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In many ways the pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of sex-- and it's everyone's duty to increase the amount of happiness in the world. For my contribution, I attempt to corrupt the young with a beginners' guide to hedonism. I offer a tour of one of Toronto's most popular bathhouses (there's probably one in your city!), and share the insights of a seasoned tub veteran.

This particular bathhouse is owned by my friend Peter. It doesn't matter what it's called-- it could be any bathhouse on a good day. Peter says that there are only two reasons why men come to the baths. He says that mainly the men are just lonely-- that they have come for the comfort that can be found in the intimate company of other men in a place where that intimacy is not faked for the rest of society. Sometimes that intimacy only takes the form of a simple conversation with someone they don't know.

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You can trust strangers at the baths with your secrets precisely because they are strangers. They don't know who you are, and don't care. Your secrets are safe in the custody of someone who doesn't know what to do with them. Others just come for sex: an all-you-can-eat sexual smorgasbord. "And a lot of times," Peter says, "it's a combination of both."

Peter is not just a good businessman, he's a community leader, and so he has made sure that his bathhouse is the kind of place that can help guys out with both problems.

It's located in the busy center of Toronto's "gay ghetto," and that makes some guys a little nervous. They still don't want to be seen going into the baths. Discretion is mandatory. Most bathhouses have blocked off all windows and there are no signs or other exterior indicators of what they are. Peter has kept his invisible to the public on the second floor of a retail-cum-apartment complex.

You enter through a dimly lit side door and walk up the concrete stairs. For many first-timers, the walk up those stairs is like the fearful exhilaration of approaching the top of a roller coaster. The final barrier to the plunge is the check-in. You will find a nice man behind a window with security bars. He won't say much, perhaps just a "Can I help you?" You have two options: rent a room, or rent a locker. You are then buzzed through the security door into another world.

A room is 17 dollars. But it's not your average room at the Holiday Inn. Most are about five-by-seven feet and have only a single bed (generally, not one you'd care to sleep on for very long) with a small shelf beside, and a locker for your clothes. Every room is cleaned by staff before each new client enters. Each also has a thin, plastic-covered mattress with fitted white sheets. The bed sits on top of a kind of flat wooden bunk. Most rooms also have large mirrors strategically mounted on the walls.

If you rent a locker (which is about half the cost of a room) that's all you get. You undress in the locker bay, and leave your clothes and other items in your locker.

Shortly after arriving, just about everyone showers.

The rooms are arranged on both sides of several long corridors that run in a number of different directions. You very much get the sense of being in a rather dark maze. The men who wander these halls looking for sex are usually wearing only towels around their waists, or occasionally nothing at all.

In the beginning it's hard for many people to walk around practically naked in front of so many other people, but in this environment, you would stand out more if you didn't take your clothes off. It also helps that you will see bodies of all shapes and sizes, on men of all races and ages. Sometimes what you find isn't what you consider beautiful, and sometimes you find sexy guys that fall outside your usual range of attraction.

Most of the cruising for sex is straightforward. One strategy is for a man to stay in his room and lie on his bed with his door open. They do so in whatever pose they think is sexy. The switch to the room light is located beside the bed and has dimmer capability. They adjust the light to whatever level they feel best accentuates their pose and suits their state of mind.

Often, the man will just lie there and wait for a possible candidate to walk by. But sometimes they don't. They may masturbate or otherwise stimulate themselves in full view of those passing by. This can cause quite a commotion in the halls if such an individual happens to be a beefy hunk, with onlookers piling up. Sometimes there are tons of good-looking men there, but there are also a lot of what are known as "trolls"-- a less-than-kind term for those deemed not particularly well-preserved.

If a man scoping the halls for a partner sees a guy in a room that he likes, he will stop at the man's door and ask him if he would like some company. If the man says yes, that's it. The guy just walks in and they start having sex. No talking. No names. No delay. They just do it.

A glorious part of the baths

For those who don't have a room, or prefer not to stay in their rooms and wait, there are a number of options.

At the back of baths, in an especially dark hall, there are the "glory holes." These are two sets of three wooden booths in a row against the wall. Individually, each booth is about the size of a confessional.

You enter through a door at the front of the booth that can be locked behind you. In the walls that separate each booth are small vertical holes. Each is about two inches wide, and eight inches in length. They are there so men can put their penises through them so that they can get sucked by the party in the adjoining booth. The eight-inch span of the holes is designed to accommodate men of differing heights.

There are also two slots at the top of the wall that you can put your hands through, allowing you to lean backwards as you get fellated. Because there are three booths in each set, that allows a third person to view at least one of the others by looking through his hole. Because of the darkness in the booths, what they see is a writhing, shadowy outline of a male figure.

