User:Ash/List of gay bathhouse regulars

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This is a referenced and annotated list of notable people for which reliable sources exist documenting their use of Gay bathhouses. People who are simply rumoured to been to a gay bathhouse are not included.

Contents

[edit] Gay bathhouse regulars

Charles Demuth Bathhouse and Self-Portrait (1918)
Truman Capote
The American writer Truman Capote (1924–1984) was a regular at the baths in the 1970s and in particular the sauna at West 58th Street.[1]
Scott Capurro
The comedian, actor and writer Scott Capurro (1962) is based in San Francisco and London. His comedy material often refers to his experience of gay life and culture.

How about that gay sauna in east London? I've gotten scabies there ... three times! And no, before you ask, it wasn't worth it.

Scott Capurro, Time Out, February 13, 2008

Charles Demuth
American precisionist painter Charles Demuth (1883-1935) used the Lafayette Baths as his favourite haunt. His 1918 homoerotic self portrait set in a Turkish Bathhouse is likely to be set there.[2]
Charles Griffes
The American composer Charles Griffes (1884-1920) wrote in his diaries about his gay life including visits to the New York bathhouses and the YMCA. His biography states: So great was his need to be with boys, that though his home contained two pianos, he chose to practice at an instrument at the Y, and his favorite time was when the players were coming and going from their games.[3]

When a friend with “little experience but great desire” confided his homosexual longings to Charles Griffes in 1916, Griffes took him to the Lafayette so that he could meet other gay men and explore his sexual interests in a supportive environment: the friend was “astounded and fascinated” by what he saw there. The baths also encouraged more advanced forms of sexual experimentation. Griffes himself had had his first encounter with a man interested in sadomasochism at the Lafayette two years earlier (he found the man “interesting” but the experience unappealing), and several men interviewed in the mid-1930s referred to experimenting in the baths and learning of new pleasures.[4]

George Chauncey, Gay New York 1995

Portrait of Mikhail Kuzmin by Konstantin Somov (1909)
Justin Fashanu
The first openly gay British footballer Justin Fashanu (1961–1998) spent his last night in Chariots Roman Spa. His suicide was due to press reports that the US authorities were planning to extradite him and charge him with sexual assault (there was in fact no warrant). His suicide note claimed that the sexual encounter had been consensual and that the youth contacted police only after Fashanu refused to pay him blackmail.[5][6][7]
Michel Foucault
The influential 20th century French Philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) visited bathhouses in California in the 1970s. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1984.[8]
Rock Hudson
American film and television actor Rock Hudson (1925–1985). Hudson was one of the first major Hollywood celebrities to die from AIDS related causes.[9]
Mikhail Kuzmin
Russian poet, novelist and composer Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) is known to have patronized bathhouses. Some of the bathhouses in St. Petersburg at the time became known as friendly to gay men and provided "attendants," who might provide sexual services for a fee. In his diary, Kuzmin writes of one bathhouse visit: the evening I had the urge to go to a bathhouse simply to be stylish, for the fun of it, for cleanliness.[10]
Harvey Milk
The openly gay American politician Harvey Milk (1930-1978) vowed to stop visiting gay bathhouses when he ran for supervisor in 1975.[11]
Rudolf Nureyev
The Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993) was known to frequent the baths in New York.[1]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b (Kaiser, 1997)
  2. ^ (Miller, 1995) page 143
  3. ^ (Gustav-Wrathall, 1998)
  4. ^ (Chauncey, 1995)
  5. ^ Powell, Vicky (June 1998). "Suicide note increases speculation over death of Justin Fashanu". Gay Times (Millivres) (237). 
  6. ^ Dominic Kennedy (May 4, 1998). "Fashanu's final happy hours in a gay club". The Times. "Mr Fashanu was at Chariots' Roman Spa, a male bathhouse, from 3pm to 7pm on Friday. The all-night health club charges Pounds 12 for entry and is popular with businessmen and visitors from the Continent. Mr Fashanu, a newcomer, was seen in the sauna area... At noon on Saturday, police were called by a passer-by to the railway arches in Fairchild Place where they found the footballer's body, apparently hanged. A post-mortem examination is believed to have blamed death on strangulation by hanging." 
  7. ^ King, Steve (May 4, 1998). "Fash fled US cops, spent 4 hours in gay sauna, then hanged himself". The Mirror (London). p. 1. "Fashanu, 36, had a sauna in London's Chariots Roman Spa club before crossing the road to the lock-up where his body was found hanging from a rope ... He was also known to visit a gay sauna in St Stephen Street, in the Stockbridge area of the city - although, like the bars, this has also closed." 
  8. ^ James Miller (1993). The Passion of Michel Foucault. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-255267-1. 
  9. ^ John Carlyle, Robert Osborne, Chris Freeman (2006), Under the Rainbow, Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0786718536  "[Rock Hudson] nursed many a hangover in the Hollywood bathhouses. He chose Craig and me to be his confidants when he had crabs, that niggling hazard of promiscuity (before the penalty became life-threatening)."
  10. ^ (Aldrich, 2000)
  11. ^ John Patterson (2008-12-06). "If I'm Killed, Let That Bullet Destroy Every Closet Door". The Guardian (London). p. 62. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/06/harvey-milk. 

[edit] References

[edit] See also

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