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RSS icon Comments on But Where Will Ecce Homo Stay on His Next Trip to New York City?

1

I figured they were already gone when Giulani was is office and busy Disneyfying Times Square...didn't the Showbox or whatever it was called above the Hojo's in Times Square get closed down? or was it just regentrified?

Posted by michael strangeways | January 11, 2008 1:11 PM
2

But the difference is that people don't go to Denny's or Taco Bell actively seeking risky behavior. If you shut down a dirty restaurant, the public says, "whew, that's a relief." But if you shut down a dirty bathhouse, won't the sexpeople say, "okay, now where's the nearest restroom?" That seems to be what happened here in SF, where even after the bathhouses closed, there are still bars and shrubberies that have that certain reputation.

And I bet those shrubberies do even less education than the bathhouses did.

Posted by mattymatt | January 11, 2008 1:14 PM
3

Then regulate them in a straightforward way, eliminate them by operation of law, or buy them out outright and close them down.

Harassment is harassment, and no way for a legitimate government to act.

Posted by NapoleonXIV | January 11, 2008 1:15 PM
4

@2: That was the point I was going to make.

All the bath-house goers will just go somewhere else. It won't eliminate any problems.

Posted by Toby | January 11, 2008 1:19 PM
5

The irony is that you and Ecce seem to be right in line on such issues, if his chaste persona is to be believed...

Posted by UNPAID BLOGGER | January 11, 2008 1:23 PM
6

Just because sex goes in the bathouses doesn't mean that they're not playing safe.

Posted by raindrop | January 11, 2008 1:25 PM
7

There is nothing in a bathhouse that doesn't happen in an individuals bedroom. It is not the bathhouse it is the people that spread HIV. It happens in bedrooms it happens in bathhouses. Shutting them down is just a witch hunt. What's next a witch hunt on certain individuals homes.

Posted by -B- | January 11, 2008 1:36 PM
8

#6. First, "SEX" means anal or oral sex as I am using the word.

Second: "SEX" at a bathhouse IS unsafe in the overwhelming number of circumstances.

The majority of sex in bathhouses is pretty anonymous and is unsafe.

Posted by Johnny | January 11, 2008 1:42 PM
9

I'm sorry- I thought I heard someplace that victimless crimes aren't crimes. What if the "health model" says to restrict gay sex entirely? Or commercial sex? Or non-monogomous herero sex?

Posted by Big Sven | January 11, 2008 1:44 PM
10

I think the more accurate analogy would be shutting down fast food joints because people overeat there and become obese.

Posted by Abe | January 11, 2008 1:47 PM
11

Guns don't kill people bathhouses do.

Posted by db | January 11, 2008 1:51 PM
12

There are three bath houses in Seattle. What are we doing to shut those places down?

Posted by Just Me | January 11, 2008 1:53 PM
13

for once, dan and i are in accord. shut them down, and shut them down quick. what gay man with a big erection is gonna listen to any ol' HIV educator? zippety do-dah. more HIV infections, more use of public funds, more of MY tax dollars being spent on a bunch of dumbfucks who wouldn't use condoms.

Posted by scary tyler moore | January 11, 2008 1:55 PM
14

Dan, I disagree with you on this one. Anonymous, unsafe sex is going to happen - would you rather it be in a place intended for it, or at the park, where you might stumble upon it?

I agree that not much education happens at places like that, and probably not much safe sex, either. But no one is forcing those guys to go there. They go out of their own free will.

And where do you draw the line on this moral line of thought? Should we go back to the days when hotel desk clerks checked marriage licenses, and wouldn't rent a room to two men if that room only had one bed?

Posted by catalina vel-duray | January 11, 2008 1:56 PM
15

I can't believe there are any bath houses left after the hysteria of the mid eighties.

Posted by Mike in MO | January 11, 2008 1:58 PM
16

Unsafe, anonymous sex is going to happen -- what a bathhouse does, and does extraordinarily well, is facilitate an individual's ability to have an absolutely insane number of sexual contacts in a single evening. However hard you work at turning your own apartment into a bathhouse via Craigslist or ManHunt or whatever, you simply can't arrange to get fucked by a dozen or three guys every time you get the urge.