There are a few other ways men utilize the unique construction of the booths.

There is usually a fair number of people in the hall outside these booths, and a quick walk through the area tells a guy what's available. A careful discernment of the body language of the manly forms lining the walls reveals who you might get, and who you won't. Men gesture their interest to each other with a strategic stroke or two of their favorite body part through their towels, or by pausing as they walk by.

One will then slip into an empty booth, making sure that there is another empty booth beside it, so that the other man can go in. They are usually cautious enough to keep their door slightly open and watch to make sure that the right guy goes in. But sometimes they don't, and they should have. More than one opportunist has found a chance to zip into the empty booth fast without the guy in the next booth knowing. The guy who was supposed to go in is left standing there to figure out what just happened.

Others are not so deliberate in their choices. They just walk into a booth and close the door. They don't know who will come into the next booth, and don't care. But they know that someone else who doesn't care who's on the other side will walk in and do what he is supposed to.

There is also the "wet area" to experience. In the wet area there are two sets of shower rooms, each with about eight shower heads in them. There are also two steam rooms, two dry saunas, and a porno room.

The prudent tub-shopper will make a point of passing by the showers on a regular basis. This is their chance to get a good look at potential partners, or to eyeball the ones they'll never get. It seems some of the men with the really muscular, sculpted bodies rather like the attention and take really long showers. This makes a lot of people happy, and most are subtle and polite enough about their visual affair, but occasionally someone will make a nuisance of himself.

The steam rooms are also interesting. Sometimes there is nobody in them, and guys can just relax and enjoy a good steam. But not all the time.

It is very dark inside the steam rooms and the steam itself further obscures your vision. It has the effect of reducing those around you to manly silhouettes. This helps men with their fantasies. The muscular outline in front of them could be their perfect idea of masculinity, or maybe not. It doesn't matter if they really are, for the moment they are, and that's what matters.

Often there can be several men in the steam room with nothing happening. There is a tangible awkwardness in the mist as each considers who will be the one to make the first move. Once someone finally does make the first move, it will often spontaneously turn into an instant orgy of men devouring one another's bodies. It's all oral sex and touching.

As quickly as these things start, they end. Too many people may enter the steam room, or a key player may stop and leave for some reason, or an ill-mannered customer could upset someone and then everyone stops and there is a mass exodus. Then it slowly fills up again and the cycle repeats. The same is true for the dry saunas.

The porno room is attached to the wet area. It is also fairly dark and has a TV mounted high on the wall that continuously plays gay sex videos. The guys in the videos are all young and perfect. There is a bench at the back where guys can sit and watch.

The main effect of this room is that it gets guys aroused. For some reason it isn't often that one sees a lot of sex happening in it. But when it does it can be many men at once. Again, this can start and stop quite suddenly, with the primary activity being oral sex.

Near the door between the wet area and the rest of the baths, the safe-sex educator has an office. On the weekends and the busy times, he hands out free condoms and lube and answers questions about safe sex.

I said before that Peter believes the main reason men come to the baths is loneliness. That may sound hard to believe at this point, but you can see what he means if you look at some of the regulars.

They are the ones that it doesn't matter when you go, you will see them. No one could need that much sex, and I doubt that sex is their motive. They come because there is no other place like it.

Many of them feel ostracized in the first place precisely because of who they desire to have sex with. They still feel stigmatized by society because of the fact that they want to have sex with other men and haven't learned to cope. The baths are protected zones for them.

They might feel alienated from their families or friends because they are gay. Many certainly feel alienated from the "public" because of their sexuality. In a contained environment like the baths, not only does homosexuality not have to be hidden or lied about, it is to be enjoyed and affirmed. Some men don't have sex at all at the baths, but whether acted upon or not, it is a place where the desire is permitted.

Many men also unintentionally-- and often unknowingly-- internalize society's disapproval of gay people. They cannot cope with the idea of a relationship with another man, because to do so is to commit to being a homosexual, and on some level they feel they can't do that. The baths serve their basic sexual needs and they also have the effect of compartmentalizing their sexuality.

While bathhouse sex may have complex motivations, the men doing it are mostly loving it.

Though they may not know their partner, nurturing and romantic feelings are possible in the tubs. It is more about intimacy than familiarity. It's about how much they're willing to let go. Guys in bathhouses often make themselves vulnerable to each other because sexopens the door to such intimate places of the heart.

I have heard many stories of men who have had some of their most meaningful human experiences at the tubs, where they have looked into the eyes of another man and known immediately that they both needed the same thing and that they could give it to each other. They have amazing sex, and then lie nude for hours in each other's arms talking about life. **

Author Profile:  Joseph Couture

Joseph Couture is a journalist based on London, Ontario.