2006-11-27 - 11:42 p.m.
For reasons past understanding, last night I found myself at the Melrose Spa, a bathhouse located somewhere in the depths of Hollywood, not far from LaBrea Avenue. I had not been to anything like a bathhouse in a couple of years – and I assure you, dear blog-a-licious blog, that the only reason I even went there now was so that I would have something to write to you today. I would never ever go to a bathhouse for the mere purpose of sexual gratification. Certainly not, wonderous Big Blue Blog-a-roo!
After all, if that were the case, one can just post an ad on the moveable sex feast that is Craigslist and have oneself an orgy within 20 minutes. For free! These days, you hardly need to shell out bucks to stride the creepy halls of some sex club, ill lit, with ghostly walruses drifting by you, casting longing glances as you tremble and avoid their groping hands trying to reach under your towel.
Yet, I have to confess that I found myself last night within walking distance of the venerable sleaze pit, so I elected to take a bittersweet walk down memory lane to see what might pop up. The place was as scabrous as it ever was – and I was appalled to discover that they have boosted the prices quite astronomically. Back in the day, you could rent a perfectly nice locker for 11 bucks – or less, if you had one of their wacky coupons, available in most of the fag rags.
Nowadays, though, with the Internet providing increased competition for folks’ sexual desires, the bathhouse appears to have jacked up their prices. It was 17 bucks for a locker – plus a three buck charge, because I hadn’t been there in a couple of years. I was mortified – not just at having to part with two sawbucks for sex that I could just as easily have gotten for free and in my own bed, but also because of the inveterate stupidity of the clerk, who, with his many-chinned face and bovine sloping forehead, combed over to hide his balding tonsure, resembled nothing so much as one of the brothers from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“Wemme tell woo about SAFE SEX,” the dimwit burbled. He took my money, a booger firmly lodged in one of the hairs sticking out of one nostril, as he forced me to look at a Xeroxed cartoon of a condom and a little diagram showing a crystal meth pipe with a “no!” red line through it. “Ib you neeb any informashun or advice about SAFE SEX I am here to assist you. I yam ebaducated in Safe Sex Techniqes!”
Inside, the Melrose Spa was looking every bit as shabby as it looked last time I was there. Some things don’t change – we would be lucky if traditions and customs in the “real world” retained the same sense of stability and unchangedness as sleaze palaces. I thought I recognized the same patch of moldering dirt in the corner of the glory hole room that was there three years ago.
Bathhouses are a little like being at war, I think. There are hours and hours of boredom, as you scope and wander about, avoiding the glances of men you find horrible beyond endurance, who are just as desperately trying to meet your eyes and conquer you. The boredom is actually enough to almost put you into a coma some times! But then the ennui is abruptly and randomly punctuated by torrid and desperate action that you are often not predicting right until it occurs.
For the first half an hour I was there, I almost thought I would go mad with the tediousness and I figured I made a terrible mistake going there at all – The majority of the guys there were far below even my least discriminating standards and thoughts of athlete’s foot and trench mouth fluttered through my mind like kids think of sugar plums on Christmas morning.
It was all ghoulish demons in dark rooms, whose hands and mouths were to be assiduously avoided. I did see one attractive young fellow, black haired in his starched white briefs, slightly moist, and for a minute, it seemed from the steadiness of his eye contact as though he might be interested in me. But then the moment passed, and he vanished into one of the little rooms to have sex with two other young people, who all promptly slammed the door against all comers.
For the most part, I was simply not tempted by the other fellows on offer, so I did the old fashioned Bathhouse Stroll – up the hall, down the hall, into the orgy room, up the little stairs to the glory hole platform, then up the main stairs to the TV lounge, and the dark room lined with pleather sofas. Then, back down the stairs, up and down the hall, into the orgy room, and along the glory hole platform.
You don’t walk too fast, just in case you need to stop and flirt with someone, and you don’t walk too slowly, in case you need to make a quick escape from Griselda The Grumpus. Most tedious of all is the lack of anything to do if you are NOT having sex at a given moment. They should have some nice books to read. Or some video games to play.
There is a TV, but it is showing ghastly porn – and there is only so long that anyone can watch that, really. At one point, whilst leaning against a stained and oil-covered cinderblock column, I found myself heartily pining for my copy of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL, which I had left in my backpack, locked inside my locker.
I wandered up and down the corridors, until, finally I found myself looking into an open room, where a nicely muscular gentleman, about 40, I’d say, with a buzz cut and a boyish face lay on his back, towel covering his groin, while he watched porn on the TV monitor hanging from the ceiling. He met my eyes and beckoned me with his hand, using the international gesture for “you’re not perfect, but you’ll do.” And so in I went, closing his door behind me.
After completing my business, I rushed from the room with a cheerful goodbye, and hopped into the shower, which is one of the advantages of a place like the Melrose Spa. I quickly dressed, ignoring the glance of a small Mexican kid, who kept giving me the goo goo face.
As I exited the Spa’s front door, I nearly ran into a handsome, buff guy in a baseball hat who was nervously hovering outside.
“What is this place? Is it a production studio?” he queried, somewhat nervously. I replied that he was standing outside one of the city’s most notorious bathhouses.
“What’s a bathhouse?” he asked, eyes wide. I told him, and his mouth opened in a gape, and he swallowed a few times.
“Wow! Are there… are there girls in there?”
I noted that, regretfully, the usual denizen of a bathhouse was a man – and that it was probably a bit of a hard core place for someone interested in “experimenting” or being “curious.” I certainly found it amusing to be in the position of seeming “adventurous” when I am this conservative-looking goofus, with my baggy sweater and nerdy glasses, and he was this frat jock with muscles and probably some kind of a six digit salary.
“Wow! I… wow! I dunno!” He gabbled. I nodded at him, advised him that his destiny probably lay on the Craigslist hookup page and headed home. And that was my night of sleaze and debauch, dear blog! And now I have told you, as well.