Bathhouses are to anonymous gay sex what assault rifles are to school/mall/workplace shootings. We're still going to have 'em, but the bathhouse/assault weapon makes 'em deadlier and more efficient.

Posted by Dan Savage | January 11, 2008 2:05 PM
17

BP!!

Posted by Mr. Poe | January 11, 2008 2:13 PM
18

I never see "bathhouse users" in the categories of people who are most at-risk for HIV infection in New York.

The categories are always minority men, drug users and young people, especially minority youth -- and now middle-aged gay men who were part of the "survivor generation" and are reverting to unsafe sex practices because of things going on that no social scientist has yet identified. (My guess: hopelessness.)

What is really happening here?

My guess is that the city health department was called to task for their failure in stopping the rise of new HIV infections in the city. So, they are going after a low-hanging fruit, New York's last remaining, deeply unpopular and rarely visited bathhouses.

The key to reducing the new number of HIV infections would be figuring out the social conditions that make it more likely for people to have unsafe sex.

And then acting to alleviate those social conditions.

The city health department can only do so much. Their efforts are constrained by factors like racism, poverty and addiction, as well as a city government who treats minorities, the poor and drug users as criminals, rather than as underserved populations who need access to all the same resources and attention that the rich get in the city -- which is an unbelievably good deal.

Lashing out at bathhouse owners will satisfy an emotional desire to "do something," but it will do nothing except increase the feeling among the gay population that it is under seige in an increasingly unfriendly city.

Posted by Aaron | January 11, 2008 2:15 PM
19

I can't really argue against closing them, but I think the effect will be minimal. You've pointed out yourself that the Internet is one big gay bathhouse, and if you look on Manhunt, Craigslist, M4M4Sex, or any of a dozen other sites, you'll see people arranging private sex parties at all times.

For instance:

Group nasty pig-sex this is the real deal ,6 plus guys - 37

Beginning at 12:30 pm to late afternoon Masculine only guys 20's to late 40's for uninhibited sex. Sucking, fucking eating ass, sweaty smellin pits and big loads. At least six guys maybe more. BB or Safe ...even just watch and JO if you want, as long as the load lands on someone's face butthole or mouth. Mix of tops and btms ready to have at it. This is the real deal..but just for fun. Please be a fit to husky decent looking guy and join in.

I suppose it'll make for slightly more work, or it'll result in the Ramble being a lot more busy (or the Arboretum, should something like this happen in Seattle), but overall, I think that a lot of men will still be doing a lot of barebacking with a lot of strangers, especially given the fantastic mass transit in NYC.

Posted by Gitai | January 11, 2008 2:25 PM
20

Yeah, being in a bathhouse doesn't cause you to engage in risky sex. I don't do anything in a bathhouse that I wouldn't do at home. In fact, knowing the risks of anonymous sex, I bet I take more precautions than some guys in relationships. Also, I love you Dan, but f--k you on this one. Some of us haven't managed to land the husband and the designer child and the picket fence, but if I want non-committal, consensual, hot, easy to get sex and don't want to have to be an upstanding, respectable citizen to get it, what's it to you?

Posted by bobbo | January 11, 2008 2:39 PM
21

I hear you, bobbo. But for the record: I've been con bathhouses forever. One of my first Savage Loves was con bathhouses -- and the AIDS educators ("here's how you get AIDS, kids") at Northwest AIDS Foundation (no Lifelong) jumped down my throat about it. So I was con bathhouses when I was single, childless, and picketfenceless.

Posted by Dan Savage | January 11, 2008 2:58 PM
22

He can stay at my brother's place.

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 11, 2008 3:03 PM
23

Nicely done, Dan. This is why I love you.

Posted by bobbo | January 11, 2008 3:15 PM
24

Perhaps a job for Larry Kramer?

Posted by andy niable | January 11, 2008 3:16 PM
25

i KNEW there was a reason i fucked a guy in london seven years ago who looked just like dan!

