a they's own story: a Club Pittsburgh report

Because I write publicly about public sex and other faggot practices, friends and friends of friends who are curious but less experienced (or who believe themselves to be less experienced) often ask me how to behave at an adult bookstore and whether all-gender night at the bathhouse is really for everyone. While I do very much enjoy telling people what to do and acting like I know what I'm talking about, I still frequently feel uncertain about whether I really belong in cruising spaces or if I'm going about sex the right way at all, despite my research both experiential and historical. The other day I described this feeling to S, who when we first met impressed me with stories about sucking dick in Baltimore porn theaters when they were twenty, and who took me to my first adult bookstore a decade later. "Stop gatekeeping yourself, you faggot," they said.

The best thing about my insecurity is that it's productive. If I were so certain about my place in relationship to the fags and our sexual histories, I probably wouldn't feel the compulsion to write and publish this remarkably non-lucrative newsletter, now would I?

Which brings me to my point. Today I am totally thrilled to share SINKHOLE//GLORYHOLE's first guest post, an essay by my dear friend (and leather brother) Shoshana Packer. Last spring SP, who lives in the Hudson Valley, came to stay with me, and while they were here they visited Club Pittsburgh for the first time, then wrote about it for all of you. Their report will surely be of interest to other first-timers, but it's not so much tips and tricks (if that's what you're looking for, scroll to the bottom for an archival guide) as gonzo journalism, or maybe gonzo pornography. And if there's any lesson, maybe it's that there's no right way to do it, but that you simply have to try. (Stop gatekeeping yourself, you faggot.) Anyway this newsletter has been rather more sinkhole than gloryhole lately, an imbalance which it's time to rectify.

On a rainy Thursday, I’m out and about in Pittsburgh, where a growing clutch of my friends and lovers live. I’ve started to get to know the place and how to be in it; I visit a couple of times a year to see my beloveds and to feel what a good city feels like. I’ve heard from them over and over about the local gay bathhouse. There, Thursday is “all-gender night,” the only one when I’d be expressly “allowed” at the bathhouse with my body in its current state. This is part of why I’m interested in going in the first place: bathhouse or sauna spaces are generally devoted to men and men only. I’ve read about some sex clubs, primarily for swinger couples, that let in “single women.” That’s not exactly what I am, but it is sometimes what I look like, and for the sake of playing, I’m willing to play along.

In approaching the bathhouse, I consider my own sexual ethos, and my perspective as a visitor. I think of Sex and the City’s straight woman protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who calls herself a “sexual anthropologist.” This is, of course, problematic for several reasons, but I think particularly because Carrie doesn’t seem to have much sex at all. The sex Carrie does have is limited in scope and creativity (I have never forgiven her for passing up the opportunity to piss on a hot politician). Perhaps there is a reason Carrie writes mostly about herself, and about relationships—I do sometimes question if there’s really so much to say about sex itself, the act itself (what act is it?). I am credited with suggesting to a nervous lover that “sex is just something to do,” as if there were nothing more to say, no reason to worry. But then again, here I am, typing, gossiping, collecting up all the little variables that align to make the sex happen. Carefully cataloging everything right up until the act itself, whatever act it may be. Going to the bathhouse, where sex is (just?) something to do.

It’s about 1 am when I arrive. I park on the street, around the corner from the
bathhouse’s entrance. There’s a very grey Amtrak station and nobody around. There are buildings that seem tall because their context contains mostly short ones. The night is misty, and warm for March. To get into Club Pittsburgh, you must pass through a bare first-floor lobby. The whole process of entry feels like a question, like pawing around for a doorway in the dark. I find the elevator on the far end of the empty space (what else even is in this building?) and push the labeled button. I think of the Chinatown dungeon that my Daddy frequents in
New York, how the nearest landmark to put into Google Maps is the Canal Street McDonald’s, how the lobby is similarly nondescript. But then, if you press the right button, you are delivered to a secret. A secret you have to know in order to even know the place exists, let alone to enter.

This elevator, too, offers me a new universe. Not to be dramatic, but when the doors open, the air is literally different. Redolent of chlorine, like the sickly heavy atmosphere of the hallway that leads to the indoor pool at my childhood JCC. A trans person in a mesh top and little tiny shorts greets me from a plastic window in the vestibule, offering a cheery welcome that feels authentic, asks if it’s my first time here.

