The following is an excerpt from Find Love in a Gay Bathhouse – An Eight Step Guide to Meeting Mr Right in a Gay Bathhouse and then Making the Relationship Work – by Marcel Wiel. Read Fridae's interview with Marcel Wiel here. The following is reprinted with permission from the author.

Step 1: Making the statistics work for you

A pool of opportunities

As anyone who uses bathhouses knows, they see a lot of human traffic - all the more so for one in large cities.The bathhouse where I met my Mr Right is typical of such a venue, located near a mainline station, with hundreds of lockers, more than 30 cubicles, lots of TV screens showing porn, two steam rooms, two dry-heat saunas, darkrooms, a jacuzzi and a café-sitting area.

It attracts a big range of people including local regulars, visiting or passing out-of-towners, lots ofoccasional users, with age ranges from late teens to 60s and older, most being in their 30s and 40s. Over the years, I’ve met business execs, students, teachers, cab drivers, lawyers, doctors, barmen, waiters, off-duty prostitutes and no doubt, without knowing it, off-duty policemen.

The message is clear: to maximise your chances of meeting your Mr Right, you need to go somewhere that gets busy. 

If you have a choice, avoid places which have an unreliable turnout or one where there is a poor turnover of customers. It’s a very inefficient way of trying to find a Mr Right because you’re dealing with a much smaller pool of possible contacts. 

The statistics of bathhouses

Imagine a typical big-city bathhouse, with around 200 lockers open midday-midnight, with peak usage between 5pm and 11pm. Taking into account that it’ll rarely reach full capacity with people queuing outside, being there during the busiest period means there’ll be at least 150 men in the different bathhouse areas. And this assumes that there isn’t any customer turnover in that period, which often there is.

Now imagine each of these people having two or three encounters on average during their visit. That’s 300-450 sexual contacts - a nightmare for public health officials trying to control the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) but a real blessing to someone who knows about safer sex and wants to meet someone special in a fun way.

It’s a bit like being given the chance to taste lots of different cakes before committing to one as a favourite.

Personal experience

Apart from 1992-95, when I was in a monogamous relationship, between 1983 and 2005 I went to bathhouses on average 20 times a year, each visit featuring maybe three sexual contacts. Thus, the total tally of all my bathhouse sexual encounters over the years comes to:

(22-3) x 20 x3 = 1,140 contacts over 19 years.

From this quite huge figure, I met one Mr Almost Right and one Mr Right, which would indicate a pretty poor success rate. 

But the fact is until my late 30s, I wasn’t interested in meeting Mr Right: I was only interested in meeting Mr Right Now. And that’s exactly who crossed my path – on average 60 times a year.

So in reality I was very successful at meeting sexy men for one-off fun with a near 100% success rate for each and every bathhouse visit.

Once I decided I wanted a relationship and changed my focus on what I was looking for, I now see I actually met quite a few potential Mr Rights. Until I met the right one for me, unsurprisingly, things just didn’t work out. But thanks to my technique at making high-quality contacts, I got lots of experience, over many years, at discovering what I really wanted - and didn’t want - in a partner, so that when I did eventually meet him, he might as well have had a sign stuck to his head, reading ‘I’m the one’. 

So the process is in fact quite simple:

1. Fish in crowded waters
2. Enjoy your catch
3. Commit if he ticks your boxes, or go back to step 1 if your catch doesn’t inspire you
4. Repeat steps 1-3 if things didn’t work out until they do.

It’s very important in all this to remember that for the vast majority of us success is about practice, learning from sometimes painful mistakes, and persistence.

Giving up is not an option!

When to go

It might seem obvious but turning up an hour before closing time is probably a bad strategy for meeting someone. Most people would’ve had their fill, or they’ll be leaving just as you arrive, and the pick of the crop is probably long gone. If possible, get to know the ebb and flow of customer traffic of your chosen bathhouse.

Otherwise you can fall back on the rule of thumb that the best times to go are from late afternoon to 10pm weekdays after people finish work; on Fridays, customers tend to leave later because many won’t be working over the weekend; Saturdays, they probably arrive earlier and stay longer; and the same on Sundays, except that many will leave earlier because of work on Monday. It’s not foolproof, but it’s worked for me.

For 24-hour or all-night bathhouses, peak times are between 9pm and 4am. Here, the type of customer profile will change depending on the time. Also, there’ll often be a mini-rush of people when nightclubs and bars shut.