Posted by scary tyler moore | January 11, 2008 3:25 PM
26

There are pretty much only two "bath houses" in Manhattan--the West Side Club and the East Side Club. The things that go on in each are relatively tame, at least for New York.

The real problem--if we're talking about the spread of sexually transmitted diseases--is the Internet, and that's hardly a New York problem. But if getting hysterical over the bath houses makes everyone feel like they're doing something, have at 'em.

Posted by Boomer in NYC | January 11, 2008 3:57 PM
27

Okay I confess, I went to a NYC bath house in June 07. I felt like a Catholic School girl, we were all dressed alike and NOTHING was happening, I left after 2 hours of watching nothing happen all around me. However I did go to "The Cock" (gay bar) it was so packed with men in all positions of undress one could hardly walk with out tripping on man. The REAL problem is that bath houses are being put under the micro-scope while the gay bars are assumed to just be serving booze.

Posted by Sargon Bighorn | January 11, 2008 6:06 PM
28

Sargon's got the bathhouse scene down pretty well there.

It sounds like oh-so-scary a place to go, but it's mostly a bunch of horny guys walking around doing absolutely nothing other than getting frustrated.

And what of the internet? Check out the bareback websites, where you'll find literally thousands of your fellow gay Seattleites looking for raw sex. "Status", you'll find, isn't always so important there.

I really think Savage should work with the Christian Right to outlaw gay sex altogether...he's practically there already.

Posted by BallardDan | January 11, 2008 6:14 PM
29

@1 -- My Dear Strangeways,

By Showbox, I believe you mean The Gaiety Burlesque, up whose firetrap of a narrow staircase I did watch many conventioneers and many boys on the make ascend.

I lived on 46th, and walked past it every evening on my way home. This was 1984. There was usually a crowd of guys hanging around outside, acting like they did not notice each other, debating with themselves whether to go in.

They'd hem, then haw...then some hot Puerto Rican kid was saunter right in and they'd race up those stairs as fast as they could, like salmon at the Chittenden Locks.

There was also a place where Robin Bird, the great tele-porn-vangelist, performed called Show World Center on 8th Avenue. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | January 11, 2008 7:04 PM
30

Ditto 27 & 28. Bathhouses can be just as much a modeling show as the nearest gay bar. So much for anonymous and plentiful sex. Spent many a night getting not what I went for, since guys are still looking for Mr Right, even at the tubs.
Dan should join forces with the Far Right; they'll go far. He obviously is missing some life experience as a gay man to think that tubs to unsafe sex are the equivilent of M16's to a shopping mall shooter. Internet orgies in private homes are where the BB'ing takes place. Everyone goes these to fuck like bunnies with total abandon. How about some laws to regulate what we do in our homes? I know Phelps would be right with ya on that one.

Posted by BeenThere | January 11, 2008 7:34 PM
31

Did gay men really think that after practically single-handedly maintaining the entire AIDS scam, viral voodoo theory alive, and collaborate with the darker powers that be to terrorize the world into submission to the viral HIV bogus god that there would be no long term price to pay?

Ha ha ha!!!

Eventually that same virus will be used against us all to take us all back to the camps. Just you all wait and see.

All the political and social advancements of the last quarter of a century have been all purely achieved through the official victim staus of gay men through AIDS (which is a scam) and most seem to be stupid enough to think that we have gotten away with it.

Fat chance!!

Closing down saunas is the least of our worries...

Posted by Manu | January 11, 2008 10:04 PM
32
like salmon at the Chittenden Locks

And the Polish judge gives Cornball a 10.0!

Posted by Big Sven | January 11, 2008 10:12 PM
33

If you're having unsafe sex at the tubs, is it OK to smoke? I mean, afterwards. Seriously. Has anyone died of second-hand sex? There is a skull and crossbones on a bottle of iodine that seems to obviate the idea that there are many secret iodine drinkers in the land.

As the old man driving a hearse said to his companion: "There will never be a cure for the population explosion as long as screwing is more popular than dying." Ooops - maybe that's off-point - still amusing. Maybe germane.

