The Shy Boy at the Bathhouse

January 7th, 2011.  Cleveland, Ohio.

My boyfriend Troy and I are traveling crosscountry from Upstate New York to Indianapolis to visit my relatives.  Cleveland is a convenient halfway point, so we get a room at the Flex Club, which offers a full gym, two swimming pools, a steamroom maze, and a bar downstairs, and bathhouse facilities and hotel rooms upstairs.

7:00 pm

After we check into our room, Troy hits the cruising area, and I go to the gym.  The only other guy there is not particularly muscular, obviously not a gym regular, gamely trying to figure out how to bench press.

I go over and offer to spot him.

His name is Lester.  He's in his 20s, of medium height, unruly black hair, black eyebrows, and sharp features, not handsome but pleasant in a quirky bohemian way,  He has a thin chest, prominent nipples, and nicely rippled abs, plus a soft Southern accent that I find attractive.  He reminds me of my Kentucky Kinfolk.

 I steer him toward the Nautilus machines and demonstrate proper form.

"So, are you from Cleveland?" he asks.

"New York, actually.  I'm just here for the night.  My boyfriend and I have a hotel room upstairs."

"Wow, I just have a locker.  I heard the hotel rooms were nice -- I've never been in one."

"Well, come on up, and I'll give you a tour."

7:30 pm

Before we go upstairs, Lester wants to go to the indoor pool and introduce me to his friends Max and Jason-- rather an odd precaution in the bathhouse.  But ok.  They are college-aged, not particularly muscular but well hung. They grin broadly and hug Lester, as if he has accomplished something spectacular.

All he did was hook up at a bathhouse -- not particularly difficult!

It is a very strange feeling to walk down one of those red-painted, dimly lit bathhouse corridors, with disco music pounding away and guys walking around in towels, open a door, and bam!  You're in a 3-star hotel room with a queen-sized bed, a tv, an alarm clock, and a private bath.

"I like to take things slow," Lester says as I steer him toward the bed.

"Ok, I have plenty of time."  We kiss and fondle, go down on each other, kiss some more.  Eventually he puts his penis -- a very thick Bratwurst -- between my legs and finishes.  I don't finish, wanting to save myself for later in the evening.

Afterwards we cuddle and chat.  Lester grew up fundamentalist in rural Kentucky, attended the homophobic Cedarville University, and didn't come out he was 20.  He transferred to Ohio State, and now he is in law school at Case Western Reserve University.  He's been in one "real" relationship, with an older guy; it lasted for two years, and ended last November.

Ok, well...I was hoping to hook up with some other guys tonight...

He keeps on cuddling.  He's a big fan of Harry Potter, Glee, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I tell him some of my good stories, about my date with Michael J. Fox, the Amazing Invisible Boy, and Cousin George ("only fools wear pajamas").  Eventually I push him down onto me to finish.

He grabs me and holds on tight again.

8:30 pm.

I've been driving all day, and I want to hook up with some other guys tonight....how do I extricate myself from this guy?  I can't just kick him out!

The door opens, and Troy comes in.  After the introductions, he joins us, going down on Lester and me in turn.  Then I get up, leave the two of them cuddling on the bed, and go cruising.  Let Troy kick him out.

10:00 pm.

I return to the room.  Troy and Lester are still there. They must have hit it off!  I join them for another session of Lester's penis between my legs, and we all fall asleep together.







January 8th, 6:00 am.

I get up, eat a power bar and two bananas, run on the treadmill, and return to the room to dress.

7:00 am.

Troy goes off to exercise, leaving Lester and me alone in the room.

"I have to go -- my locker is expiring," he says.  "What are you guys going to do today?"

"Breakfast, then the museums.  Then we're leaving for Indianapolis.  It's about five hours away."

"Great, then you'll be in town for lunch.  Let me take you and Troy to my favorite place.  It's right near the campus.  I'll invite some of my friends."

He writes down the address, kisses me, and leaves.

1:00 pm.

Troy and I spend the morning at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History, and the Botanical Garden.  Then we walk to a place called the Jolly Scholar, on the campus of Case Western Reserve.  It's empty on a Saturday morning before classes have started.

Lester arrives with three of his friends, Max and Jason from last night, plus a portly young lady named Michelle.

"So someone finally took pity on our little Lester!" Michelle says, hugging us both in turn.

"We thought he'd never meet anyone...." Jason adds, sliding into the booth next to me.

Lester blushes.  "Guys, knock it off!"

Meet anyone?  "Well, we're not actually dating.  Troy and I are off to Indianapolis after lunch."

"So you mean you just used Lester for his body, with no intention of following through with a relationship?"

"Um...well...."

"Just kidding!"  Jason grabs my knee under the booth.  "That was the whole idea.  Little Lester has only been with a few guys in his whole miserable life."

"...including two years of monotony with that jerk David," Max says.

"So last night we dragged him kicking and screaming to the Flex Club, and told him he couldn't leave until he went down on at least five guys..."

"Or one guy five times..."

"Did you keep a tally?" Michelle asks.

Lester puts his head into his hands.  "Boomer, you took judo.  Make them stop.  Throw them out the window!"

See also: My Kentucky Kinfolk; 10 Bathhouse Boys; and I Get With Every Guy in the Bath House

The Truth about the Formosan Penis

Montreal, July 1998

My doctoral program in New York (1997-2001) was not only about studying sexuality.  I spent a lot of time seeking out ethnic groups with legendary penises:

The Basque, reputedly the largest in the world.

The Bushman, reputedly always in a tumescent state.

