CHAPTER OUTLINE
(chapters marked << are completed)
1. A Place For Us?
Theaters,
baths, and nightclubs; a case history in gay entrepreneurship, visibility,
and the marketing of “lifestyle. How the New Saint Mark’s
changed the gay bathhouse.
1.1. <<A World Inside: Brief history of baths in New York City,
and the rise of Bruce Mailman and the St. Mark’s Baths.
2.
Getting Close to the Subject: A first person account of the meaning
of the baths. How I came to write this book.
2.1. <<Closure
3. Keep it Clean: Temples of the Body Gyms, saunas, spas: a brief history and cultural overview of the U.S. and other cultures: Turkish, Jewish, English, Greek, Japanese, Eastern European. Public Baths in history and literature.
4.
Getting Close to the Subject My experience of non-gay bathhouses
4.1. Budapest
4.2. London
4.3. New York City Russian Baths
5.
A Proper Place for Perverts?
5.1. Gay gathering places through the 19th Century.
5.1.1. <<London
5.1.2. New York and America
5.2. 20th Century:
5.2.1. New York City Piers, The Rambles, 42nd Street
6.
Only Connect: Nights (and days) in a bathhouse 1960-2000 The
role of the bathhouse in creating a gay identity, and the issues of privacy
and safety. The details of desire: what is/what was a bathhouse. Locations,
designs, features. (much material will be in interview form).
6.1. <<No Regrets: 1962-80 An interview with a sixty year old New
Yorker
6.2. The Continental Drift: remembrances of a cabaret /bathhouse
6.3. Additional Interviews. Some individual, others in group format
7.
We’re Strangers When We Meet: Interviews with men who men
who met long-term partners in the baths. How public sex connects with
their private relationship. Interviews with couples and/or one member
of couple. (this Chapter may be combined with preceding, depending on
material)
7.1. <<We met in Covent Garden: Interview
7.2. <<What was your grandfather’s name? A story
7.3. Additional Interviews
8.
Getting Close to the Subject
8.1. <<My experiences is gay baths in America
8.2. <<Experiences in England and Europe (partial)
9. Other Voices, Other Rooms Women’s bathhouses
(lesbian and straight).
9.1. An insider’s report from “Flirt,” the women’s
night at Covent Garden Baths
9.2. Rita Mae Brown at the Club Baths 1975. Excerpts from her essay and
other women’s writing on bathhouses and sex.
10.
From Paradise to Pariah: the changing role of the gay bathhouse in New
York City 1970-1985. The battles over closure in New York City.
Putting the gloves on, taking the doors off?
10.1. Interviews with past and present bathhouse owners and Health agency
administrators
10.2. Defenses and attacks, Whose side are you on? Interviews, research
of the history and literature of mid-eighties closure battles.
11.
Touch Sensitive: bathhouse battles outside New York during the first decade
of AIDS. Legal cases, statistics, documents, demonstrations
11.1. San Francisco
11.2. London
11.3. Montreal
12.
Making Love Under Radar/Bodies in motion: Public Sex since 1985
Sex Clubs, gay personals, phone sex, internet sex. How has the nature
of “anonymous” sex changed? The role of video and advertising
in changing the way we look at ourselves and others. The role of the bathhouse
in the evolution of images of perfection and fantasy
12.1. <<Interviews with men of varying ages
12.2. <<Making Love Under Radar. Research and analysis of data and
interviews
13. Getting Close to the Subject
13.1. <<The Romance of Perfection and Impermanence
14.
Who you calling a slut? Defining promiscuity
14.1. Definitions from interviewees
14.2. Sex Panic!? Michael angelo Signorile, Michael Warner, Larry Kramer,
Allen Berube, Walt Odets. The battles within gay culture over sexual behavior
in the nineties. Review of the literature, the rhetoric, and the repercussions.
14.3. What do we do with ourselves now? Sexual behavior in public
15. Epilogue: Getting Close to the Subject:
How the writing of this book affected my own life and behavior.
Placed throughout the book: Fiction and Fact: Cinematic, literary, and
visual art depictions of the gay bathhouse. Photos, reproductions of paintings
and drawings of baths (disbursed throughout book)
16. Bibliography
17. Acknowledgments and Sources
18. Index
© Jeff McMahon 2002