The Steam Room- Page 4

[M J R]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:14pm

Ladies, ladies - you're both pretty....

[luvliza89]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:17pm

Does anyone elses bookstore bathrooms have men groping each other? Almost every bookstore in my area seems to THE spot to hook up, at least in my area.

Not that I would know...

[Pip]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:21pm

Mmmmm...Steam rooms... One of my unfulfilled fantasies...

[Glebb]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:25pm

Keep it that way Pipushka!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:25pm

Oh, let's just break it down, shall we? Gimme a beat!

"Is what I'm saying so out there and unlikely?"

Yes.

"Namo, I am sorry that you can't have a discussion without you twisting everything around."

You mean the way this thread was about steam rooms and became about disease thanks to you and LittleFish? About disease in an uninformed manner?

"And I'm tired as sh*t of having to defend every single goddamn thing I say from you."

I know the word "hysterical" is a misogynist construct, but seriously, again your statistical analysis is found to be wanting. Most of your posts leave me utterly flat, and I do not respond to them. But when I see you making misstatements about something I DO know a thing or two about, like sex between men, I will call you and anybody else on it. Like Littlefish.

"Why are you the freakin' board police?"

I'm not, never said I was. I did have a cop icon at one time, perhaps that's what confused you.

"Why are you so superior from the rest of us?"

Here's where you do The Patented Rath Technique of broadening out difficulties I have with some of your less-informed opinions to "the rest of" the board. Well, you don't actually represent some "us" you imagine you belong to, they have the ability to post for themselves, and frankly, you are projecting your own inferiority complex onto me and presuming that I think I am superior. I do not. I merely think you're wrong. And I said so.

"If you know EVERYTHING, why are you WASTING YOUR TIME ON A MESSAGE BOARD???"

Again, you're projecting more than the AMC 42nd St., and they have a lot of screens.

"Do you really think you're making that huge of an impact here?"

Um, what?

"How many people do you think read this board anyway?"

I have no idea, why do you ask?

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:28pm

Pip and glebby in the steam room...

[Pip]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:30pm

Naw D2...Glebb's always looking out for me. He'd probably make me put on a robe or something...

[Glebb]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:31pm

That's not bloody likely.
K&Hs to Pip and DD.

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:32pm

no robes in the steam room...

[Pip]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:33pm

Hey, Glebbs. Good to see my favorite avatar again...

[Glebb]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 6:35pm

Cpaceeba moi droog.
(Sorry, Glebb's heart is heavy right now.)

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 8:54pm

Just came back to this thread after many hours away.

MJR--you win for funniest post...not that you had much competition.

Robbie--you and I must hang out in the same steamrooms.

Pip and Glebb--can I watch?

But can we change the subject--what about guys who do it in the SAUNA!?!

With no steam--and scalding benches.

What's THAT about?

Posted: 6/7/05 at 9:52pm

York Hall, at Bethnal Green, might be of interest to many of the posters in this thread, male or female, who are either residents of, or traveling to, London.

York Hall is similar to a neighborhood YMCA in the USA. It is a family recreational center. On alternate days the sub-basement steam rooms are reserved exclusively one sex or the other. These steam rooms are fashioned after Roman baths, i.e., there is a cold room, a tepid room, a hot room, a hotter room, an ice plunge and an open cold shower room. There is also a tiny sauna located somewhere in a corner. Free massages are given to anyone who desires one by other occupants of the steam rooms.

These steam rooms attract an eclectic group of occupants, various ages, races, social class, marital status, and sexual orientation. The local regulars have weekly card games in the small recreation room. It's all very homey. Sexual activities are discouraged.

Just thought I'd share something that was told to me from a traveller to London.




Updated On: 6/7/05 at 09:52 PM

[Elphaba]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 10:09pm

years ago.......

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/7/05 at 10:28pm

Ah...liaisons...where was I...? WHERE was I...?

In the steam room at the baths on St. Marks Place,
Where I spent most of my graduate years,
In the steam room at the baths on St. Marks Place,
I had married men for preludes,
Chorus boys on Quaaludes...

