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The following article originally appeared in The Real Paper from Boston. High Gear recently came across it via Toronto's The Body Politic. With sincere gratitude to Ms. Brown, we are reprinting it here. Ms. Brown is the author of the lesbian-feminist comic novel "Rubyfruit Jungle" and most recently, "In Her Day." Both volumes are available at Coventry Books. If you read any article this issue. read the following. It is delightful and only a taste of the extraordinary genius known as Rita Mae Brown.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. Don't bother booking passage, though: Xanadu is currently called The Club and rests serenely on First Avenue between First and Second Streets in New York City. No woman had ever seen this foreign place until March 21, 1975, for The Club is a "bath house" serving a gay male clientele. However, on that date I, moustache firmly in place, curiosity raging, crossed the threshold into unknown territory. The adventure attracted me, but besides that I've been raised with the constantly repeated notion that women's sexuality and men's sexuality are absolutely different. By placing myself in an all-male situation where there is no intrusion of female sensibility I hoped to learn something about that sacred cow, sexual difference.

Like Dante, I too found my Virgil Arthur, a dear male

friend as high off the fun of it all as I was. Before I could crash The Club I had to contend with the minutiae of cultural sexual differentiation. My fingernails were all wrong. Had to cut them square across. My walk, though springy, just wasn't butch enough so I practiced a manly gait and felt like John Wayne reduced to five feet four inches. Arthur coached me in my transition, combed my hair, painted burning gum spirits under my nose, slapped on a dashing moustache, draped virile garments on my back and took me to dinner to rev up my courage. When the waiter looked at us and asked, "What are you fellows having?" I fought the urge to reply, "A heliuva good laugh." Feigning hoarseness | whispered my order. There's no way my voice could ever be confused with a man's. The whisper worked as he didn't bat an eye. Encouraged by this success ! still worried about my breasts. At dinner I kept on the short Eisenhower jacket so I passed. But how wouid i ever get my clothes off in the locker room without anyone noticing.

As we stood in the line next to each other to get into the baths I started sweating. Friday night is buddy night at The Club. Two men get in for $5. At $2.50 apiece that makes this the cheapest entertainment in town. Arthur, my buddy, twitched a bit himself the closer we got to the entrance window. Approximately 30 men waited patiently in line that evening. As we approached

HIGH GEAR

A STRANGER IN

"PARADISE"

Entering the brightly lit TV aware of being

room I was

looked at. Men look

at each other differently than men look

at women.

R.K.

JANUARY 1977

the booth, which resembles a ticket counter in a movie house, Arthur jumped forward, paid our money too hastily and signed his name on the clipboard. I signed mine "R. Brown", which was truthful enough. The door buzzed open and an attendant pointed us downstairs to the lockers.

White double lockers lined the narrow room. Seven or eight men crowded in the small space trying to get their clothes off. I took my shoes off first. What could be safer than feet? Then socks. Next I unzipped my pants. Wearing what our Elizabethan ancestors called a "cod piece" I felt secure about the tantalizing bulge there. As the men bluntly stared at my family jewels I whipped off the Eisenhower jacket. In a place like this your cock means everything. It's unlike lesbian gatherings where your face is most important, but it does have something in common with straight gatherings where men discuss the Mideast crisis with your left tit. Here, in the baths the men don't even make a pretense of looking at your face as straight men on the make đʊ. But how could I get my turtleneck off without my breasts flashing like a Maidenform advertisement? Sweat rolled off my forehead trickling over the black moustache. Arthur, naked in an instant, caught the moment and called for me to come over where he was. I walked over and

he said in a forced conversational tone, "Does your arm still hurt? Let me help you get that off." Good old Arthur! Anxious to hit the action all but one of the men in the locker room left. Two new ones barged

in just as I pulled my turtleneck over my head. Arthur lept in front of me and threw a short little robe over my shoulders.

So that I wouldn't be the only human being among the hundreds in a robe, Arthur put one on too. As we left the locker room area, passing by a mosaic pool and sparkling showers, he took my hand, for the crowd was so dense we would have become separated.

Entering the brightly lit TV room I was aware of being looked at. Men look at each other differently than men look at women. The leer is gone, the thinly disguised hostility of the street vanishes. Here the eyes zoom to the crotch. As I was partially covered their glance went directly to my eyes and since I didn't respond to the unspoken question the eyes turned off to the side or to another person. The transaction boils down to: curiosity, no connection, disconnection.

The TV room is neutra! territory, a sort of sexual DMZ. Good photographs of men cover the walls, comfortable chairs allow people to relax and compare the photographs with reality while sipping a beverage. You might find someone in the TV room but you don't begin sexual activity until you leave there. We threaded our way through as fast as we could because of the lights and because the room is next to the