And the Formosan of Taiwan.

When I first moved to New York in 1997, I had to live in a grad student apartment, where I was assigned 3 roommates: Max, the most obnoxious guy on the planet; a beefy Turkish guy who mostly kept to himself; and a Taiwanese guy named Huang, who also happened to be a fellow grad student in the Sociology Department.

Huang was not nearly as muscular as Max, but also not as obnoxious.  His only faults: he occasionally had a girl over to giggle in his bedroom, and he called his family back home every Saturday at 4:00 am.

In each case I could hear him quite clearly through the wall.

My Mandarin was limited to Wǒ xǐhuān zhōngguó rén, "I like Chinese men,"  but at least I could recognize the language.  And when Huang spoke to his family, he wasn't speaking Mandarin.

Turns out that he was fluent in Mandarin (and Hokkien, French, and English), but his native language was Paiwan, from the Formosan family, related the Tagalog of the Philippines and the Javanese of Indonesia.

There are about 400,000 Formosan aboriginals in Taiwan, about 2% of the population, mostly living in the mountainous south.

"We get discrimination," Huang told me.  "The Chinese think yuánzhùmín are uncivilized, barbarians.  Like the Indians in America."

There are statues of muscular, half naked Formosans all over Taiwan, like the statues of Native Americans in the U.S.

The Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Park in Yuchi, about 150 miles south of Taipei, invites Chinese tourists to see aboriginals performing traditional arts and native dances, like the pow wows in the U.S.

"But the Chinese woman like us," Huang added with a grin.

"Oh, why is that?"

"Yuánzhùmín men are bigger than Chinese men." He pointed to his crotch.  "Dá jībā!"  Apparently that meant big penis.  

I reddened, shocked that a straight guy would be comfortable enough to discuss his penis size with me.   Or maybe he was bisexual, and expressing interest.  "Well -- I'm sure some of the Chinese men like Formosan dá jībā, too."

"No, they are jealous."

Not bisexual!

"When you tell a woman you are yuánzhùmín," Huang continued, "She always ask if the stories are true, and she want to see it."

"Well - are the stories true?"  I asked.  "Can I see it?"

"No, no, not for gays." He giggled. "Just for women."

I'm not usually deterred so easily, but after Huang's startling display of confidence, I felt guilty about plotting any complex schemes to get a glimpse of his jībā.  

Maybe I could see it by accident?

No -- he didn't go to the gym, and he didn't strut around the apartment in a towel.

When I moved out of graduate student housing to a place in Manhattan, I lost hope of ever finding out if the stories about Formosan men are true.

But my hope was restored in July, shortly after I returned from my trip to Estonia with Yuri and Jaan.  Some of the sociology students drove up to Montreal for the International Sociological Association World Congress, and Huang and I shared a hotel room.

Surely he would change clothes in front of me, or sleep in revealing briefs.

No -- he changed clothes in the bathroom, and slept in pajama bottoms.  Not even a bulge was visible!

One night I was planning to go to the Keynote Speech, then "out" (actually to the Oasis, where I met the Muscle God and his Wingman).  I told Huang I would not be back until after midnight.

But after the Keynote Speech, I realized that I had left my jacket in the hotel room -- it was rather chilly in Montreal -- and rushed back upstairs.

I slid the key card through the slot and pulled the door open.

The first thing I noticed was cheesy 1970s music.

The second was the heterosexual porn playing on the tv.

The third was Huang lying on his bed, naked, doing what heterosexual men do when they watch porn.

He yelled and pulled the covers over himself.  But he was still tenting.

"I forgot my jacket," I said, stepping forward to grab it from the coat rack.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry....I thought you are not coming back until very late."

"Don't worry about it.  By the way, you're right -- it really is a dá jībā."

I'm certainly not going to make a joke about Huang and hung, but he was.

See also: The Secret Identity of the Elevator Hookup

Where to Find Circumcized Men

I've never seen a penis I didn't like. Big or small, thin or thick, soft or hard, veined, curved, epispadias, hypospadias, who cares?  Any penis that the guy agrees to let me look at, fondle, or go down on is a good penis.

Well, not entirely.  There have been a few that were too ugly.  I don't like a red, shiny glans, smegma deposits under the foreskin, or wrinkled shafts.

And being uncut is not a deal breaker, but I have a definite preference for cut.














They're much more majestic.  The obvious urethral opening, the hard surface surface around the crown, the obvious differentiation between the glans and the shaft.


Beautiful.

















Much more interesting than having a tiny part of the glans peeking out from the foreskin.

And having to pull back a foreskin to see it.

Or the ones where the foreskin doesn't retract at all.

Good luck in finding cut cocks, though. Circumcision is required by Islam, so they're mostly in the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East and North Africa.   Latin America, India, China, Japan, only a few cut guys. There are a lot in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, where faulty medical science decreed circumcized penises healthier up through the 1970s.

Well, I live in the U.S., so it shouldn't be a problem, except that the number of circumcized cocks varies by region.  70-80% in the Midwest, 20-30% on the East Coast and California.

It also varies by race: nearly 90% of non-Hispanic white men are circumcized, but only 70% of non-Hispanic black men, and 40% of Mexican-Americans.











Plus the overall the number of circumcisions performed in the U.S. is decreasing.  It's hovering around 60% now.

So unless you can find some Midwestern white guys over 50, it's increasingly likely that your date or hookup will be uncut.

Oh, well.  There are plenty of Jewish and Muslim men to choose from.


See also: Cut or Uncut