Nick Adams

The steam coated my skin, condensation sticking to my warm, naked flesh. It filled my nostrils, tendrils creeping up from the slimy tiled floor. I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, but it made no difference—I remained slimy from head to bare toe. The towel wrapped tightly around my waist offered little respite as I roamed the dimly lit space, guided by a weak grey light that struggled to pierce the ever present wet fog.

How could I be so lost?

It had been years, perhaps decades, since I’d been in an establishment like this. I was above it, after all. I had Joe, why would I need to plumb the depths of somewhere like this to find connection; limbs fumbling in the dark, the faint smell of shit and amyl in the air. But then, one day, much sooner than I’d ever expected, I didn’t have Joe anymore. He was gone, lost behind a veil I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) cross, and I was left to face the next twenty, thirty (maybe even forty?) years of life alone. The concept made my heart race for hours at night until it settled, leaving behind a feeling of lead in my stomach.

My friends were supportive at first, but it didn’t take long for them to suggest I move on. I couldn’t blame them, not really. I’d never been good at dealing with tears or with emotions, constantly doing my best to deflect. Joe always told me that, and it drove me crazy that I knew he was right. Soon enough, their soft suggestions turned to them begging me to try new things, to remember what life was like before him. You have so many years ahead of you, they said. I wasn’t so sure about that. I didn’t know if I wanted that at all.

Still, I listened. I wasn’t always stubborn.

It started small; dinners, drinks, gallery visits, but they wouldn’t relent. Soon it was back to the bars, the clubs—but I was much too old for this. Wasn’t I? I thought I had put this behind me years ago. My stubble had long turned from salt and pepper to silver. They told me the boys would love that. David told me that I was ‘daddy’, and that ‘daddies’ were in. But I had only wanted one boy to love me and he wasn’t here anymore. After months of pushing, and months of loneliness, I decided to place my faith in David and follow him into a different type of darkness.

***

As we arrived, David could sense I was nervous. His advice was to ‘stop being such a baby’, that this was ‘perfectly normal’ and that there was ‘nothing to be afraid of’.

Then why did I feel so on edge?

Knowing they would fog up immediately, I left my glasses along with my clothes in the small locker I was assigned upon entry. The key attached to an elastic band that dangled around my thin wrist, bobbing in time to my deliberate steps on the slippery tiles. Without 20/20 vision and in the feeble light, it appeared as if I was in a dream. Hard edges and defined details were gone, replaced with softly blurred bodies, each person saved from my full judgement. Their attractiveness remained a distinct possibility until the very last moment when my eyes could comprehend them up close.

I wandered next to the pool, next to David, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It had been a long time since I had shown off my body like this and I didn’t like how it drooped awkwardly in places it never used to droop, how the muscles I had once been so proud of were now taking refuge beneath ever softening tissue. David seemed nonplussed, proud even, to show off his own stocky body. The years had not been kind to him; his large stomach hung low over his towel and I wondered what the young, slim boy he used to look like would think of him now.

‘There’s no talent down here,’ he said after quickly scanning the room, judging the cohort of naked pink men bobbing in the fluorescent blue water. ‘I’m going to head upstairs.’

‘Wait—what about me?’ Panic suddenly overtook my body as I realised I would be doing this alone.

‘You’ll be right.’ He patted me on a bony shoulder. ‘I’ll see you up there, daddy.’

Before I could protest further, he was gone, waddling away behind me into the dark to find some hot young thing who didn’t mind a bit of old dick. I was companionless, just me and my towel versus the world.

***

Standing there unescorted by the shining water, I felt eyes on me from all directions as I struggled to find my bearings. I glanced from man to man, trying to see whose eyes were taking in my body, yet I saw no one gazing at me. In fact, everyone seemed to be making a deliberate attempt not to look at me, as if I was some repulsive old man that had wandered into their exclusive club. I remembered when I was their age and the disdain I had for the old men who wandered saunas like this, their gangly wrinkled bodies lumbering in the dark like zombies. Then why could I sense eyes on me from somewhere, boring into my pale skin, right at the back of my neck? I turned to look and spied a man in the distance, or at least the muddied shape of a man. Even this far away, he was so familiar… I rubbed my eyes in a futile attempt to improve my failing vision but he was gone, disappeared into the gloom. The hairs on my arms stood on end, reaching for the ceiling.

