'Life is a cabaret old

chum,' or maybe it is a bathhouse. I prefer to think of it as the latter. I will never forgive Liza for revising the lyrics from"When I go, I'm going like Elsie" to “When I go, I'm not going like Elsie" — Liza please! How dare you moralize about a play that made so much money on Nazi-ism? (Well it did -- as did The Sound of Music.)  But I digress. I think of the bathhouses because they have temporarily disappeared. When I'm in Toronto I reside opposite what used to be The Cellar — a bathhouse; and all my friends say ‘I had such good times there...’ So did I. I can hardly remember any of those times; that’s what makes them so delicious. I do remember meeting my old music teacher there. When I was in my teens I played the cello in a string quartet at the Royal Conservatory of Music; my teacher was a mean, irascible old fart named Robert Spergel -- who I was terrified of. Of course I wasn’t a very good cellist and he was an excellent one. Perhaps he hated me for that reason -- bu I was never sure. At the time I was in the closet, but quite beautiful (well, at 15 anyone can be beautiful!). Years later I saw him at The Cellar, lurching around a corner when he was nearly dead, and it all became clear — had he been in love with me? (It is my experience that teachers who are in love with their students tend to torture them). Anyway when he died there was an article about him in the newspaper, and I discovered that he had been a child prodigy, a cellist — and he composed a symphony — and met Leonard Bernstein. But when I saw the picture — well he had been a gorgeous curly-headed blonde teenager -- whereas I was never anywhere near as beautiful as he. But I could fully understand why he would hate me as I was so much less beautiful and so much less talented. Then there was the TV chef who looked like a clown who I met at the bathhouse and who threatened to kill me. (For the record, whatever your name is Mr. TV Chef Clown, I’m sorry I disrespected you, and I hope you don’t come and kill me now because I’m writing this). He was a large (shall we just say fat?) fellow with frizzy hair, and as I was quite the body fascist at the time (it was my fault I take all the blame on myself, please don’t kill me, sir!)  he wasn’t my type. He kept lurking around my door so I finally slammed it in his face; it was cruel and completely uncalled (I can see that now, and am fully repentant sir Mr. Clown, honestly). I waited for quite awhile and finally opened the door. And lo and behold there he was. He said: “I’ll kill you someday. You won’t be able to hide. You’ll be standing in a bar having a drink and laughing with your friends, minding your own business and I will hunt you down and I will kill you.” And then he walked away. Yes is it perhaps a wonder that the world of the bathhouse is one that  I long for, one that I miss? But one could go on forever extolling its heavenly features — a gay bathhouse is the most honest and democratic institution in the world. That doesn’t mean that young body fascists (like my ex-self) don’t lurk there, in the steam. But the fact is that anyone can get laid there if they are just willing to acknowledge the truth. Sex is honest; that’s what I love about it, especially for men. Perhaps that is the appeal of sex for men, women can fake orgasms and do, regularly (sorry guys) but men cannot (is, or is not, the bed wet?)  and most of all they cannot fake an erection. (I should know, I haven’t had a hard or vaguely firm one in years; but it’s the thought that counts!) Anyway, a bathhouse isn’t like a ‘date’ or a ‘bar’ or any other artificial, social convention where people can pretend to be 'into you,' they either are, or they are not. I need that certainty, as one of the only things that really turns me on is being desired. A straight friend of mine told me a story that exemplifies the bathhouse. He lives in a rather seedy apartment building in a very long apartment and his bedroom is at the end of the living room, far from the front door. Well one day he was working in his bedroom and there was a gentle knock on the bedroom door and he opened it only to discover a man standing there wearing only a pair of overalls pulled down to just below his pubic hairline, leaning against the wall. My friend was, of course, startled, and the black man (he was black, okay, I’m not going to not tell you just because it will be considered an irrelevant/racist detail by some, it's just the facts, and that’s all I am offering here, as you well know, is just the facts). “Do you have a cigar?” he asked, in a languid sort of way. My friend did not, and did not quite know what to say. The semi-naked stranger went on  --“Do you want to have sex? “My friend said no. “Can I have a drink?” My friend said no. “Well I was just at the bathhouse and someone let me in the building, and your door was open, and the way I see it, if the door is unlocked then God meant for me to go in.” This is my favourite detail, a kind of sophisticated sophistical wisdom that surpasses Buddha or Confucius, partially because it is both so fundamentally wrong and right at the same time. My friend figured a way to get him out of his apartment without a confrontation. But what strikes me is that probably the semi-naked stranger was at the bathhouse, stoned -- and they kicked him out (we’ve all been there, haven’t we?) and he just couldn’t imagine that the world itself was not a bathhouse. I mean why shouldn't it be? Why can’t it be? I have met so many women who when I tell them about my experiences at the bathhouse (and they are  the kind of woman who wants to know) whine “Why aren’t their bathhouses for women?” And they are right to whine. But men are men, and women are women, and never the twain shall meet, except at the end of some guys dick, or in a divorce or sexual harassment court settlement. Sorry. I just don’t understand heterosexuality; never have, never will. It’s just a trick to populate the world, isn't it? And we queer perverts are onto it. The jig is up, and if we had our way we would all be wandering through popper-infused hallways, stoned, stumbling into people’s rooms, and onto people’s penises. 'Oh I’m sorry, I don’t know how I got there, I guess I just tripped!' When sex is a felicitous accident that's divine, when you force it to mean something (love, procreation) you kill it. Please don’t try and kill sex. For the revenge it takes is that it will try and kill you.