Fear of the public bath

  

So I was overcome by the desire to see a naked man somewhere. I walked near the beaches, waiting for the moment when they change clothes in the bushes. But it would seem that the easiest thing was to go to a public bath! And - no, I couldn’t, I was embarrassed to undress among the crowd of people, I can’t even say why I was embarrassed. Apparently, it was some kind of an insurmountable psychological barrier.

In our Suburb there were two baths, I went there  but only in shower cabins separated from one another by thick stone walls. I kept planning for myself the day when I would finally go to a public bath, but I put it off for many years. In enclosed showers, of course, it was dreary. Someone was washing behind the wall, spitting, smoking. Sometimes two men bathed, their loud conversations could be heard. At the bottom there was a drain, one for two cabins, a rather large hole, and, bending down, one could look into the neighboring cabin and sometimes see something. Once I bent low to the floor and saw a spectacle that shocked me: a young man was fucking a radiator!

There were also bathrooms, where the ticket cost more. Once, having taken a ticket to the bathroom, I went there, pulled the door handle, it was unlocked, and there, in the bath, lay a man, a court of hanging clothes, a serviceman judging by the clothes on the hanger. He said: “do come here, come, what's wrong with that! Women wash with each other, so you and I will wash". I was confused, didn't know how to react to this, and quickly stepped back, slamming the door. Afterwards I regretted for a long time that I did not dare to go in and wash with him in the same bathroom. I pictured in my mind what could have happened in this case ...

It also happened that in the evenings I stood outside to the unevenly plastered windows of the men’s section of the public bath and tried to look at the naked men through the gaps. My presence near the windows of the men's bath did not raise questions from anyone, because it was a men's bath. At the same time many were lurking on the other side, where there were windows of the women's bath. They were chased from there and shamed.