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.