***

David had told me the rules of this establishment on our way here together, crammed into the backseat of a black Honda Civic.  

‘Downstairs is the pool and the bar. Strictly no fucking.’

‘Uh huh.’ I tried not to roll my eyes at him treating me like some baby gay. I was almost sixty years old, Jesus Christ. This wasn’t exactly my first rodeo.

‘Upstairs, that’s where the real action is. Oh, and the steam room.’ He laughed, a deep booming laugh that embarrassed me in the back seat of the Uber. I didn’t like talking about these kinds of things in front of strangers.

***

In the steam room, the world was a soft neon blur. Tiled walls had been erected as a maze that in normal circumstances would be easy to navigate, but in the almost-dark and through the thick steam, felt like it had been built to confuse a very clever minotaur. My mind wandered in the hazy air—did I even want to be here? To get fucked? I wasn’t sure but, still, I kept my eyes open, looking for someone who was willing to give an old man a go. I knew deep down that I would do anything to eradicate the loneliness running through my veins.

I pressed my hand against the dripping walls to remind myself to stay tethered, and if I was being honest, to help keep my balance on the wet floor. I squinted through the dampness, guided by the soft sounds of sucking and the rhythmic pulsing of someone, or someones, getting fucked.

Each corner I turned I expected to stumble across a scene out of a porno, a thriving orgy that perhaps may invite me to join them. Yet, as I stumbled my way forwards, each corner yielded nothing. No sex. In fact, no men at all.

I couldn’t understand where all of the action was, where these sounds were coming from. All I could hear were my own footsteps beneath me. Until they were joined by another set, slowly padding their way towards me across the squelchy floor, sounding like a swamp creature.

At least I wouldn’t be alone.

But as I turned to glimpse a potential hook-up, there was nobody there. Just a cloud of steam floating through an empty corridor. Unless… I squinted, trying to make out a figure through the grey veil. The outline of a man stood there, watching me. Dumbly, I lifted my hand to wave.

After a moment, the figure did the same.

A sudden tap on my shoulder behind me almost sent me jumping out of my skin. I slipped and fell to the ground like the stupid old man that I was. Groaning, I hoped that some young thing would appear from the darkness and take pity on me. Yet still, there was no one. I tried to orient myself upwards, but as I moved my creaking bones I felt a cold breath on my neck, an icy contrast to the warm, wet air.

‘Why are you here?’

It was barely a whisper, muffled as if coming through a vent or a rotary telephone.

My body jolted alive and I yelled, ‘Get away!’ and despite my age, put myself back on my feet in a matter of seconds. I blinked and steadied myself to find I was surrounded by naked gentlemen, a collection of bodies swaying like trees in the mist.

‘Are you okay, man?’ a lithe young thing asked.

‘People need to understand consent,’ said a middle-aged man standing next to him, putting his arm on my unsteady shoulder.

After a second I was able to stammer, ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

‘If you’re sure…’ The young man again.

I nodded, indicating for them to leave me be. I was getting out of here. Whatever need I had to secure myself a good time with another man had evaporated from my body.

***

David was nowhere to be found.

Upstairs was even more of a maze; narrow hallways connecting in the crimson light, a parade of black doors littering each one. Outside of each, men stood. Their stares imposing, statuesque, yet none of them stared at me. Again, I was ignored. Avoided even. As if I shouldn’t be in this place, and I was starting to agree with them.

I wasn’t ready for this, for whatever this was becoming. Maybe in another few months. Or years. Maybe this wasn’t my scene anymore. I was too old, too weathered. My skin wouldn’t stop prickling and neither would the sense that no one yet someone was looking at me. 

