“Is This Alright?”: Being Molested in a Gay Sauna, Aged 19
His pleasure at my expense
In February 2016, I was living in Melbourne and the ten weeks I had there are among the brightest, most joyous periods of my entire life. As I have written previously, I have many strong memories of my time in this tremendous city and can’t say a bad word about it.
But there is at least one sour note within this happy symphony: I was groped without consent in a gay sauna, by a man in his late 60s. I had never been to a sauna before (and haven’t since, in fact), but I was pretty keen on going to hook up with guys in a steam room. In my head it seemed very sexy and exciting, but the reality was rather more seedy than that.
The idea was not originally my own, having been planted in my head by a guy I met on a tram coming home after a Pride parade. We chatted for much of the journey and exchanged numbers, soon after going on a couple of dates before he invited me to an under-30 “twink night” at a gay sauna around Brunswick Street, the city’s nightlife strip. He was only just eligible, being ten years older than me, but I had to decline his invitation as I had recently pierced my ears and couldn’t subject them to salt water or chlorine.
But I kept the idea in mind, all the same.