Posted by RHETT ORACLE | January 11, 2008 10:38 PM
34

Saragon @27: A group of my friends when to NYC a couple of months ago, and a bunch of them went to The Cock. The next day, one of them said that it was disgusting, depraved, and vulgar. Then when one of his other friends asked where he planned that night, and he responded by saying he was going to The Cock!

Posted by Anna | January 12, 2008 10:44 AM
35

Dan, you're a hypocrite. From personal experience I know you've had your share of anonymous sex. Now you're a Bellevue housefrau with MORALS. Sex in parks is BAD. Sex in bathhouses is BAD. They spread DISEASE! GASP.

Well, you know what? Sex spreads disease. Grade schools spread disease. (In fact, I hate fuckin parents I work with who come in hacking and coughing or shitting their guts out only to give it to me.) Injection drug use spreads disease, but outlawing it sure as HELL doesn't keep it from happening and doesn't keep it from spreading disease, you born-again/child-bearing fucker! You are basically condoning harrasement of a group of gay men because you feel like you're better than them and can judge them because "they are spreading DISEASE!"

Posted by SuckedDansCockinthepark | January 12, 2008 1:48 PM
36

I think the majority of gay men born before the AIDS epidemic have had anonymous (and unprotected) sex. Why should 2 men have to use condoms if there wasn't any risk of pregnancy? Then people figured out that condoms weren't just to protect women from becoming pregnant, so gay men started using them.
Most of my gay friends were born before AIDS, and they've admitted to having unprotected and anonymous sex. Now they're all volunteering at fundraisers to raise money for the fight against AIDS, and they don't have unprotected sex.

Posted by Anna | January 12, 2008 2:50 PM
37

Don't look now, but Dan Savage's puritanical authoritarianism is showing.

Posted by Mr. X | January 12, 2008 5:14 PM
38

This is such a great idea! Has anybody ever thought about shutting down all the gay bath houses in Africa? That would really lower the HIV rates there, too.

Posted by thegayrecluse | January 12, 2008 6:18 PM
39

My fellow homos;


When did "gay rights" become synonymous with "the right to have reckless and promiscuous sex?" When did "gay sex" change into "group sex with multiple same-gender partners?"


When did my right to have sex with someone irrespective of their gender in the privacy of my own home become a sex club owner's right to profit from providing a breeding ground for the greatest public-health threat of our time?


Why do you think that instantly available anonymous sex is such an integral part of the gay experience?


What the fuck is wrong with using your right hand when you're single?


Why are you all so goddamned determined to keep engaging in risky sex?


Look around. This isn't about cracking down on fags. It's about cracking down on a disease that kills us. The idea that you shouldn't have sex with 300 people a year isn't some vicious lie made up to oppress homosexuals. It's good advice for anyone wishing to avoid diseases. No sex advice worth a dental dam would advise people to engage in highly risky sexual behavior.


Love,


A 21 year old fag in NYC.

Posted by Wells. | January 13, 2008 2:37 AM
40

Um, has anyone ever said "Gay Rights equals The Right To Fuck Till Cum is leaking out of my ass?" Shut your hole dumb twink. And why do you think gay people are the only ones fucking like bunnies? Just because sex clubs provide people a place to do it doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere. "Club owners profiting by providing a breeding ground"! Wow, where have you been getting your retoric? The Pope? (Who wears Prada by the way and presides over one of the hottest sex clubs ever - the Catholic Church.)

People like sex twink boy, you included. All your preaching and outlawing just drives it to where you can't see it, which might make your uptight ass feel better but doesn't really do a damn. Don't you think that people know anonymous sex is bad? Do you really think your preaching makes a difference? Try thinking outside the box. What about preexposure prophylaxis? Stop the "Sex = Death" message which has burnt people out. (Sex = Death = Constant Fear = Hopelessness = Depression = Risky Sex.)Try something else besides what you know won't work. (Sex = Fun = Have Lots of It = Take Some Simple Precautions = Live Happy.)

Posted by Dumb Twinks in NY | January 13, 2008 12:46 PM
41

I think I love you @38. Concise, sarcastic and witty while making a very good point.

Posted by Love 38 | January 13, 2008 5:51 PM

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