Twenty years ago, Wallace came here for fun. Next to him on the bed are a dozen unopened condoms and several oral H.I.V.-testing kits. I eventually find him sitting alone on a twin-size bed in a small room on the main floor. ![]() I go to Flex one night to meet Ricardo Wallace, an African-American outreach worker for the AIDS Task Force of Cleveland who comes here twice a month to test men for H.I.V. (Flex recently shut its doors temporarily while it relocates.) Flex is on the East Side, and it serves a mostly black and Hispanic clientele, many of whom don't consider themselves gay. On the city's predominantly white West Side, Club Cleveland - which opened in 1965 and recently settled into a modern 15,000-square-foot space - attracts many white and openly gay men. In small rooms nearby, some men are having sex. A naked black man reclines on a sling in a room called ''the dungeon play area.'' Along a hallway lined with lockers, black men eye each other as they walk by in towels. In the basement, the mood is different: the TV's are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy. ![]() In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV's. There's a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |