www.bathhouseblues.com

Here at DarkPost we like to bring you something a bit different every once in a while. We all love leathers, fisting, and the whole rough she-bang, but I stumbled across this site and thought it was so interesting that it was definitely in need of a mention here. And while it doesn’t necessarily concern our most celebrated topics it’s sure to make you nod your head in agreement at some point, or at the very least titillate your senses and spark your imagination. Bathhouse Blues is a gay Asian male’s bathhouse blog.

Yes, bathhouse blog! How inventive is that! Perhaps there are a thousand of them out there and I’m the ignorant novice yet to be reading one, but what a novel concept! This particular man swears that his stories are true (not sure if I care if they are true or not, as they are still an interesting read), but doesn’t give us much in the way of details about himself or his location, etc. Again, this is okay; it’s the other people in his stories that are almost the more pivotal characters, as they are the motivation behind his writing process.

His stories originate over the past ten years and cover all sorts of experiences. Many of his articles examine the basics like bathhouse etiquette, the reasons men go to the baths, when they go, and who they are. These stories may not get you off but they provide a very interesting characterization of a system that many gay men are drawn to without really knowing why. While these articles of course only provide anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon I’m inclined to believe a lot of the assumptions our author suggests. Besides these informative articles the author also writes about his own experiences finding sex. These may be straightforward quickies, but more often the author analyzes what people are after (“Rice Queens”), busy times (“Christmas at the Baths”) and how to attract (“Eye Contact”). If you’ve been to a bathhouse before you should have experienced all of these things and will probably find that our author knows what he’s talking about.

With all of the authors purveying of information about bathhouses he rarely gets to his own specific sexual encounters that might create another dynamic to his writing. I realize he is trying to separate the writing found in erotica anthologies and that found in academia. Yet, since he is not an academic, he would be advised to spice it up a bit so that it stays interesting to more of the audience and doesn’t run the risk of just being a user’s manual for bathhouses. This small complaint could easily be rectified, and despite it, I still found myself intrigued by what this young man had to say about an institution most of us have patronized at some point.