[Glebb]

Posted: 6/8/05 at 8:15am

PalJoey - you are brilliant!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/8/05 at 10:03am

Cpaceeba xorosho!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 12:37pm

Quick, boys! OUT of the steamroom--the New York Times is here!
Locker Room Trysts Bedevil Health Clubs

[Elphaba]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 12:41pm

Joey, I love that, let's play finish the story....

Locker Room Trysts Bedevil Health Clubs
By CAROL E. LEE
Published: June 16, 2005
A FEW months ago Timothy Young, a comedian and puppeteer, headed to the steam room of a Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn to relax after working out. When he opened the door, he saw two men kissing and fondling each other.

Timothy inched his way through the fog of steam, watching as his lower lip quivered in excitement......

oh my, could I have fun with this thread! LOLOL

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 12:43pm

*puts towel back on*

Darn... can't read the article... not a subscriber...

[PalJoey]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 12:45pm

June 16, 2005
Locker Room Trysts Bedevil Health Clubs
By CAROL E. LEE

A FEW months ago Timothy Young, a comedian and puppeteer, headed to the steam room of a Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn to relax after working out. When he opened the door, he saw two men kissing and fondling each other. "Go ahead, I don't care," Mr. Young, 31, told them.

But he did leave the room.

Not all gymgoers are blasé when they stumble upon locker-room canoodling. "They're infringing on my right to work out at the gym without having to deal with that nonsense," said Cyd Zeigler Jr., a member of David Barton Gym and a co-founder of Outsports.com, an online magazine for gay sports fans and athletes. "I don't get the full benefit of my membership."

Men cruising men in the locker room is a near-century old pursuit. And the steam rooms, showers and saunas at health clubs continue to be meeting places for men seeking anonymous sexual activity, much as bathhouses in New York and other cities were before fear of AIDS prompted a widespread shutdown in the 1980's.

"It has always been there, and it has its ups and downs," Charles Kaiser, the author of the 1997 book "The Gay Metropolis," said of sexual behavior in locker rooms. "People complain, and they shut things down, and then it creeps back up again."

Just how much sex occurs in gym locker rooms - and whether it's more prevalent today than in the past - is difficult to gauge. Gyms are reluctant to say how many complaints they get from members, and the New York City Health Department, which has the authority to close the saunas and steam rooms of health clubs that fail to crack down on sexual activity, rarely hears from gymgoers.

Of course most of those who engage in furtive sexual behavior are savvy about not getting caught.

Gyms are everywhere: the number nationwide has more than doubled in the past decade to about 26,000, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, a trade group. And at certain times of day, their showers and steam rooms are not crowded. A closed door - or the fog of steam - make it easy for men engaging in sexual activity to elude detection.

"No one can really see anything," said Jonathan, a 43-year-old sales representative from Manhattan who gave only his first name. He said he regularly goes to an uptown New York Sports Club for "work and reward": a cardio workout, some weight lifting, then sexual activity in the sauna or steam room.

To some members, such behavior is offensive and detracts from their enjoyment of the gym.

Last month, Carlos Sosa, 34, a restaurant manager in Manhattan, filed a $25,000 lawsuit against David Barton Gym on West 23rd Street. (The gym has officially denied any wrongdoing.) Four months into his membership he complained about sexual behavior in the locker room, he said, but the establishment refused to let him out of his contract and refund his $950 annual fee.

Mr. Sosa, who accuses the gym of allowing sexual activity to flourish in the men's locker room, said that on one afternoon in mid-November 2004 he went to the shower and saw that two men in adjacent showers had slid their hands through a gap between their stalls. "One was masturbating the other," Mr. Sosa said.

Tom Shanahan, a lawyer for David Barton Gym said: "What he's alleging happens everywhere. It's how you deal with it, and we try and deal with it."

MOST clubs, including David Barton, Equinox, and the Y.M.C.A., have zero-tolerance policies. "If you're caught," Mr. Shanahan said, "then you're out."

