I keep hearing the term “Gay Bathhouse,” but I’m still not really sure what it means. My guess is that it’s a place where gay men go and sit in hot tubs nude with each other, and that there are rooms where they can go off and have sex with each other if they so desire. Is this basically it? If I’m wrong, could someone with more expertise set me, er, straight?
And is there anything like this for heterosexuals?
Yeah, that’s basically it. Naked guys looking for other naked guys to have sex with.
You mean like a bath house where heterosexual men sit around nude with other heterosexual men and then there are rooms where they can go off and have sex with each other?
I am not sure, but I don’t think so.
Where straight MEN and WOMEN go, Silly.
Just wanted to comment that the OP has the best name possible with this topic.
What’s that supposed to mean?
What goes on inside a gay bathhouse?
A condom, if you were smart.
I don’t know if you could call it going silly, but there would definitely be a drop in inhibitions.
My father told me that in New York there was a place called Plato’s Retreat that he described as a “sex club.” Would that be the straight equivalent of a gay bathhouse?
It’s like the joke about the two gay Irishmen, Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick.
Oh, ha ha. That IS funny!
Maybe they could join together with the Wright brothers and start a gay resort. They could call it the Fitz-Wright Inn.
No it’s much more obvious. PaulFitzroy = Paul fits Roy. 
If I’m not mistaken, Otto is gay, and answered your question in post #2.
So, my options were to close it or move it. I choose to move it.
If we get one factual answer in ten posts, I ain’t waiting around for the 100th joke post on this.
Answered in GQ, and moved for your pleasure to MPSIMS.
samclem GQ moderator
Helpful hint (TMI):
Do not attempt to suppress raucous laughter while you have pasta in your mouth. You’ll get a piece of it lodged in your sinus cavity. Actually had to blow the bastard out. Ewww.
So he’s making him a garment? Those crazy queers!
<obligatory Friends reference>Aren’t tailors supposed to…cup?</oFr>
I’ve been, once or twice, to a classy establishment downtown called the 456 (one of my friends works there).
Upon entry, you may choose either a room or a locker. You are then issued a towel and some condoms. You go in and disrobe. At the 456, the lower floor is, indeed, a bathhouse: there is a large swimming pool, hot tub, showers, and a sauna. There is also a sort of drawing room with a TV and an Internet terminal, and a bar where health foods and light snacks are served. (In the basement is a gym; the place doubles as a health club.)
The second floor has many tiny rooms, as well as a porno theatre; upstairs has larger rooms and glory holes, in a “jailhouse” theme.
Officially the management frowns on actual screwing in the public areas, however the rule is sparsely enforced upstairs, and there is usually something going on in the porno theatre. I would say most of the people who go there, go there to meet people; some go with their dates, with or without the intention of supplementing their couple with another fellow or two. Condoms and lube are freely available; drugs are prohibited, and I don’t recall seeing anyone visibly sloshed.
In addition to actual bathhouses, some gay-run bed and breakfasts have a reputation for being especially cruisy, but one doesn’t necessarily go there in order to have sex.
Canada has some old, rarely enforced laws against running or being in a “common bawdy house” (i.e. a brothel). Although these establishments are not brothels (you are paying for the accommodation, and it’s up to you to find a partner; indeed, I know people who use it as a health club and/or cheap hotel), once in a great while the police force will take it into its head to raid one; the most recent case was in Calgary in December 2002, and I’m not sure what came of it.
Other famous raids took place in Montreal in 1990, after which footage of rubber-gloved police beating up protesters galvanized the community and earned the sobriquet “Montreal’s Stonewall”; and a raid on a lesbian sex party in Toronto in 2000, where male officers roamed the building for hours and then left without filing any charges.
Visions of Brain Candy & dozens of gay men evacuating a public facility upon police infiltration.
Yes, I understand that’s more or less how it goes, except with less comedy and more assault.