Sauna

Something I wrote sometime ago...

This has been troubling me a bit, and I’ve not been able to talk about this to anyone since, and I hope this can help me vent my frustrations and questions.

Just before lunar new year I was in Bangkok with a gay friend. If you’ve been to Bangkok, then you’d probably know why the place is known for its ‘sex-capade’ tourists. One night, we ended up at a gay sauna (or THE sauna in Bangkok).

I’d never been to a sauna, neither am I someone out in the 'scene', but after hearing stories from my ‘experienced’ friend (he’s quite in the gay scene, whereas I’ve always felt intimidated by it), I was really wound up to go take a peek.

It was quite an experience, and just as my friend described it—video rooms, open lounge, dark rooms, fitness gym, open showers and the likes. People walked around almost completely naked, with just a towel covering the ‘essential bits’. At first I felt really excited, the way a curious school boy would doing something naughty. But then it felt frightening as well, and the more I walked around the place and was there physically, the more I felt uncomfortable and wanted to get out. I ended up no doing anything with anyone (despite numerous offers, yes), which is probably just as well. Who knows who all these people are and what they have…

The place was simply oozing with sexual tension, it was almost oppressive. And people go there to pick up or be picked up. Everything circled around satisfying sexual desires, lusts and physical appearance without strings attached. A wink, a wave, a caress on the body, and two people (or more) start their few minutes of action. The floor was 'sticky' (can't imagine from what...) . Used and crumpled up toilet paper lay strewn all over the floor, overflowing from the bins in the cubicles. Condom wrappers lay here and there. A mess, in a paradise of sexual pleasure.

Maybe it’s the hopeless romantic in me and my ideas about intimacy and that big ‘L’ word, but the more I thought about (and heard) what went on behind closed booths, the more I couldn’t see the point in going to such places. Perhaps I think too much or have been too naïve, but do people really go to such places ‘just for fun’? And afterwards I felt guilty, for some reason, even though I hadn’t done anything.

Not that I’ve not had any gay sex or that I’m a prune who believes in abstinence, but why is it that such places exist for gay men (as far as I’m aware of) to indulge in themselves? It’s different from visiting a prostitute, as there you pay for the services. At such a sauna, there’s just one thing on people’s minds, and one thing that people go for when they go. The difference being consent is mutual, with no money or strings attached.

Could it be that (gay) men really have much more powerful urges that need fulfilling ? Really a set back for me, as I had thought it would be a place to meet people, which instead became a total turn-off. Which then beckons the question: where is the best place and what is the best to meet people if you’re shy and not part of the ‘gay scene’?