“Yes it is, and we don’t have this where I live, in the middle of nowhere.” I feel the need to announce that I’m an outsider. My voice is sure but my hands are cold and shaky. Dade and S, my friends and a couple who have been here together, told me it would be fine to go alone, especially fine on a Thursday. I have thus convinced myself that I am capable of approaching this type of space solo. I’ve read essays about bathhouses, long dreamed of entering such a sanctum. I texted a friend earlier, “sex is the thing that scares me the least.” I think that’s true. I’m generally afraid of interacting with new people in casual social settings, and also distressed by bright lights, big sounds and rushed places. But I’m not scared of my body, or my desire, or anyone’s desire about me. Sometimes ambivalent, sometimes not interested, but really never scared.

Through the window, they take my ID and a handful of cash. They buzz me in through the next door, into the bathhouse itself. Behind them on a shelf is a line of poppers displayed for sale. I recognize Double Scorpio and Cleaner Tapes, the good stuff, not Rush like the fake punks used to dump on the floor at house parties at my fancy liberal arts college. I’ve bought poppers online, but I’ve never seen either of these brands in person, and all of a sudden I can be certain that they exist. I like that knowing about and using poppers indicates that I am the kind of queer who’s into fisting and cruising, rather than some recent and, horror of horrors,“tender” alternative. Such a tender alternative, one that overwhelms my Instagram feed, seems more concerned with pronouns and infographics than fisting and cruising—what ever happened to “every time we fuck, we win?” I will admit that I am attached to the idea of “queerness” staying tied to sex. Isn’t the point that we fuck each other? Isn’t that at least part of the point?

The attendant offers me a metal box in which they will lock up any valuables I wish to submit for safekeeping. In addition to my ID (graced by a picture of me at 16, making a terrible grimace underneath even more terrible flat-ironed bangs), I give them my wallet, and my car keys (on their oversized Schott leather fob—I laugh at myself, even this little mundane detail of my car keys is about sex). “Lucky number 77!” the attendant says as they hand me a rough towel and a green elastic band holding the key to a locker. They give me a brief rundown of what’s on each floor: one stairwell only goes up to one floor, the other accesses all, including the smoking roof. As I depart the check-in area, I become immediately confused, because I was too nervous to listen closely enough to orient myself. I do my best to head to locker 77. When I get there, I hesitate for a minute.

I look, as my friend Dade says, “just like myself.” Scuffed black leather Chelsea boots (composite toe—in my home world, you never know when an animal might step on you), black Levi’s, a black leather belt with a heavy, curved silver buckle, a black cotton t-shirt, a zip-up hoodie (also black), and on top of it all, a blue and white flannel with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. I look like a farm boy. No, I look like a dyke. No, like Dade said, I look just like myself. I decide to get the lay of the land before I take off my clothes. A man in a towel appears out of the stairwell and greets me. He lingers for a moment in the locker area; is this lingering about
me? I deposit my tote bag and my towel in my assigned locker, but I keep my phone and my cigarettes, and I head to the roof.

I sit in a plastic chair, arranged among others in a circle. The seat is wet from rain and so my ass is soaked through my jeans. The towel-clad man who lingered appears. “Can I join you?” I nod and he sits across the circle from me in one of the chairs. He’s tall, white, maybe sixty. He has grey hair, a square head and rectangular glasses. In my head I try to guess what he does for work. I can’t help it, he just looks like somebody’s dad to me, maybe somebody’s accountant. He says his name is Ken, he’s from Texas. Ken tells me that he read about Thursdays at the bathhouse on FetLife. He says he’s an experienced swinger, his favorite club is in Shreveport, Louisiana, and he’s “recently bi...” The way he says it makes me wonder what exactly happened recently that made him bi. Suddenly the world is very wide—it’s me, a Jew from New York, sitting right here, in the damp spring in Pittsburgh, with Ken from Texas who swings in Shreveport. His towel has fallen to the side and he adjusts it, covering himself. I glimpse his cock and it’s cut, notably thick, substantial.