Different bathhouse areas

Different parts of a typical bathhouse provide different chances of making a contact:

The cloakroom
This might seem a good place to start and, while you’re undressing, someone interesting might catch your fancy. But in truth whoever you see here is just the tip of the iceberg. My advice is, move on to the heart of the action and don’t linger.

The shower area
This space is much more erotic. People are naked, soaping themselves down. On the plus side, it’s easy to see if you turn someone on and you may see other people who arrived at the same time as you. Also, if you’re having a shower after you’ve had sex and cum, your penis can look a bit fuller and more impressive - good for attracting more action later. On the minus side, that attractive man showering might be washing himself down after a tryst of his own and, there and then, may not be immediately physically able or willing to respond. Plus, you’ll only see a handful of men here - another tip of the iceberg situation, but you never know.

The bar/lounge/TV room
In this space, you can just as easily find men who just want to quench their thirst after a sexual encounter or a spell in the sauna as other who fancy chatting. This is also where someone who wants more than a quickie would be attracted to and where you’d strike up a conversation easily.

The dry heat sauna
It gets hot here - up to 80C (176F). People can’t normally bear it for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. You sweat hard and men are sitting next to each other on benches. Eyes notice, hands move around a bit, legs flop apart suggestively, thighs touch. A good place to attract and make first contact, but a bad place to stay for too long - unless you’re a camel. 

The steam room
This is a really easy place to make contact and have sex in. It’s not as hot as the sauna and so is a much more bearable place to spend longer periods. It’s also often bigger so you can walk around rather than just sit. Plus, there’s the erotic allure of the curtain of misty steam and the dim lighting. What does the face of that handsome shape coming towards me look like? What kind of kisser is he? How well hung is he? But the real clincher is that because the heat is wet, towels are left on hooks by the door and, as anyone will tell you, it’s not hard to guess what someone wants when his cock is pointing at you. It’s all very easy, and totally nonverbal, with people coming in and out more or less constantly.

The cubicles and surrounding corridors
Head here for a more intimate time, where privacy is possible because you can shut the cubicle door. Some of the men are inside with door open waiting to be chosen, with others walking around and checking them out. Often the layout is circular. There are probably more men here than in the steam room but people are pickier because they can see more. This can be used to your advantage, so be bold. At peak times it’s not unusual for all the cubicles to be occupied. 

The darkroom
A darkroom is exactly what the name implies, although there’s often a teeny bit of light. It’s pot luck who you’ll end up with, but sex is virtually guaranteed. To any naysayer I point out that a very good friend of mine met his partner of 28 years in a darkroom. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because gay men meet other gay men where gay men go, and lots of them are looking for partners.

Childish and childlike behaviours
One way to look at bathhouses is to see them as somewhere you can meet ‘gay men at play’. Of course they’re about sex, but in the most general sense of the word, they’re also about ‘play’. 

Playing speaks to the part of us that’s a child. It’s the part that can be ‘childlike’ - enthusiastic, giving and full of energy - and most importantly enjoys having fun. But it’s also the part of us that can be ‘childish’ - impatient, reckless, and greedy.

Naturally, gay men at play in bathhouses often display these two types of behaviour, and will switch between the two. If anything, feeling childlike makes the switch to acting childishly even easier. So if you can recognise the signs of these behaviours, you can save yourself a lot of time and energy.

Here’s why:

• It will help you not to respond childishly to childish behaviour:

Example 1: You enthusiastically approach an attractive man with a wide, open smile only to be rebuffed (in the buff). You naturally feel rejected and become sulky. This is exactly the wrong response to rejection in a bathhouse. We all like to be liked, but people don’t go to these places to be liked, they go there to have sex. So if you keep getting rejected, you need to look at your technique, not sulk hoping someone will take pity on you.

Example 2: You’re having a wild old time with a handsome man and you’re both really turned on. The sex is moving towards penetration but he clearly hasn’t got a condom on as he lies on your back, kissing your neck and rubbing himself against you. He starts to insert himself into you and you let him carry on because you think to yourself one of two things:

Either:

He must be HIV-negative, like me. No-one would be so thoughtless as to have unprotected sex without a condom if they were HIV-positive.

Or: 

He must be HIV-positive, like me. No-one would be so stupid as to have unprotected sex in a bathhouse with a complete stranger if they were HIV-negative.

