Gay sauna connoisseur Carl Schütz, both a gay man and a boylover, writes in with tales of his adventures gallivanting around some of Europe's finest establishments. He illuminates how, despite their modern representatives having disowned the MAP community they were once part of, a desire for youth is still alive and well in gay culture.

The text published is the original, without a copy edit.

Well it's Friday night and you are heading out for some hot fun in the big city. Actually the city does not have to be that big, these establishments can be found in most major cities in the European Union and also most likely in other places of the world. It is not always a sauna it can also be a "Porn video club" although the need to check out movies of naked people at a public place may have been decimated by the introduction of home video and later easy-to-hide things available online via your smartphone. Some focus on the sexual part and some with mostly a bunch of naked gents reading the paper. Sometimes also the dance club has a "playroom" where people get more touchy feely than you may remember from prom.

In places where being gay is a crime often public bath houses serve the same purpose but now since we are in a very gay friendly "tres chique" city with rainbow zebra crossings there is not that much secrecy. Those who know know. For those who don't there is the Internet.

Some cities have a collected gay area where various venues cram together on one street. In others it is spread out and often since large warehouse-like buildings are preferred it is situated in the often suitably named "meat packing district".

At times it is situated on a street with "progressive" shops, second hand businesses and alike. One typically enters by ringing a door bell, the door clicks and in you go and a most of the time a correct but not overly friendly person attends the entrance.

There was a time not so far away from here in an other galaxy where the age limits where not so exactly upheld but nowadays a strict 18+ age limit is required to uphold a venue for "adult entertainment"

The entrance fee is typically 20-30 euro and you get a locker and a towel very similar to how an ordinary bath house operates.

So you mostly just throw everything in the locker, get a rubber band key around your wrist and away you go, possibly checking some app that ends with "-dr" first. Phones are mostly banned in the inner sections of the place partly because one does not want broken glass in anything resembling a bath house and partly because people want to be free to do what they want without pictures being taken. Drinks are also in plastic bottles and alike. Preferably for me I then enter the shower but there is also a demand by some for a more "aromatic" male scent.

So then wrap that towel around you, if you are fat it will invariably drop more often since only a small part of the cloth will overlap.

It is also possible for shy newcomers to float around fully or partially dressed. Some also like to have some special attire that they wear, leather or perhaps lingerie, if something looks ridiculous to you the courteous thing to do is to keep a straight face, remember this is a place where many fetishes have to co-exist. "Trans" outfits like panties, a bra or the full monty with fake boobs are also common.

It is generally open to "gay men and trans" which most of the time means plain old transvestites and ordinary gay men. Even in the most woke city the no-women policy can be upheld by pointing to the scale of intersectionality in which women are clearly "above" gays and transexuals in the competition of who deserves most of the pity.

One would ask why these places exist in this time and world where we have a virtual gay village at the click of the smartphone app and flirting takes place in anything from airport lounges to zebra crossings. The obvious answer is that when you feel an insy bit "needy" it is not always possible to pull that hot someone out of the screen at the same time, so the rational choice is to enter a place where the other people who currently also feel "a bit antsy" congregate.

No streaming service with ever so hot fantasy men can at least currently give a convincing stimulation of touch so this is another obvious reason people still need to leave their home.

So although you cannot freely chose the channel on the large screen monitors as you can on your phone or computer, a selection of men deemed "desirable by most" either by being young and hot or simply by being well-endowed can be viewed. Very often in the audience one can watch two strangers start to fiddle with each others business while shyly looking at the screen.

The "strangers" can of course also be two guys celebrating their 20th anniversary by revisiting where they first met. These things do happen, if you are at a dinner with a gay couple and the question "how did you two meet" is met with an awkward silence one might consider to not push the subject further.

For those that like to feel a bit "monogamous" or "trigamous" there is also a set of lockable booths with room for a few people. Some booth also have the infamous glory holes where you can stick parts of your anatomy out either to offer or to request handling.

To be frank this place has a huge spread of ages and looks, most likely you will be neither the oldest, the ugliest or the fattest person in the place.