I ask Ken if he followed me up here, to the smoking roof. He says yes, and that I’m “the only attractive woman who’s been in here all night. “The FetLife event said ‘all genders,’ but it’s mostly...old guys.” I nod, amused at the irony, like, ok Ken. Ken tells me he doesn’t know the etiquette of this place. I don’t either. “I’m a bit of an exhibitionist,” Ken confides in me. Can he jerk off? I shrug easily with my Marlboro, even though I’m a little excited by this. “Sure.” Ken’s towel falls over the edges of his chair and he starts to work his wide cock. He’s smiling, I’m blushing. He’s telling me about how he “has a thing for redheads.” I ask him what the fuck that’s about, no man has ever given me a satisfying answer. Ken also does not give me a satisfying answer, instead bumbling about how redheads can either be “homely” or “sexy.” “So I’m homely?” I tease. Poor Ken. “Of course not, no, of course you’re sexy.” His cock is red, he yanks on it. Another man in a towel comes up to the roof but only briefly. I quickly notice that I find him attractive, an observation that brings my body pleasantly to attention.

As Ken is beating off, it occurs to me how much this dynamic feels like the one I lean on when I have anonymous online video chat sex. I’ve been fooling around with random people— mostly men—on Omegle since I was a teenager. I used to be ashamed of this fact but I have come to know it’s not just me, and I also know it hardly matters. When you live in the country, anon online sex is the closest thing to the bathhouse. There’s Grindr, but I look like a girl, and not the right kind. And I live on five acres in the dark, by myself. I’m scared of the risky implications of anonymous real-life sex in this relative isolation. But I am not scared of the sex
itself, and so I have it online.

I grow tired of this rooftop scenario, having also just blown smoke into my own eye in an attempt to be mysterious and sexy. I am already mysterious and sexy to this man—less than half his age, a redhead, a stranger—why did I bother with chain smoking? For armor. I needed the buffer in the beginning, even though I still have on my leather boots and belt, and that’s what really holds me together, like the pole up a scarecrow’s ass. I wonder what will happen when I take them off. I inform Ken that I’d like to get more comfortable and check out the sauna. He asks if he can find me there and I nod yes.

Back at locker 77, I strip off my damp jeans. My boots take up the majority of the little locker. Most of the men wear their green elastic keychains around their biceps, so I do the same. With sleepy eyes, I keep confusing the elastics for delicate little tattoos. I am a little disappointed every time I register what the line encircling their arms actually is. In anticipation of this moment of disrobing, I have strategically worn a black Calvin Klein underwear set. I am not yet prepared to go full tits-out in the brightly lit hallway of this bathhouse; I stick to my boyshorts and sports bra and sling my towel over my shoulder. I go barefoot and try not to
think too much about it.

Feeling exposed but confident, I lock up lucky 77 and head to the stairwell. Down one level are private rooms, down two, a dark room with a sex maze and a dungeon vibe. A skinny guy approaches me, asking “how long have you been here?” I’m pretty sure I’m not into him. I tell him not long, and that I don’t know where I want to be yet, which is true. I venture upstairs.

On the level with private rooms I notice a few with the doors open. Each partitioned space has a bed, some singles, some doubles. In one room a person dressed in lingerie lies on their back on a single bed, legs parted. As I travel down the hallway I notice sighs, moans, sounds of people in pleasure. Looking up I realize that the individual rooms have no ceilings—the walls and doorways create an open-topped grid through which sound can readily pass.

On the floor between the lockers and the roof, I find the whirlpool, steam room, and sauna. I enter the sauna and perch myself (on my towel, again, trying not to fixate on cleanliness) in view of the door. Shortly thereafter, the skinny guy appears, enters, and takes his place diagonal from me. He asks if I’m bi. I feel as if every cell in my body has eyes and they are all rolling—but I say yes, because I cannot bear to get into it with this stranger. “I like to watch,” I tell him, because it’s true. Then Ken arrives. He sits in the corner between Skinny Guy and me. Skinny Guy informs Ken that “she likes to watch.” He is so proud to have a piece of information about me, to behave as though he is running the fuck. It is clear to me, though, that I am the one running the fuck. This is my sauna. The men are here to look at me. They are here to tug on their cocks in the glory of my orbit. They are here to beg me. They are lucky to beg me.

I sit like a Greek statue, or a Rodin—an illusion of flesh, perched, poised,
pedestaled. An object to be seen and not touched. To be worshipped, but at a safe distance, only by gazing and supplication. Skinny Guy reaches for Ken’s cock. Ken allows this, but does not reach for the man in return. Jerking himself and Ken, Skinny Guy repeatedly murmurs ohhh yeahhhh. I find this distracting and irritating, but I let the scene unfold. Ken smiles at me like a blissed-out dog receiving a belly rub. He looks foolish. I am pleased about this. This man who is so much bigger than me, who is more than twice my age: inside of my sexuality’s reach, he becomes totally pathetic. I am starting to sweat. Skinny Guy is starting to suck Ken’s dick.

