... to me it's completely obvious that a choice must be made. It takes an effort of sentience, of will, of consciousness to stop the self-denial, to accept ones feelings as different from the status quo. It takes further and similar conscious effort to communicate that struggle and its end to others.

It takes a choice. You can call it acceptance, an embracing of the truth, a celebration of who you truly are. But it all starts, somewhere.

With a choice.