Outside the Waterloo station that evening, I followed the directions on the card I found at the phone booth earlier that day and took stone steps that led down to a glossy black door, framed by a brick arch underneath the train tracks. There was no obvious place to ring, but I spied a gray button set discreetly on the doorframe and pressed. A buzzer sounded. I opened the door. There was a man collecting money right inside. I paid him, and he motioned me to a curtained area, which I shifted aside with one hand to walk through.

There were rubber mats on the floor and long benches on one side of the room. On the other two sides were lockers. There was a pile of towels on one of the benches. I was the only one there and had not been given instructions, but I figured I should take off my clothes, which I did slowly, then took a towel and wrapped it around my waist. I took my pile of clothes to the lockers, metallic gray with orange nubs sticking out that held keys with elastics attached; I noted that there were at least a dozen nubs that had no keys and wondered if that was crowded or light for a Saturday night.

Even before I opened the metal door to the next room, I could feel vibration emanating from the other side. I turned the knob and found myself in a concrete space lit in stark pools of light, with several shower stalls on one side and the dark orange light of a sauna on the other, several naked figures inside who I only saw in the periphery of my vision. I hung up my towel on a hook and turned on the shower—too cold—yet I stepped under it anyway, eager to dull the pulse of my senses, as I suddenly became aware that the throbbing sounds in my head were not only from my heart but the insistent beat of techno music.

Alone when I entered the room, I realized there were several men who had come in, all of them middle-aged, two paunchy and pale while one was dark and hairy. I imagined instant lives for these men, how maybe one of the pale ones was a postman and the dark one, handsome in his solidity even though the hair cover on his chest did not immediately pull me, was a married businessman from India who dallied on work trips. Then I realized they must have come to see the new meat up for offer, and from their languorous movements, their bodies like gentle waves, I could tell they liked what they saw, even if I couldn’t quite believe it.