The desperation in Ken’s stare is palpable. I decide it’s only fair for me to show these men my tits, like I feel inclined to hold up my end of some odd bargain. I peel off my top and place it next to me on my towel, resuming my thinker’s pose: one knee up, leaning forward on an elbow. Skinny Guy is wholeheartedly giving Ken head. Ken permits this, but mouths to me, “I want you.” Indeed, I am watching and I am sure I can do better. Skinny Guy reads my eyes: “do you wanna suck it?” I kind of do want to suck it, if I’m being honest, and if only because I am eternally and ferociously preoccupied with sucking cock...but I realize that in the end I don’t want to give Ken the satisfaction. I tell the men that “I’m here to sweat and be entertained.” Ken offers, in a way that I am sure he thinks is sexy but is actually tremendously gross, “that’s a shame, because I wanna eat you so bad right now.” I stifle a laugh, and the bad kind of gag. Like, what does this man think I am, a meatball sub? The men who walk by the sauna’s transparent door peek in and check me out on my perch. I get the feeling that some of them see tits and run, but that is their right, and so I do not take it personally.

Ken gets the picture—so for him, this is where our story ends. He exits the sauna, bidding me “thanks for sharing!” on his way out. Thanks for sharing? I am impressed with how thoroughly unsexy he has become to me over the course of the evening (how long have I been near Ken? it must now be past 2am, time is blurry due to my exhaustion but also due to the windowless nature of the place, the molasses-thick movement of the steamy air). Once a generally attractive stranger, Ken was now departing with the vaguely creepy energy of a cool English teacher who always says the wrong thing when he bumps into you outside of class.

Skinny Guy is holding out hope. He maintains his post, and his erection. Then, the
tiniest twink I have ever seen enters. I think he looks particularly tiny because he is wearing large, square glasses and sand-colored suede boots. They aren’t black leather, and so they aren’t immediately legible to me as fetish gear. The boots look comically enormous without the balance of clothing, causing the twink to resemble a child’s drawing of a stick figure with improbably giant feet. He assumes the corner spot where Ken used to be. Last to enter is the man I noticed earlier on the roof, the one whose presence gave me a surprising little frisson of attraction. He is difficult to describe, if only because he is so unremarkable: he’s white, and not skinny, not fat. He’s definitely taller than me, but not notably tall. He has short brown hair, just a little of it on his chest, and none on his crotch. He is an outline, the shape of a Regular guy. I notice his hands, which don’t appear worn from work like mine, but they are strong-looking, and also clean and pretty. He sits beside Skinny Guy, who is now sandwiched between him and the twink. For a second our newcomer fusses with the sauna equipment, inquiring if it’s on, as if this sauna is intended for real therapeutic sweating. He quickly gives up, drops his towel, and sits back to accept Skinny Guy’s hand on his dick. Lucky for Skinny Guy, Mr. Regular returns the favor. Then, like Ken, Mr. Regular looks at me.

This eye contact cuts through the sauna like a blade. Our gazes join in a straight line, a rope we each pull taut across the hot air. Skinny Guy jerks Mr. Regular’s cock, and, to my surprise and delight, reaches for Mr. Regular’s asshole. I watch his abdomen engage as his breath gets sharper in pleasure. For a few minutes, the two men finger and rub each other, arms all intertwined, sweaty skin on sweaty skin. But then Skinny Guy wants mostly to please, and so he turns his focus on Mr. Regular, who is near orgasm. I’m quiet, and I’m wet. Sweat trickles down my chest. I’m very still, sitting tall, held up by my own arousal and anticipation. Mr. Regular grunts and sends an impressive amount of cum onto the floor of the sauna. I almost wince, thinking about how many loads have landed on this floor, but my anxieties about hygiene quickly retreat—I am watching this man’s orgasm shake through his body, watching his cock go soft as he sighs in release. We are all there inside of his pleasure, its presence fills the small, hot room. The moment ends when a round old guy comes in: the door opens, the air changes, the spell breaks. “I’m gonna go rinse off,” says Mr. Regular, gathering up his towel and departing. I linger for a moment, but soon decide that it’s time to leave the sauna, and so I
bid Skinny Guy and Tiny Twink goodbye with a nod.

In the locker area, new men have arrived, and they are asking my name, and again about time: “are you gonna be here for a while?” But I’m now on a mission. I’m hoping to catch Mr. Regular before he leaves. I liked his body and I want to be closer to it. Leaving the lockers, I slink to the floor with the private rooms, and there he is, unlocking the door to a double. Again, our eye contact seems to produce heat. “Hi,” I manage, uncertain of the etiquette, and surprisingly, uncertain of myself. I knew what to do with Ken because I didn’t want him, and I knew he wanted me; I knew I held all the chips. “Hi,” he says, “that was really hot,” gesturing upstairs to the sauna. I nod eagerly, reassured. “Do you want to come in?” he points to the doorway. I nod again.

Inside the room he drops his towel, his cock already halfway hard. It’s big but in a
unassuming way, straight and cut. I immediately drop to my knees and take it in my mouth. He leans into me, and I recall a time when, dishing about a hookup, a friend scoffed at my concern that a man might think I was a straight girl. “You love sucking dick like only a faggot could,” they insisted. Behold, here I am at the bathhouse, sucking dick like a hungry faggot. I stand up to take off my underwear, and Mr. Regular pulls me in for a kiss. This I’m not sure about, but I accommodate it for a moment, understanding that this is a way to initiate closer contact of our bodies. I like how he feels up against me, and I ask if he wants to fuck. He says yes.

We’re on the little double bed, and he’s making out with me again. He has his tongue in my mouth and I don’t like it, so I tell him “I don’t really want to kiss.” He says “okay,” and moves to suck on my tits. I am pleased that this request presents no issue, that this man is versed enough in cruising or creative enough about sex that he knows we can have each other another way. I had a lover once who I didn’t kiss for almost a year, a period during which we had some of the best sex of my life. Some of the worst sex I’ve had was with a guy who insisted on “taking it slow,” who kissed and kissed and kissed me and couldn’t fuck worth a damn. I fell in love with him while I kissed him, and out of love when I finally fucked him. The whole process was deeply intimate and desperately unsatisfying. At least as far as fulfilling my appetite, I would rather fuck a stranger than kiss a crush.

His hand is between my legs, and it feels really fucking good. “You won the prize,” I tell him with what little breath I can gather. He knows that the others in the sauna wanted me, he knows that I picked him. My eyes fall on my own body while he touches me. My thighs are tattooed, one with a lion and the other with a cow. There’s a funny little bird on the inside of my left ankle. I have yet more easily-recognizable tattoos on my arms, a barbell in my right eyebrow, and my hair is red and curly. Realizing how much I still look like myself without my clothes on, I’m both nervous and proud. I’ve succeeded so thoroughly in making my body my own that I’ve also rendered complete anonymity impossible. You could look at me naked and know who I am. Mr. Regular, on the other hand, could be anyone. No tattoos, no piercings, no notable marks anywhere on his body. Brown eyes and brown hair. The only thing I might be able to pick out about him is his smell, but even that is generic—the kind of cologne I’d expect to whiff at a car dealership, or on a store manager, or maybe waiting in a fast-casual lunch line behind a guy in an unstylish suit. Mr. Regular smells like a normal man who’d like to smell nice. He looks like a normal man who takes care of himself. Depending whose eye falls on me, I look like a trans person, or a dyke, or maybe some kind of promiscuous and “alternative” woman.

It becomes clear that despite our enthusiasm, after the sauna dalliance he can’t get hard enough to put on a condom. I like that in this interaction condoms are a given, as matter- of-fact as my rejection of kissing. His fingers feel so good that I don’t care if we fuck, and besides, this is sex to me too, as much as a dick, maybe even more. And so he fucks me with one hand, and scratches my torso with the other, and we sweat on each other and I bite his shoulder and he makes me cum. I’m noisy, and I know that the people in the next rooms and the hallway can hear me, but unlike in the sauna, I cannot be seen. I am into this, I think Mr. Regular is into it too. He gets to play with me and nobody gets to watch. I am pleased that I can maintain something as only mine in my every move at the bathhouse: in the sauna, you can look, but not touch. In the private rooms, touch is only for those who I choose, and anyone can listen, but not see. I return to sucking his dick, and he cums on his stomach, notably less than in the sauna. But I’m mostly not keeping score.

