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Turning around two intersections and looking deep into the alleys sandwiched between the post office and convenience store, you can see the glowing signs. Mc is at the corner of the alley, hidden deeply, but after all, it is in a bustling area. If Ah Hui finishes shopping in IFS, Didi can get here with only the starting price. Searching for "MC Bathroom" will have no results when locatable, you must search for "MC Bar". In fact, "MC Bathroom" is only the name used by regular customers to communicate privately, and the signs and main entrance are written "MC SPA Full House".
Tickets from Friday to Sunday are slightly more expensive than on other days. The MC is open 24 hours, but only one customer can be admitted for 16 hours per ticket, and a replacement ticket is required for overtime. Ah Hui bought a ticket to brush through the floodgates, lifted the curtain, and the familiar and intimate smell of sweat and flesh came to the face. He knew he couldn't look away, or his sight would frighten the men who were huddled in dim light and spewing hot air at each other. Ah Hui walked quickly to the open dressing area, took off only his underwear, and wrapped himself around the white bath towel sent from the counter.
stimulate. Joy. freely. The night began again.
In the fleshy forest of white flowers, there is a person in a suit who is particularly conspicuous. He would nod and greet regulars like Ah Hui he met in the aisles. That's Cong Lin, who has been a manager at MC for 9 years.
9 years ago, if someone asked what "MC" meant, Lin Cong would explain that it was "beauty plus purity". But customers always circulate all kinds of other claims in private. The combination of these two letters has been freely extending more meanings for a decade, so that Lin Cong now does not know how to answer this question.
MC is not actually the first gay bathroom in Chengdu. There is a "rainforest bath" that has a longer history and is still open today. But Mr. Lin doesn't see MC as a competitor to the rainforest: although gay men of all ages from twenty to fifty can be seen at MC, young people still make up the vast majority; and customers in the rainforest are basically older. In Lin Cong's view, the two gay bathrooms "have a good passenger flow."
Another reason not to see similar stores as competitors may be confident in MC's popularity. Mc has about 200 consumers a day from Monday to Thursday, and about 500 people a day from Friday to Sunday. Lin Cong is also proud that MC often attracts customers from Xi'an, Guizhou and other areas around Sichuan and Chongqing. What he particularly relishes is that during this year's National Day, several customers came from Beijing and stayed at MC for 16 days.
In the eyes of these gay men who have lived for half a month, it is more like a "gay hotel" than mcmaking a gay entertainment club.
Signs near the MC are called "bathrooms" by regulars, but there are many other amenities inside the MC. Originally MC was a "bar + bathroom" model. After the renovation in 2016, the part of the bar was removed, and only the next small restaurant was retained; the area of the sauna area was expanded, and a separate SPA massage area was added, as well as a small KTV and outdoor fitness area. Lin Cong said that this is an adjustment made after taking into account the increasing number of gay bars in the Chengdu area; and after the renovation, the two areas of the sauna and spa massage are completely separated, and customers can enjoy the massage of the technician in a separate small room, which is more "private". Two hundred years ago, during the purging of "sodomy", Florence and Paris had historical records of "gay bathrooms". Since the beginning of the last century, gay bathrooms have gradually appeared in britain and the United States. Around 1950, the United States opened gay bathrooms known as "gay oases" and gradually obtained legal operating licenses over the past two decades.
Nowadays, in Europe and the United States, the gay bathroom has long been regarded as a public place for bathing, but a well-known place where same-sex sexual acts can be performed.
MC main entrance Ah Hui Lai MC does not have the habit of finding technicians to do SPA. He is looking forward to making the night more memorable with strange men in a private "little black room".
"Little Black Room" is what regulars call the various hidden beds and semi-open compartments in the bathroom and sauna area. Despite claiming not to provide sexual services, MC never shy away from the existence of "little black houses" in the bathroom sauna area. During the renovation, MC deliberately added a new interconnected path between each "small black house". Now unfamiliar guests hang out alone in the bathroom sauna area, it is easy not to get around. Lin Cong laughs and says that the design is to increase the interaction between customers to make it more "interesting", and he and his colleagues have privately changed the "little black room" to "escape room".
If the newly opened SPA studio provides the "privacy" of one-on-one massage services between customers and technicians, then the "little black room" makes the "interaction" between customers and customers more "private".
Baidu's "Gay" Tieba has 97 MC-related posts, almost all of which are "dare not go in" and "ask for a group". Lin Cong understands that friends who have not been to MC have "fears" about this place, but he believes that "after coming here, you will feel nothing, because it is actually the same as other places." He thinks that two boys may be embarrassed to go to the hotel to open a room, but if they come to MC, it will be "better".
Lin Cong believes that everything that happens in the "Little Black House" is "if you want to, you are willing, if you don't want to, forget it", completely following a voluntary principle. And whoever chooses to come to MC for what they do is their "own freedom."
Since the 1980s, there have been lobbying activities in Europe and the United States against the establishment of gay baths. Opponents point out sharply that the gay bathroom has created a "private room" that facilitates the illegal trade in alcohol and drugs, and even encourages the gay and lesbian community to freely engage in sexual acts of any nature — safe or unsafe — in an enclosed space without any supervision.
And "unsafe sex" often points to a disease that many people smell discolored: AIDS. For many gay men, it hangs over the word "freedom," creating a large shadow.
In 1984, out of fear of AIDS, the San Francisco Department of Health filed a court petition to close the city's gay bathroom. Eventually, the court banned san Francisco gay bathrooms from opening "little black rooms" and required that same-sex sex should not occur in the bathroom space. Most of the gay bathrooms were closed.