For the super-shy there is often also a completely dark room or a "tunnel of love" where your skills of handling means more than your looks, kinda like an adult version of the dark room game from middle school.

There are often also some places for kinks where you can try to be tied up and often a "sling" in which you can be placed and height adjusted with rattling chains to suit the height of your proud cavalier. Some places also allow for voyeur / exhibitionist play.

At this point in time I sometimes giggle at the questions I at times get from straight males on how "aren't you all just a bunch of over-sexualized weirdos". Then I imagine and describe this place as full of women of all ages, colors and sizes doing it and all but wanting this straight male to "join in on the fun" ending it with a question of conscience "If a place like that existed, would you go there?" I had guys totally loosing it and with dreamy weird eyes ask "where is this place" and me ever being the keen eyed witty guy going "Oh honey in your case it is often referred to as a whore house".

This gift of easy sex is given by mother nature or the devil or who you think is in charge since competition serves no purpose when not producing offspring. Not to say gay men cant also overcomplicate things if they want to.

Thinking back on my days as an young activist for gay rights in the 90s. I even in those days sensed a very fierce resistance against relations with a large age spans. Actually the movement of the days where facing a common enemy as the normie society so these differences could be worked out or simply ignored. At the same time as these groups wanted "freedom" they also wanted to "protect others".

As time went on what i call "the assimilationists" i.e. the movement would throw the "deviants" under the bus to gain general acceptance.

This succeeded as we all know by now but in almost every aspect can be regarded as a Pyrrhic victory. Only to those interested in +/-5 years age span of other men, monogamous and keen on upholding the best hedge rose in the neighbourhood could feel that this was a win.

For all others this would simply be yet another stray jacket, you sit in your little bungalow and throw your glances at the neighbours' teen son with the hockey muscles.

Since monogamy in the heterosexual context is upheld at least to a certain degree by clusters of women forming a (somewhat working) wall against infidelity this is not at all possible in a gay male context.

Finally, hedge roses are fucking boring.

But now back to the sauna club.

A few funny events can be noted, if a younger man appears at this place, especially smooth shaven there tends to be a "stampede" of sorts where everyone tries to get as close as possible being willing to "serve" in various ways. It would be laughably naive to believe that this attention would magically stop under the magic limit of 18, we are only restrained by our own initiative and legal requirements after all. So this crowd of assimilationists do not uphold the standards of the proud rainbow very well after all.

Sometimes the younger person(s) gets entangled in some kind of improvised orgy and since you can only place so many people on a mattress in order for it not to become a live scene with an audience the people who did not make it onto the mattress will start performing as "extras" or "move-ons" as if it was indeed a movie scene, thus expanding the "orgy" to make it less of a gaping audience whilst at the same time keeping track at what goes on in the main stage. At the same time the porn movie with the hunks moves on in the background and for the cinematic nerd you start to feel like you are in a Kurosawa-goes-gay kinda movie within a movie.

Then I focus my mind on a conversation I recently had with a fairly intoxicated young man at the bar (these places also serve the purpose of socializing). This young man wanted to have experiences of all kinds and having sex with a man as old as possible was on the bucket list. So he confided (well shouted out to all) that he tried someone who was indeed over the age of 80.

Sometimes the young lads entering the place have a wish to be dominated preferably by a whole bunch of men and used and abused in all possible ways. This desire is surprisingly common and of course it is one of many sexual orientations. Many later on move to the leather scene which invariable have a shortage of "tops" and an over-supply of "bottoms". (The top being the dominant person and the bottom the submissive in a bdsm terminology). Again it would be comically naive to assume this desire magically manifests itself on the 18th birthday. Often the "scandalous" articles written on these topics stem from a teen boys raging hormones with accompanying fantasies. Also a convenient excuse when one has been "slutting around" as the expression seems to go.

To conclude it seems there is a great discrepancy between ideals and reality, it does not suffice to say "well they are 18 they can do what they damn well please" when at the same time age differences as small as 18 vs 25 are frowned upon and there is even some kind of formula called the "creep index" of acceptable age differences.