is waif
ON BEING NAKED WITH STRANGERS
Feeling ugly is very easy for me. At my best, it takes a 10-minute close-up nose-to-mirror inspection of my face, pointing out every pore, scar, and crease to feel bad about myself. Sometimes, on really good days, I have to “accidentally” open my selfie camera in order to feel that rush of dissatisfaction. But, at my worst……... I just wake up feeling fucking ugly. This schism between what I think to be true (ugly) and what is actually true (not ugly), for the longest time, seemed to only be spanned by naked men wanting something from me. And it was hot! I felt hot! I gave and they took and I gave and they took and I gave and they took and then I sold out and deleted Grindr and moved back home with my mom.
Moving back home with my mom doesn’t NOT have anything to do with this, because it does. But, she doesn’t know that while I was living with her after college, I happened to find my self-esteem in the steam room of a gay bathhouse in downtown Indianapolis.
issue 12
“This is the bridge I’ve thought I was building— one paved with naked men, not by and for them.”
I always get lost downtown, and it happens because the streets all of a sudden change from numbers to names, which should be some sort of violation of the 8th Amendment. This is no different the first time I decide to dip my toes into the aforementioned gay bath waters. After circling the block, my eyes finally spot the black font on white brick telling me where I need to be. I pull in, go inside, and learn that I need to buy a locker. “Luckily,” the bathhouse worker says, “you’re under 25, so you get a discount.” Luckily. He hands me a key on a hair tie and a white towel still smelling of bleach and shows me to the locker room. “Clothing is optional.”
I’m nervous and naked under a towel, in that order, and muster the courage to explore the layout. Small, locked rooms that I later learn people can rent take up most of the real estate on both floors. In the middle of the main floor is a large, dark room with two risers on either side. Moans come from a couple in the corner whose silhouette exposes the fun they’re having. I walk through, unable to make out any face near me. This means they can’t see me too?
Upstairs, gay porn is playing on multiple TVs evenly spaced along the walls. Two men are fucking on a baseball field on one screen. On another, two guys are being interviewed about the sex they just had. I’ve never understood a post-coital interview. But then again, I’m at a gay bathhouse because I’m bored, horny, and want the anonymity and freedom of a hookup without having to give out my address, or worse, feel pressured to spend the night when they give me theirs. Maybe I have something to learn. I head back downstairs toward the wet room. Chlorine starts to burn my nose, luckily, and I discover the showers, the hot tub, and a steam room. Paradise Lost no longer.
After a quick shower - only quick because I don’t know how to make the water less hot - I join an older man in the hot tub. We’re both naked. He reminds me of a counselor from the church camp I went to in middle school. I smile at him. “It’s kind of quiet here tonight,” he says. Is he talking about the bathhouse or me? I agree that it does seem sort of dead, even though being naked around strangers definitely makes me feel anything but. We introduce ourselves. He tells me that I’m “really very pretty” and expresses confusion about why I’m there. I don’t remember what I say, but he laughs. Duh. He wants to have sex, but I go instead outside to the pool.
I’ve only skinny dipped once, when I was 14 at my mom’s apartment complex after dark with a few girls from my middle school class. I didn’t quite know I was gay yet, but they must have. All I remember is feeling nervous: about getting caught sneaking out, about my ability to climb the fence of the pool, but mostly about being seen naked. I couldn’t even enjoy it. What a waste.
I redeem myself in the bath house backyard. The still water of the pool mirrors the clear night sky. With my towel off and taking a break on a beach chair, I walk into the pool and disrupt whatever peaceful protest the surface tension is having. How else does my body disrupt? Is that okay? I grab a pool noodles and lay back, letting the nighttime summer breeze brush my eyes shut and fill my open lungs. I float in this position until my hands prune. There’s actually an evolutionary reason as to why fingers and toes prune— to help us grip onto surfaces when wet. Then why do I feel like I’m letting go of something in here? The man from the hot tub comes outside to smoke a cigarette which is my cue to head back in.
I make my way to the steam room. Immediately upon entering, I can’t see a thing. My glasses are fogged all the way up. I’m not sure if Mythbusters ever tested the “if one sense is gone, the others strengthen” myth, but I can say, with confidence, that I just couldn’t see well. I take a seat in the back of the room and listen to men enter and exit, some making their way to the back, where the stand staring at me. I can’t see what they’re doing, but I don’t want them to know that. All I can see are vague fleshy outlines of human bodies. Eventually, the room empties and I can finally sit with my eyes closed. It is quiet except for the sounds of the steamers and the screaming eroticism present in the space. I remember learning that humid air is less dense than dry air, so I sit fingers crossed, legs open, eyes closed. If I breathe this air long enough, will I float away?
My peace is interrupted by a man entering the room. He walks to the back and sits by me, exposing himself. All I can see is his fleshy outline, and it asks how I’m doing and what I’m doing, noticing it interrupted something. The conversation continues until we no longer have to say anything. We float away.
I end up going back sporadically over the next few months. Each time is different than the last, but most are generally unmemorable. The typical clientele is older and married men, often trying to get something they can’t in their real lives. Some are, and let me be clear, sexy, sexy daddies who will be able to get it until they’re in hospice or in their mid 80s, whichever comes first. But most just remind me that my youth is currency, that I am hot and sexy, and that being gay in the Midwest is just hardly bearable. And they make sure to remind me that there is free pizza on Sundays when “the game” is on, which is simply considerate.
In many ways, they also show me how to traverse the schism between my thoughts and reality by meeting me naked and wanting me anyway. They call me stud and play with my hair. We compliment each other’s bodies without having to give anything in return. This is the bridge I’ve thought I was building—one paved with naked men, not by and for them. In this space, I’m just making friends until I want to go home.
These experiences—the sexual moments; the wanting eyes from older men; the dull Wednesday nights spent alone in the pool; the sunny weekend days when everyone was an opportunity; the joints shared with another Discount Entry as we also shared stories and men; the floating—should not remain in those walls. My memories inform me, now, that I am largely not who I think I am, and in fact, I am larger than my thoughts. These men welcomed the space I took up, and, again and again, they celebrated it. Their touch applauded what they saw while their mouths screamed cheers without saying any words at all.. The hallways of the bath house were a parade that I strutted through like a big hot air balloon. And when I would leave, I’d remain that hot air balloon, drifting across the Indiana horizon, soaring toward the sun, becoming hot forevermore.
Not everything is sink or swim, I was taught. Sometimes, just lay back, and float.