The hand was now on my crotch and it was attached to a man with a moustache. But I was not about to tolerate unwelcome advances.
"Excuse me � your hand is on my penis.�
�Yeah, so?�
�Well�I don�t usually like hands I�m not acquainted with touching the lower part of my anatomy.�
Before the overly-friendly, moustached stranger could reply, or take his hand off me, Barry jumped off the bench and stood in front of the man.
"You heard him, mate � get your hand off his dick!�
It was a sight that would have brought a laugh out of even the most cynical and all the other faces in the sauna suddenly swung around to stare at the little drama unfolding in the mist. Here was a skinny-looking kid with no towel and his hands on his hips, telling off a man twice his age and four times his size. The moustached-man got off the bench and stood erect and it wasn�t just his height that was at attention. He was six foot five and with muscles the size of a small house. He looked like he could break Barry in half with one hand.
"If you don�t like the heat, get out of the kitchen � or should I say the steam room.� His face changed into a sarcastic grin. �But you�re just a kid so I�ll let you play with your old man."
He made the last comment staring directly at me with a cutting expression.
I almost died of embarrassment as the butch man turned on his heel and walked off into the mist. He thought I was this kid's dad?! Then I realized the other part of what he had said. This wasn't a strange gay nightclub at all - it was a bathhouse where men had sex! That explained why the patrons wouldn't leave me alone and why there had been so much groaning and moaning. If that little kid had told me he was taking me to a bath house to talk I would have told him to go to hell instead. Never having been to one before it was the rudest introduction I'd ever encountered and not something a man that liked romance would have ever want to repeat.
Standing up I adjusted my towel and stomped out of the room. The kid was following behind me.
"Hey, where are you going?" He called out. "I haven't finished talking to you about Oscar Wilde."
"Save it for your next date in a bath," I called out angrily.
Storming past the other silent men I rushed up the stairs and to my locker to pull on my clothes. I was still dripping with sweat as I fled the building for the busy street outside. Looking down at my hand I realized I'd rushed out so quickly that I'd taken the kid's rose with me as well without thinking. Then I started laughing. As people walked past me they must have thought I was mad, staring at a rose and finding it funny, but I didn't care. I'd had a disastrous evening, but at least I could laugh about the literature student that could only discuss Oscar Wilde in a bathhouse.
