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RUB A DUB DUB
Things got a little spooky for a monogamous Phil Scott
when he ventured back into a sauna.
Let’s talk about gay bathhouses. I can’t say the most memorable evenings of my life took place at “the tubs”, but maybe I’ve just forgotten. It was another millennium when I last went. For the sake of finding something to write about, I recently decided to check one out.
The stakes weren’t desperately high, because I have this monogamy thing going on. (I have to say that, on the off chance my boyfriend reads this column. Usually he doesn’t bother.) But look, so what if you’re not on the market? Eye-candy, unlike nose-candy, is not to be sneezed at.
I regret to say the experience was worse than I remembered. It was mid-week, and about as exciting as the Newtown Hotel the evening after it closed. (I’m not knocking the establishment itself, which was clean and sensitively lit.)
A number of guys in towels were wandering around like members of the undead.
They weren’t DNA cover models, but they clearly expected a busload of buff bottoms to turn up at any second, because they never so much as glanced at one another! I don’t know how they managed to avoid a head on collision. Their peripheral night vision must have been world class. Or maybe, like ghosts, they passed through each other as they floated by. There’s something a bit spooky about a sauna, possums.
Sometimes, the undead would cease wandering aimlessly and wait, also aimlessly. It’s weird to see a man who looks like a farm machinery rep leaning up against a door, attempting a ‘horny but bored’ Paris Hilton pose.
Not even Paris quite pulls it off, let alone your mother’s third cousin from Merriwa.
I soon discovered that I hadn’t lost my old knack of clearing a Jacuzzi or hot spa within seconds – simply through my fabulous presence. Is that charisma or what? Well, maybe it’s eczema.
Despite that, there were at least two gentlemen older, balder and tubbier than me. They had the good sense to settle in for the night and watch porn, sitting as far away from each other as humanly possible.
I did stumble across one stunningly hot body, but it was getting dressed to leave as I was getting undressed to enter. Timing is everything. That never changes!
After a little while – at $1.75 a minute: I worked it out – I left and scurried downtown to a Chinese eatery that stays open till 4am. I was sitting, watching the big crabs and doomed redfish in their aquaria (showing more signs of life than any of the gents I’d been eyeing off), when a group of rowdy young studs arrived at the next table, bursting with zest and laughter, all tanned and nonchalantly fit.
One had his arms clasped around his friend’s waist and his head buried in the guy’s chest. “Whoa, mate! Cut it out!” the friend laughed. These boys were straight, and pissed off their sweet little faces.
That’s when I realised what was missing at the sauna: a welcoming, well-stocked bar.
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