“That was so hot,” he says, the same as his comment about what went down in the
sauna. As he’s standing up and handing me my underwear, he asks me “what’s your name?” I almost laugh; what a strange question from someone with whom you’ve just shared an orgasm, but also, this is the nature of the beast. I share my name and he shares his, each one a single forgettable syllable. With his name he adds that he’s “bi, so [he] comes on Thursdays, but tonight it’s not busy.” This strikes me as funny—men here seem to constantly announce their bisexuality, asserting to nobody in particular that it is All Gender Thursday, perhaps as some last grasp at hetero privilege? Is anyone that excited to be “bi?” I figure there’s gotta be a motive. He fusses with a remote control that’s on the bedside table with the discarded condoms. I notice for the first time that there’s a little television, the size of a desktop computer monitor, mounted by the doorway in the upper left corner of the room. The screen displays the kind of tacky and contrived porn you’d expect: a trans woman struts coquettishly by a luxury swimming pool, tits out, lips puckered. The kind of thing that comes up when a Straight Guy sheepishly clicks on “shemale.” The TV is muted, and my compatriot gamely tells me, “I finally figured out that the volume UP button turns it down, and vice versa.” We giggle and there’s a pause. This man is all out of cum and I have no business remaining in his room. I tell him I had fun, and I depart for my locker.

One of the men who asked my name has reappeared in the locker area, naked but for a leather body harness. It is now 3am, so far past my bedtime I feel like I might be dreaming. With my clothes back on and my towel deposited, I retrieve my valuables from the attendant with the metal lockbox, and exit to the elevator. I am delivered back to the vague threshold of the lobby, shaking my head, bemused—did any of that happen? Maybe this question is what permits the happening at all.

Back in my car, inside the relief of solitude and familiarity, I think about the
aforementioned “take it slow” kissing boy. How I couldn’t imagine telling him about what I was up to this evening, how I know he would inevitably (if accidentally) sputter out a judgmental comment in surprise. I think of the handful of men in my recent relationship history who have vaguely claimed to accept me, stating in my bed something like “I know how you are and I’m ok with it.” How am I, anyway? I think of how I’m so tired of being tolerated, how I feel like celebrating this way of being, wanting, fucking. How rude it is to meet my living commitment to desire with a that’s fine, as if those who merely behold me ever had a say in what I choose.

Arriving at Dade’s, I park my car and ascend the many steps to their porch. The dog lifts her head from the couch when I walk through the door, taking attendance and then going back to sleep. I slip off my boots and make my way quietly to the shower which I turn to burning hot. I step in and wash my feet very carefully, thinking about the twink who kept his shoes on. In the shower, I still look exactly like myself. The next morning I tell Dade this whole story, with all its details, over coffee. We always take pleasure in sharing the crunchy little minutiae of life, whether errands or sex. Everything up to the act itself is just as important, if not more.

At home in the Hudson Valley, I poke around on Grindr and thumb through the headless torsos on Sniffies. With the electricity of anonymous sex still in my body, I feel almost inclined to put myself forward on the apps. But I’m not sure if my success at the bathhouse will translate to this locale. Last summer, when I went to get my Mpox vaccine in Hudson, New York, I was surrounded by men who couldn’t figure out why I was there. Beyond the fact that the Hudson gay population has a general vibe of “architect,” these men were not able to immediately understand me as a fixture in their sexual world—unlike in Pittsburgh, there’s no place in our town where we might bump into each other under such a pretense. I’m not one of theirs because there’s no bathhouse where I could be. Maybe they weren’t thinking about me at all, not noting or judging my presence at the vaccine clinic, just chatting about their country house remodeling projects. But I sat and pondered about them and myself, about our relationship to one another, all gathered in a room in service of our (indeed) collective sexual well-being. I wondered how many of them knew each other from Grindr or Scruff or a fruitful glance in a bar, who was and who wasn’t saying hello, who had and hadn’t fucked. I wondered if they read me as a dyke. I wondered if anyone knew the bottom half of my face from an app profile. I wonder now, if we had all been in our little towels at the bathhouse, if they’d make eye contact with me, and what would that eye contact mean.

SINKHOLE / GLORYHOLE is free but if you have the money and inclination to pay for it, you can send a tip to @golus-goals on Venmo or $golusgoals on Cashapp. Any money you send this week I will of course forward on to SP.

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