For some reason, I pictured my never-smiling father. He seeing this, would absolutely die then absolutely kill me.

I’d grown up Presbyterian, okay? And now, sobered by the image of my dad’s lipless face, I sidled, smiling, toward the glowing exit sign, “Excuse me, thank you, ooops, no offense, li’l bathroom visit … coming out … nothing personal …” From the water fountain in a non-steam area, I drank deep. Then, having found a dime, I dialed Angie from a pay phone (they all reminded me of her), “Guess where I am and what I’m wearing?”

“First, did you mail away your cocker spaniel-divorce short story this morning? Number two—you gettin’ any?”

My voice is the voice of thousands, and my towel encases much. Walt Whitman, are you watching? Because, Walter, check these guys out! Nudity is democracy. Erection, the great leveler. In here, bare young milkmen outrank myopic Wall Street brokers. NYPD detectives stake out chorus boys, figuratively then literally. All are alike only in the unlikely eyes of God.

You get reduced to your most major owner’s strut while wearing the most minor of rental towels. No secrets, no closets—only timeshare cubicles where you, odalisque, recline, then beckon or reject the passing cavalcade of chest and leg hair. One boy had precisely Robert’s ears. Another Angie’s butt.

I dallied with a somber smoldering lad whose crazed glare bespoke a cleric freshly, wisely, defrocked. He was sexy till admitting he’d soon snag his doctorate at Columbia. When he mapped out his thesis topic, “The Ontological Impasses Implicit Between the Populists Sympathy and the Tooled Aesthetical Surfaces of Flaubert’s Prose,” he sent my erection toward such an impasse. “Abiento,” I departed.

I felt followed and it pleased me, “Well, hello, Ed. Sorry, been busy. Yes, well, thank you. But tonight I’m trying to widen my, I was hoping to … you know, branch out.”

What am I, a tree?

I toured a hundred open doorways where nude boys summoned me or waved one past. I remembered my own quiet horror during a student trip to Amsterdam—lady prostitutes on display, gals busy knitting in small overlit houses, wearing no underpants, wives for lease.

Here, boys made much of timeshare cubbyholes. Some had brought along their own pink lightbulbs and screwed in a little flattery. They lolled, but only after oiling their very best sides. Padding around I recalled Lord Byron’s description of Turkish baths: “marbled palaces of sherbet and sodomy.” Might our snackbar serve sorbet?