Bodies of Evidence, Gay advocates disagree about the dangers of bathhouses.(warning graphic text)

A tour of Club Body Center includes a trip downstairs, where David D'Amico hopes to create an orgy room out of a currently unused pool, and a stop in the laundry room, where high-tech computer-driven washers dispense just the right amount of detergent to keep sheets sanitary and costs low. "You find all kinds of things on these sheets," he says, lowering his voice. "Blood. Feces. It's all part of the business."

D'Amico spends more time with the business now than ever. For years Philadelphia's last gay bathhouse was presided over by a manager who reported to unseen owners. But D'Amico, 45, took a hands-on role at Club Body Center about six months ago, after he began hearing what he calls unpleasant "buzz."

In June PW printed an article in which local men claimed they could buy crystal meth from dealers inside the bathhouse. Federal prosecutor Tom Hogan even said the feds had rigged the place, a nondescript row home in the 1200 block of Chancellor Street, with hidden video cameras, hoping to record meth use.

D'Amico reacted to the PW story angrily at first. He flew to Philadelphia believing the reports weren't true. But then he started asking questions, and he soon saw the problem. "I kicked three people out for dealing drugs," he says. "I told them they weren't welcome."

Whether D'Amico can eradicate drugs from the property remains an open question. Local addiction and mental health therapist Albert Luciano says his clients say they can still score meth at Club Body. D'Amico says vigilance will be ongoing and that he's clearly needed onsite.

Bathhouses have received much attention in recent months, and the reason is crystal meth. National Public Radio sent a reporter into a bathhouse for a story on meth use, and interviewed D'Amico at a Club Body Center in Miami. Well-known activist Peter Staley caused a huge stir in New York's gay community by exposing the amount of unprotected sex, fueled by crystal, happening in that city's bathhouses. And Philadelphia's Jay Dagenhart, who appeared on PW's cover in February, recently taped an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show (scheduled to air next week), where he discussed the nexus between crystal use, the bathhouse and increased incidence of HIV.

During his own meth addiction Dagenhart spent entire weekends at bathhouses in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and New York City. By the time he came down, he was HIV-positive.

D'Amico had heard stories like Dagenhart's before but acted only after he realized the drug could threaten his business. "People can still get this drug in many other places," he says. "But I have to protect my interests."

Open the nondescript row house door, sign in at the counter and present ID. The man behind the counter hands over a key, a towel and a condom. Room 453, he says.

The downstairs area is outfitted like a tropical resort, with deck chairs and bright colors. The upstairs is dark and utilitarian, a plywood cave. The steps leading upstairs are narrow. And the private room is no bigger than a prison cell. An average-sized man could stretch his arms and span its width. The mirror across from the bed bears a single footprint where someone fought to gain traction. An empty condom wrapper lies on the floor.

The lighting is low, and the bed is a thin, plastic-coated mattress mounted on a wooden platform. The room's front wall, which incorporates the door, is only about three-quarters high. So conversation and the sounds of men having sex occasionally drift in. But the club music from the sound system drowns out most everything except the heavy footfalls that pass in the hallway outside the door. Those steps indicate someone is doing the bathhouse shuffle-a slow walk past the private rooms, looking for someone to hook up with.

The basic rules are fairly easy to divine: Men wear only towels for the most part, though a few add baseball caps or flip-flops. They either amble through the darkened halls prowling for a sex partner, or sit in their own room with the door open. Some men lie on their stomachs, advertising themselves as "bottoms" or receivers for anal sex. Others sit up in bed as an invitation to those who walk past.

Rest area: The Center's downstairs is decorated like a resort. The fourth floor includes a communal room where men watch porn from low-slung black benches. Some carry tubes of lubricant with them or bottles of amyl nitrate, which they inhale to enhance their orgasms. They ejaculate freely on the floor.

Hookups happen quickly. A man pokes his head into a room. A few mumbled words are exchanged. He steps all the way inside. The door closes.

In the halls men walk past, making eye contact if they're interested. They raise their eyebrows as they slide by, careful not to touch. Turn to watch them go, and they look over a shoulder, motioning with their head to be followed.

The setup includes a lot of room for rejection. Men make unwanted passes at each other and move on, some of them failing to find a partner all night long.

In many respects David D'Amico might be just what Club Body Center needs. He's a stocky, constantly smiling man from Buffalo, N.Y., who calls other men "baby" and talks as straight-forwardly as a finger-poke to the chest. "Things were slipping here," he says. "The managers are fine, but sometimes a place needs attention from the owner."

D'Amico ended up working in bathhouses by accident. His first love was the piano, and he spent many years playing and singing on cruise ships. But then he met Jack W. Campbell, a pioneer of bathhouses in the '60s and Club Body Center co-owner. "It wasn't out of any love of bathhouses that I started doing this," says D'Amico. "Jack needed some help running the business, and it just seemed like something I should get involved in."

Through Campbell, D'Amico is familiar with bathhouse history. Bathhouses were once like nightclubs. Bette Midler's career first took off in New York's gay community because of her bathhouse popularity. For years bathhouses stood as the one place gay men could go and be themselves. As a result, criticism of the bathhouse and its culture sounds to many gay men like an assault on their civil rights.

"The bathhouse is a uniquely gay institution, and I understand why people are fascinated by this dark, mysterious place where sex goes on so openly," says Kelly Groves, co-chair of Liberty City Democrats, a group that promotes political power for gays and lesbians in Philadelphia. "But the bathhouse is not a big part of our community the way it would've been in the '70s. Is it our dirty little secret? Maybe. As a gay activist, I think we should make sure these places are safe and well-monitored-and I also support their right to exist."

New York activist Peter Staley thinks bathhouses should supply 24-hour confidential STD testing services as a condition of doing business.

The most outspoken critic may be sex advice columnist Dan Savage, whose syndicated column appears in this paper. Says Savage: "My basic position is that if they traced as much disease to a Denny's as they can to a bathhouse, it would be closed in half an hour."

Savage says bathhouse closings in the wake of AIDS produced a backlash from health professionals. "There's a lingering fear they'll be perceived as homophobic if they do anything about bathhouses," says Savage. "So they send the gay community only messages the gay community will accept. But we also need to be told things we don't want to hear: Bathhouses facilitate a kind of sexual conduct we know is destructive and unhealthy and acts as a kind of lawn sprinkler shooting disease all over a community." (For more of the columnist's thoughts on bathhouses, see "Savage Talk," right.)

Nurit Shein, executive director of Mazzoni Center, and David Acosta of the city's AIDS department, both believe Philly's sole remaining bathhouse should stay open. And a study the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services conducted recently suggested that men who frequent bathhouses are cautious about what they do there.

"What we found is that men who attend bathhouses engage in riskier behavior elsewhere," says epidemiologist Trista Bingham. "Men who sought HIV testing in the bathhouse may behave more conservatively than they do when they have sex with someone in a private home, precisely because they're afraid of the amount of disease in the bathhouse."

D'Amico says the new computer system he installed for tracking members at Club Body Center indicates that 3,000 different men visited the club in the three months after it was installed. D'Amico says he's making improvements to turn Club Body into more of a gathering place.

In an attempt to rid the club of drug dealers, he's enforced random bag checks, and has made the downstairs lounge available to the Philadelphia Crystal Meth Task Force, co-founded by Jay Dagenhart and Michael DiPilla, as a distribution point for antidrug literature.

D'Amico has also replaced the carpets, repainted areas of the club, started cooking free outdoor lunches on the patio deck in summer, and outlawed smoking and chewing gum upstairs-which he says made the place seem cheaper and dirtier. He also plans to reinstitute pizza and movie nights, all in an effort to make the bathhouse a place for more than just hooking up. And that may be precisely what's needed.

"If the bathhouse is willing to work with us and allow us to do outreach, that's great," says Dagenhart. "If they're going to remove the drug dealers and keep them out, if they continue to be proactive on education and awareness-then great. But if they aren't going to be proactive about the obvious issues we face, then I wonder what the purpose is."

"D'Amico has also replaced the carpets,....................... and outlawed smoking and chewing gum upstairs-which he says made the place seem cheaper and dirtier."

I think we see the perfect example of being so Blind to your own sin that they never notice how crazy the above quote sounds in the context of a bath house. What is he afraid of... second hand smoke might kill his customers? Or that someone might step on someones gum with bare feet on the way to chewing someones fecal matter? ( sorry folks but yes they do)

From the end of the article

"I'm sorry," says Savage, "but it's simply not healthy to suck a million ****. If you walk up to a gay man and hand him half a sandwich that's been lying on the ground, he'll refuse to eat it. But a guy in a bathhouse will happily suck on a **** that's been in 30 other mouths-and that's a prescription for oral gonorrhea. Some gay men are missing a healthy sense of cooties. And a bathhouse is a cootie factory." (S.V.)

Edited for the queasy

Like other posters have said. They have a death wish.

Don't forget AIDS is all Ronald Reagans fault < /sar >

"circle jerks..."

Circle jerks? I didn't see that in the article. I must admit I could have missed it. I didn't give it a thorough reading. However, you just dated yourself Chuzzlewit. I haven't heard that term since the '60s.

I want to scowl whenever I hear a touchy feely plea for more research funds for AIDS (which gets millions more anyways than other critical diseases). These people continue to act in self-destructive ways and then whine because the mean ol' Republicans won't give them more to cure them.

Even if they don't get aids, I can only imagine the damage they are doing to their rectal area. I'm sure alot have bowel incontinence earlier.

Says Savage: "My basic position is that if they traced as much disease to a Denny's as they can to a bathhouse, it would be closed in half an hour."

This, BTW, from the fellow who joked about licking a doorknob to give Republicans the flu...but he's right. Other gay activists such as Larry Kramer have said so from the beginning. For doing so they are widely shunned by the "community."

This isn't even about homosexuality per se, it's about suicidally selfish behavior that is protected by political correctness, and a community of men who have grown accustomed to a limitless, responsibility-free promiscuity that kills, and an endless insistence that somebody else is to blame for not "doing enough" about it. Bathhouse sex is utterly insane.

But one can see the difficulty that infection vector tracking would have in the world of multiple anonymous encounters every evening - it would be impossible. And it may not be obvious just how explosively infectious this environment is until you've actually seen the math involved. Bathhouses aren't just cauldrons for STD's, they're cauldrons for ALL infectious diseases. Insane.

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