Goodbye Canada

One week ago I left Canada for Australia.

In my last week of canadian-hood, I was running around trying to see my friends as much as possible. The theory was that if we saw each other enough, we'd get sick of one-another, therefore making my continental absence for 10 months okay a little less noticeable. It didn't work - seeing so many people over such a short period made me want to hangout even more.

Tim, Mike, Xav, Liz, Kieran each got their individual moments with me. In each respective case, we just hung out their apartments. It was great.

I also had a party downtown, with over 30 friends and acquaintances showing up. The night was amazing, albeit my memory is disappointingly fuzzy. Everyone was feeding me drinks, so my brain sort of cut out around 1am. I do have a great image of sitting in a taxi, with Mike and Mike's Girlfriend of either of my sides, with Mike's Girlfriend holding her purse open in front of me saying:

"Ìf you need to puke, just do it in my purse."

She's a definitely a keeper.


Alicia and I confirmed the details of my arrival in Sydney. I'll be staying with her for a bit, and probably intermittently, while I'm in Australia. We're both incredibly excited to hangout together, as we used to do back when she lived in Montreal.


My last full day in this city was spent at home with family. We didn't do anything, but talk and hangout. Mom and Dad were mostly reminiscing of when they had gone on long trips. For my Dad, it's when he left England to attend grad school in Canada. He accentuated how he never actually went back home. My Mom spoke about he backpacking trips in Europe. She insisted, while holding back some tears in her eyes, that we needed to stay in touch otherwise she feels like we would lose the closeness we had developed since I moved back home.

They both agreed that it's going to very different at home, without me.

The morning of my flight, they both brought me to the airport and waited with me as I got the tickets and checked my bags. They walked me to the customs door, where only people boarding flgiths could continue. We hugged. I looked my Mom in the eyes and she started crying. I don't consider my self a crier, well not at least infront of others, but I started crying too.

Then I walked away and tried not to be sad - since I'm starting an amazing experience. It somewhat worked.

No One Actually Takes Baths There

Let me start off this experience with a preface: bathhouses in general creep me out. Random sex with strangers, no knowledge at all about the STD status of partners and just the whole unreal environment of public sex is definitely not for me. In Montreal, there are 20-30 bathhouses. They mostly cater to "straight" tourists who come here to cheat on their wives and then go home, although there's obviously a big "out-gay" presence there. An acquaintance that works for the CLSC in the Gay Village says that half the people who test positive for an STD and whom also openly self-identify as being gay/queer say they go to bathhouses. (CLSC is a government-run public health clinic that does a lot of things, including free STD tests)

So, a few weeks ago I went to a bathhouse.

The subject of bathhouses came up in a conversation with Guy-I'm-dating; he wondered if I had ever gone to one. My answer was no, since random hook-ups with strangers is not my thing - that and STDs ain't my cup of tea. Knowing me, he was amazed that I had never even ventured into one to see the wacky world that's held inside. If I like to speak past security guards to illegally explore industrial buildings, how could I not just pay 5 bucks to see what's going on in a bathhouse?

From that, he decided we were going to a bathhouse in Quebec City. It took him a while to sell me on the idea, but I eventually caved. We weren't going there to fool around with anyone or even each other, it was just so that I knew what went on inside those walls. He also wasn't hoping to push me into anything beyond that, since I know he's also pretty nervous of unsafe sex and diseases.


If you've ever seen adds for bathhouses, they're all pretty much along the lines of the above pic: the hot, young dude in a towel. I love them because I like to pretend that some people genuinely believe that bathhouse patrons look like that. I, on the other hand, am not tricked so easily. In fact, I can now confirm it's nothing like that.

We walked into the bathhouse around 11pm. The cashier said a few sentences in French, then immediately switched to perfect English when he realized that our accents were from out of town. Hearing perfect English (or English at all) in Quebec City is rare, unless it's a business aimed at tourists. Stereotype confirmed: bathhouses are for people from out of town.

Guy-I'm-dating took the lead in exploring, since he had been in bathhouses before and clearly sensed I was uncomfortable. Straight from the start, an older guy was following us. As we both changed in the lockeroom, he quasi-watched us from around the corner, while masturbating himself. As we checked out the 3 levels of the building, he followed us. We sat in the dry sauna for a bit; the guy felt the need to hangout there too, though he seemed to cut out the masturbating a bit...but not giving up completely.

I thought it was creepy, but at the same time I knew this was all sort of normal for a bathhouse (damn you Queer As Folk!). People play the subtle game of trading glances before hooking up with one-another. They follow one-another, play hard-to-get, and get comfortable that way before hooking up - it's just the way it is.

I felt a little bad for the guy though. It's not because he's was in a bathhouse, but instead because he never had a chance with Guy-I'm-dating or myself that night. Oh, we're such [unintentional] teases! We weren't there for fooling around, but even if we were we'd probably want to do the deed with someone close to our age, skinny and good-looking, as opposed to some fat, ugly guy who's the same age as my dad. He wasn't the only guy who fell into that category though. From my perspective, everyone there was old, out of shape and ugly. Stereotyped confirmed: bathhouses are filled with older, not-so-pretty men.

After 20 minutes of refusing eye contact and ignoring him, he gave up. We found his "brother" in the wet sauna, whispering weird things to us although we didn't stick around enough to really understand. Instead, we hung out in the jacuzzi for 20 minutes and watched the strangers walk by. Oh, and made out a bit.

The clientele aside, the bathhouse itself was actually really nice and clean. It was surprisingly huge and empty, which means we probably just came on an off-night. I had assumed that the place would be dirty and the floors would be covered in mysterious liquids, but it was nothing like that. It felt like some sort of spa...with naked men having sex. Stereotype unconfirmed: bathhouses are not dirty.

We were both starving after our short stay, so we changed back and the lockers an headed to the lobby. The cashier seemed happy to see us again, but a little down that we were leaving so soon. I think he has been hoping for a show.