Gay Bathroom in Portland, Oregon, Wikipedia Many AIDS-related reports point out that gay men are a "high-risk group" for the spread of infections. So, can a place that is mainly aimed at "high-risk groups" of consumers and "allowed" to have sex be called a "high-risk place" for THE spread of AIDS?
Lin Cong actually agrees with this "high-risk place" and acknowledges that there is a case of HIV infection in the MC - indeed some customers will choose to have sleeveless anal sex. But he added that there are actually free condoms at the bar in the restaurant area for all customers to pick up.
A year or two ago, Lin Cong heard rumors that gay entertainment venues throughout China would be "cut." He always thought that this statement was ridiculous. In his view, if all gay entertainment venues are really closed, considering that many gays and lesbians are ashamed to open houses together, the only places that can really be left for gay men to have sex will be left in the corners of general public places.
Lin Cong stressed that for the gay male community, MC is a more "good" and "cleaner" place than a traditional public entertainment place for all groups. Lin Did not specifically explain what "good" or "clean" means. When entering any of the MC consumption areas, customers are not required to disinfect or be required to undergo disease testing as they did before stepping into a public pool.
"It's definitely better to have a relationship at MC than to have people in public toilets, in park corners, somewhere?" Lin Cong believes that no one will want to make this group "more chaotic" and make the AIDS disease more severe; the gay bathroom is just a buffer space to alleviate this problem.
At nearly eleven o'clock, Ah Hui met Lin Cong again at MC. This time, Lin Cong took the initiative to greet him and asked him to go to the SPA massage area for an AIDS test.
MC does not directly cooperate with the Chengdu Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (hereinafter referred to as "Chengdu CDC") to conduct HIV testing programs. According to Lin Cong, MC once proposed to let Chengdu CDC set up a testing point for two nights on the weekend with the largest passenger flow, but Chengdu CDC employees took weekends off and gave up. However, since 2009, MC has established a cooperative relationship with a comrade non-profit organization in Chengdu (hereinafter referred to as the "public welfare organization"), and volunteers serve as testers on Friday and Saturday nights to conduct free HIV tests. Such "bathroom projects" are also funded by Chengdu Cdtec.
Wu Yu is one of the volunteers in charge of HIV testing at a non-profit organization, and he is on duty every Saturday from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Lin Cong specially vacated a single room for SPA massage for Wu Yu as a "studio" to protect the privacy of the testers.
When Ah Hui was pulled by Lin Cong to do the test, Wu Yu was ready to "leave work". Counting Ah Hui, today Wu Yu just did a full 15 people test, and every time he came to do the test, it was almost this number. The entire testing process, which includes filling out the questionnaire, using blood test strips, and waiting for the results, takes about 20 minutes.
In addition to the content of informed consent and privacy protection statement, the questionnaire that Wu Yu's testing "workbench" Ah Hui first filled out also included inquiries about whether the tested person had recently had high-risk sexual behavior, as well as several AIDS knowledge multiple choice questions. During the period of instructing the tested person to use the test strip and waiting for the test strip results, Wu Yu would quickly browse the questionnaire. He calls this browsing a "risk assessment" that allows him to "mentally prepare" himself before the test strip results come out. According to the "risk assessment", Wu Yu will choose which topics to talk to the other party during the waiting period.
If Wu Yu finds that there is a misunderstanding of the other party's understanding of AIDS, he will first correct it; if the tested person confesses in the questionnaire that he has recently had high-risk sexual behavior, Wu Yu will first be prepared to test the test paper positive (that is, the test result is infected), and talk to the other party about how to adjust and what diseases may occur if the hive infection is assumed. Even if the other party has a correct understanding of HIV/AIDS common sense and says that no high-risk sexual behavior has occurred recently, Wu Yu will still emphasize the importance of safe sex with the testee.
In Wu Yu's view, in the gay bathroom, it is not so much a "test" of AIDS as it is an "intervention" in the spread of AIDS. He believes that the volunteers are passing on the message that "safety behavior should be performed to wear condoms" in the process, and then radiating to his friends by receiving the information Therefore, Wu Yu believes that it is of great significance to set up detection points in the MC.
Wu Yu observed that most of the customers who will take the initiative to conduct AIDS testing in the gay bathroom such as MC have confidence in their own health. They have not had high-risk sexual behavior recently, but have regarded regular TESTing for AIDS as a "habit of life", or have been "kindly introduced" by Lin Cong like Ah Hui. Lin Cong's move is also a kind of "uninterrupted intervention", constantly conveying the message of "vigilance against the spread of AIDS".
Unlike other gay entertainment venues, occasional high-risk behaviors in gay bathrooms are higher, but it is difficult to track down HIV-positive cases. Sichuan Province is also the province with the second largest number of live AIDS infected and sick people in China.
In these contexts, Zhao Qian, the head of the Chengdu AIDS Control Department, is not as relaxed as Lin Cong when talking about the gay bathroom. She said that the opening of gay entertainment venues is not a decision that a disease prevention institution can decide, and what Chengdu Disease Control can do is to carry out publicity and education and intervention testing coverage after such a place.
In March 2008, the "Oasis Bathhouse" and its branches of the gay bath in Beijing were raided by the police and closed shortly after. Mc opened in the same year. Lin Cong recalled that during the ten years of operation, MC had a smooth business and had never been pressured by relevant departments or any policy influence. In June this year, MC also opened a branch in Chongqing, but only provided SPA massage services, and did not set up a sauna area.
In Lin Cong's heart, the future is bright and infinite. He believes that MC "will certainly become the best and most first-class gay entertainment venue in the country."
Note: All names mentioned in this article are pseudonyms