A Day and a Night at the Baths

by Michael Rumaker

Fiction. LGBT Studies. Originally published by Grey Fox Press in 1979, Triton Books, the new imprint of Spuyten Duyvil, restores this classic novel to print with a new introduction by the author. "Rumaker an original prose creator of great shamed heroic sensitivity has taken up his pen again to describe a hidden psychological & physical reality. As an old sex fiend from the baths myself I'm grateful & relieved to see thru his eyes and feel thru his body"--Allen Ginsberg.

Genres: Queer, Gay, LGBT, Fiction

148 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 1979

About the author

American author and graduate of Black Mountain College.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is nearly pornography only perhaps through the author's command of language does it become obvious after you read a passage several times that no, it's not quite pornographic, it's much closer to literature. And while certainly it may be possible for some people to use it as an assistance in a masturbatory act, I would suggest that there are magazines or even tv shows better suited for such desires. This book really is not intended for a younger audience, and I would object to providing it to a young person. That said, I probably would have been very interested in the book as a teenager. The language is rather flowery which I think is actually a positive feature. In fact this 70s era moment in time has actually made me slightly sad at how poorly people write in contemporary literature. What can you do? Read more books I suppose.

THIS IS A VERY VERY GAY TEXT. WILL PROBABLY OFFEND YOU IF YOU GET OFFENDED BY REPEATED COPULATIONS OF A HOMOSEXUAL NATURE. But seeing as how it's not pornography, sometimes the copulations are skipped over or implied. You know, like in The Great Gatsby. Thanks Lance...I still to this day don't know how I skipped over that part.

[jjmann3 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Michael Rumaker’s “A Day and a Night at the Baths” (The Baths) is an evocative narrative of a gay man’s first trip to the Everard Baths, a realm of, “grime and sweat and steam and chlorine,” on a cold winter day in the 1970s. The sweeping, poetic prose Rumaker employs throughout the piece echoes the courageous language of the then-nascent Gay Liberation movement. After all, this was the 1970s, when there were so few “unrestricted havens, no ports free of the contaminating fathers” for gay men to meet, get to know one another, and have carefree sex. “The heart’s desire and the awakener of the heart; the miracle of a barely imagined paradise, here in this dingy smelly place, heavy with stale body odors and decades-old perspiration of lust-sweat, and fear-sweat, and ashes of spermfire that encrust the walls and floors and ceilings from all the century-long years of those who have searched here in unspeakable pleasure and pain.”

Throughout The Baths, the narrator sought to chuck off almost all consigns of the vapid sense of socially-accepted beauty to embrace the uniqueness of our physiques. In the sauna, “here, we were our naked selves, anonymous, wearing only our bodies, with no other identity than our bare skins, without estrangements of class or money or position, or false distinctions of any kind, not even names if we chose none.” The book describes encounters with all different types of men, young, old, white, dark, beefy, thin — and those with a disability even — “even one struggling about the halls on aluminum crutches, his twisted legs strapped in metal braces” and discovers beauty, hope, and a sense of resilience in each and every framework of lives he encountered. “There is no end to desire.”

The version of The Baths I read included an Afterward penned by the author that was especially poignant to me. As someone born during the very winter of The Baths, I never knew the gay movement sans the cloak of AIDS.

“The queer spirit had a vital if hidden existence, surviving centuries of state and religious persecutions that sought to hobble and murder it—and that still do to this day.” By writing this review, I only hope to impart the notion that books like The Baths are important and need to be shared.

[Bill Arning]

A rush of intoxicating description

Rumaker's description of the baths in pre-HIV america is intelligent, poetic, real and mythic- as record and a tribute to a queer culture being born.

[Luke McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some insightful passages here about the erotic potential of the bathhouse, but mostly a compilation of terrible sex writing (how many times can one compare a penis to a flower?).

[Nenad Knezevic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just finished the book, the first word that comes to mind is - excessive. It's too lyrical to be considered pornography, too sexually raw and explicit to be seen as fine erotica. Although fictional, perhaps it's best to see it as a testament to an era in gay history when baths served as the place of exploration and self-discovery, the liminal place of both ultimate vulnerability and empowerment. Rumaker sings an ode to these squalid, smelly, dingy establishments, but one can't fail to recognize them as a by-product of symbolical and physical violence of heteronormativity.

[Joseph Longo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite a trip. First published in 1977, this book is a first-person, fictional account of a pre-AIDS day and night in a New York gay bath house. Poetic and graphic. Well detailed. Maybe a bit too obscure or maybe a bit too surreal at times. But insightful. A broad picture of going to the baths in those pre-AIDS days. Not everyone's cup of tea.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a very bold book and very sex positive even now. It’s also extremely funny how the protagonist starts as a bit of a snob and becomes more liberated as the book goes on. It is quite a quick read and maybe a bit repetitive so it doesn’t quite have the same staying power as Dancer From the Dance.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating piece of gay history told in fiction but the language was too flowery for my taste.

[K.D. McQuain · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is very little literature on this topic, and as brief as it was, it was certainly an enlightening read.