I lapped the halls several times, yet David was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he’d already gone home and left me here. It wouldn’t be the first time; he once left me in a field following a music festival in the ‘80s. I was stuck there in the middle of nowhere, covered in dirt with our tent and Esky; the prick forgot he was driving me home. Although, no sign of David meant that I was now free to leave on my own, I reasoned. It was just a matter of finding the exit.

I turned right, then left, then right and then… I was back to where I started?

My bare feet carried me forward down another hallway. The further I went, the more intense the light became. It had started soft and weak, but now I was reminded of developing photos in a high school darkroom. Red drenched everything and each man I saw was no exception, their pale muscles shining against the light, their white teeth flashing as they continued to look anywhere but at me.

Not knowing what to do, and knowing I could do nothing else but give up, I kept going, my pulse quickening with each step. This was ridiculous, I’ve just gotten myself turned around, I told myself.  But I knew something was wrong. My guts felt like lead. Even in those darkest first few days after Joe had gone, I’d never felt this alone, this desperate. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want to look crazy. The insane old man losing his mind in a gay sauna; I would never live it down.

Footsteps, again; behind me. They slowly approached, as if following me. I was too afraid to turn, so I stopped. They stopped too. My legs shaking—no—my whole bloody body shaking, I knew I needed to face whoever this was. On the spot, I twisted my torso to face them.

There was no one there. Literally. All of the men that had been guarding the doors to the private rooms, to their fuck fests, were gone. I was the only man alive.

My heart pounded as I realised that something was horribly wrong. Surely, this was a dream and that I would wake up soon. Hallways didn’t just shift and move, people didn’t just suddenly disappear… I must have hit my head when I fell, I told myself. I must be asleep—

A cool breath caressed my right ear: ‘Why are you here?’ the voice again, louder than a whisper this time.

I spun around to confront it. To face whoever, or whatever, was tormenting me.

His face wasn’t how I remembered. It was younger, much younger than the last time I had seen him. That last night, the night he should have stayed home. If only I had stopped him from leaving the house, but he said he needed air. Our fight wasn’t that serious though, was it? I couldn’t even remember what it was about. It didn’t matter now, it just mattered that it happened.

The truck—I would never understand how he didn’t see it. He was distracted, I supposed. Distracted by me, by us. Not watching where he was going, only to end up a red smear on the road.

His eyes were the same though. Deep green, ready for mischief.

‘Ah, now you can see me,’ he said smiling, his gaze drilling a hole into my wrinkled forehead. ‘I didn’t think you were that blind without your glasses.’

But, it couldn’t be him. That was ludicrous. He was gone. I’d always pictured him zooming around other dimensions after he died. I hoped he would move on from what we had, like I was trying to do.

I couldn’t speak. Words caught in my throat like razor blades.

‘You don’t need to say anything.’

Relief spread through me like warm water as he let me off the hook.

‘I know it’s weird to appear here of all places. I don’t know how these things work but I seem to have some kind of connection to this place. Do you remember when we were first dating?’

I did remember. How could I have forgotten? The nights we spent here swimming in the pool in those early days, forging new connections with a parade of fellas. It was all so long ago… Another lifetime.

‘I didn’t think you would ever come back to a place like this,’ he continued as he took my hand in his.

I was surprised by how warm it was as he led the way forward down the never-ending hallway. For a moment, it felt like it used to. When we were both so young and nothing scared us. Eventually, we stopped at one of the unmarked black doors and Joe pushed it open. He stepped inside the small room furnished with just a mattress and I followed behind him, stepping beyond the veil.

---

Nick Adams is an ex freelance journalist who has primarily written about queer culture and music for the past decade and a half, having been published by ABC, Junkee, SBS and a variety of forgotten music publications. He currently works in communications and puts together words for people who get paid much more than he does, while also teaching at RMIT University. He lives in Melbourne with his partner Scott and their dog Scully.

More bone-chilling stories await you… Return to Issue 4!