In fact, studies of sexual behaviour of gay men in bathhouses have shown that the HIV-positive ones tend to assume that many of the other customers will be HIV-positive like them - and then not use condoms, while the HIV-negative and untested ones in the same place will often assume most of same people will be HIV-negative like them - and then not use condoms.

The only way to make sure that you don’t risk HIV infection when you have sex in bathhouses is to always use a condom.

• It will help you to recognise people who behave well:

Example 1: You’re back in a cubicle with the same sexy man who’s kissing your back and rubbing himself against your butt, so you know that penetration is the next thing that’s going to happen. He stops and puts a condom on, or if the roles are reversed, he gives you one. Bingo! Here’s an intelligent person who knows that when you have sex with strangers in bathhouses you should always use condoms, even if it breaks the mood or makes things a bit awkward for a few moments. Better that than pass on or catch an STI. Chances are this person is equally responsible in other areas of their lives.

Example 2: You have a great time with a lovely man and, apart from the sex, you also have some nice conversation. He gets your contact details and says he’ll call you. He calls you. This is a sign of good behaviour. What tends to happen is you meet someone, you have a great time together, they say they’ll call, but don’t. Often in life, people do not honour their commitments, so if you meet someone who seems to do so, they’re really worth getting to know. And if a friendship rather than a relationship develops, at least you’ll know he won’t be late for arrangements.

Example 3: You start getting it on with a man who turns you on. The urge for sex seems to have worn off and he says he wants to take a shower and fancies a coffee. He offers to buy you a drink. Most people in bathhouses are only interested in their next trick. So when someone demonstrates interest in you beyond your body, see this as a good sign. It means the communication between the two of you has a chance of moving to another level.

Also, being myself a total sucker for good manners - hospitality to the stranger in this case - I’d find this situation quite promising.

But don’t get too excited about this scenario. A coffee is just a coffee; he’s not asking you to sign up to a 25-year joint mortgage. That said, who knows where a fifteen-minute chat with a well-mannered stranger might lead?

For me, I was always looking for someone who could communicate like an adult and be playful like a child at the same time.

What about you? 

Past sexual encounters

Thinking of highly enjoyable encounters you’ve had in the past, name three things…

a) … that you liked about the setting:
1.
2.
3.

b) … that the men had in common:
1.
2.
3.

c) … that you liked about the sex you had:
1.
2.
3.

Doing what comes naturally

The straight world often pooh-poohs places like bathhouses. It’s not natural, they say. What a load of rubbish! It’s not only natural but also a site of normal human behaviour for gay men.

As human beings, it’s in our very genetic makeup to seek attachments and to want to bond. Without attachments and bonding with people who are similar to ourselves, we would go mad. And if babies don’t feel this sense of attachment more or less constantly, they cry louder than road-digging equipment. Our anxiety around being alone is rooted in an infant’s very real fear of abandonment and we carry this around with us like an invisible passport all our lives. 

Social networks, clubs and association, team sports, families - all these groups speak to our need to form attachments and bond with similar people. Few people would disagree with the idea that a life without love is indeed a sad and empty life. Attachments and bonding give our life meaning and they are very worthy and healthy goals. Anyone who says otherwise is at best mistaken and at worst cruel.

The straight world also criticises gay men for being promiscuous. Wrong again. The innate drive to ensure that our genes will be passed on to future generations is at a basic level the driver of all sexual behaviour. It doesn’t matter if someone’s gay and may never have children. These basic building blocks of what it is to be human are within us all and men, who produce millions of sperm a day (as opposed to women who produce only one ovum a month), are by nature prone to the machinegun approach to ensuring their long-term genetic survival. No wonder therefore that gay men have lots of sex with each other; they are behaving like men. Indeed, for men, the word ‘slag’ isn’t a noun; it’s a verb. 

So rather than taking on all the negative bullshit the straight world throws at us gay men, my advice is to glory in the biology of our sexuality and our gender - a powerful expression of which is gay sex.

Key points on marking the statistics work for you

• Go at busy times
• Know your Mr Right is within a pool of Mr Right Nows
• Steam rooms are great for making first contact
• Always use condoms
• Keep your eyes open for good behaviour
• Be bold and persistent

 Find Love in a Gay Bathhouse is available in print and ebook format here.