In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Paul M. would often fill himself with liquid courage before he slipped through the doors of Club LaGrange, a gay bathhouse that occupied a worn but majestic brownstone in a gritty slice of downtown Boston.
Up a flight of stairs, he’d approach the counter, supply his name and some cash, before proceeding to a room or locker, where he’d stow his clothes and don a towel. Then, for the night, he was anonymous and free to explore the showers, saunas and private rooms of the club—each space a new opportunity to cruise for sex.
“I was young, horny and in the closet,” says Paul, now 82 years old; the bathhouses—outside the gaze of the more public gay bars—filled a need for him.
Boston never had a legendary gay bathhouse scene like those in New York or San Francisco—partly due to a hangover of “Puritan prudishness” that augured a tamer scene overall, according to historians. Boston’s gay community, some of its own members admit, was not as “wild” or uninhibited as those in other large American cities. But for a period in the 1970s and ’80s, a string of baths in the city gave gay men like Paul crucial community spaces—which were also on the forefront of public health, before and after the AIDS crisis hit.
better fit for the World News or Environmental sections, nothing more