Equinox revoked memberships a "handful" of times in the past year, according to Scott Rosen, the chief operating officer. At Reebok Sports Club/NY, Brad Zeifman, the club's spokesman, said that "less than a handful" of memberships have been revoked in the past year because of "inappropriate behavior," which includes using profanity and getting into arguments as well as improprieties in the locker room and spa areas.

Gyms in New York, which are required by law to enforce the state sanitary code against sex on their premises, often post signs notifying exercisers that "inappropriate behavior" is not permitted. While few, if any, establishments have employees patrol the locker rooms to police sexual activity, most have staff members check in from time to time so they can, among other things, alert management if they see forbidden behavior.

But despite these efforts, men continue to arrange rendezvous at gyms with willing partners, often via the Internet.

"Looking for a little relief during your day? Meet me at Lunch at the NYSC Sauna and lets have some fun," a June 8 personal ad on craigslist.com said. Other postings are more explicit: "We were alone in the steam room Monday night. We fooled around a bit and you said you were 26 as well. Would love to meet up again." Some of the postings - like "married looking for discrete hot sex at my gym" - suggest that men who identify themselves as gay are not the only ones who participate.

If people who stumble upon a couple in flagrante delicto were to complain to New York City's Health Department, a club's saunas and steam rooms might be shut down. But only two or three complaints a year are received, said Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

"If we don't know if something is going on," said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy commissioner of the department's Division of Disease Control, "there's nothing we can do about it."

A lot of the sexual activity in gym locker rooms, according to witnesses and health experts, may not be the unprotected anal sex that led officials to disband bathhouses in the 80's - and sex clubs in the 90's - but if it were reported to the Health Department, Dr. Weisfuse said, it still would raise enough concern for the department to investigate.

But most aggrieved members complain only to gym management. Some gyms will shut down their locker room amenities while they investigate a complaint, but eventually they reopen them.

"We have closed the saunas and steam rooms at certain times," said Susan Gerson, a spokeswoman for Town Sports International, which runs New York Sports Clubs.

In response to complaints last year about sexual activity in the men's steam room, sauna, shower and Jacuzzi areas, Reebok Sports Club/NY sent undercover personnel to investigate, a measure it also randomly takes, according to Mr. Zeifman. The club has not discovered sexual behavior in its locker room areas since last summer.

Whether their clients are annoyed or unfazed when sex disrupts a visit to their club, gyms are obligated to crack down on it. For them, sex in locker rooms is no laughing matter. But Mr. Young, the comedian, isn't above joking about the situation. He incorporated sex at the gym into his stand-up routine.

"Oh, yes, these steam rooms are wonderful," his puppet Oglesby boasted in a Manhattan bar a few months ago. "I even hear they have a workout room upstairs."

[wildcat]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 1:06pm

If that was the best joke Oglesby could come up with, bring back Senor Wences.

[DayDreamer]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 1:13pm

Maybe I'm just not as aware of it, but this doesn't seem to happen as much or be as blatant here in Seattle as it was in DC.

[gymman]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 1:17pm

As a gay man, I have to say that most of the locker room activity is fairly benign..of the "I'll play with your's if you play with mine." I have seen this my entire life in gyms, and it ain't gonna change. And yes--many of the men appear to be married types, since they talk about wives and kids on the gym floor.

Having said that, I am soooooo over putting up with it; I'd like to take a shower at Bally's without a bunch of guys stroking their d....and looking at me. (There are better ways to meet, and I'm not interested in meeting you this way.)

Seriously, though, this kind of activity is obviously driven by homophobic cultures, and obviously appeals at least in part to those men who are victims of that culture, who cannot or will not come to terms with their own sexuality.
Updated On: 6/16/05 at 01:17 PM

[midtowngym]

Posted: 6/16/05 at 1:40pm

awwwww... Gymman...Thou doth protest too much. You pump your cleavage up to Pamela Sue Anderson size, and then complain that you're stared at.
From one gym queen to another, it's when they STOP j*rking off in front of you that there's a problem.