Man's Country: More Than a Bathhouse

by Owen Keehnen

When Chuck Renslow opened Man's Country in 1973, he wanted it to be someplace special—and he succeeded. The bathhouse was a part of Chicago gay life for 45 years—serving a number of changing roles, supporting the larger community, and spawning countless memories. Rudolph Nureyev ran naked down the halls shouting, "Who wants to swing on a star?" Puppeteer Wayland Flowers held court in the TV lounge in nothing but a towel with his puppet, Madame, on his hand. Generations of gay men explored their sexuality in this "oasis of pleasure" with amenities that included a snack bar, a retail store, a wet area and whirlpool, an orgy room, a gym, specialty rooms, a rooftop deck and garden, and the largest steam room in the Midwest. The Music Hall stage at Man's Country was a venue for such talents as Divine, the Village People, Judy Tenuta, Charles Pierce, and Rusty Warren. When there wasn't a show, there was dancing. Some men checked in to Man's Country for six hours, and others came for the weekend. Man's Country was a place to let your freak flag fly. When the iconic bathhouse fell to the wrecking ball in 2018, the Man's Country story came to an end, but not the legend. The stories and the memories will endure. Chuck Renslow always said he wanted Man's Country to be more than a bathhouse, and it was much more. With chapters on the techno-dance club BISTRO TOO & the leather bar, the CHICAGO EAGLE.

152 pages, Paperback

Published August 20, 2023

About the author

Writer and historian Owen Keehnen has had his fiction, essays, erotica, reviews, columns and interviews appear in dozens of magazines and anthologies worldwide. Keehnen is the author of the humorous gay novel Young Digby Swank (Wilde City Press, 2013), the gay novel The Sand Bar (Lethe Press, 2012) and the horror novel Doorway Unto Darkness (Dancing Moon Press, 2010). He also recently released the reference book The LGBT Book of Days (Wilde City Press, 2013). Along with Tracy Baim, he co-authored Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011) as well as Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). Over 100 of his interviews with various LGBT authors and activists from the 1990s have been collected in the book We’re Here, We’re Queer (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). He recently finished editing For My Brothers, the Mark Abramson memoir about life and love in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He co-edited Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago’s LGBTQ Community 1977–1997 (Firetrap Press, 2009), was a contributor to Gay Press, Gay Power (Prairie Avenue Publications, 2012) and wrote ten biographical essays for the coffee table history book Out and Proud in Chicago (Surrey/Agate, 2008). Keehnen was on the founding committee and executive board of The Legacy Project and is currently a contributing biographer for the LGBT history-education-arts program focused on pride, acceptance, and bringing proper recognition to the courageous lives and contributions in LGBT history. He was the author of the Starz books, a four-volume series of interviews with gay porn stars. He has had two queer monologues adapted for the stage and served as co-editor of the Windy City Times Pride Literary Supplement for several years, was a co-founder of the horror film website RacksAndRazors.com, and a featured poet in Wilde City’s 2013 collection Falling Awake. He lives in Chicago with his partner, Carl, and his two ridiculously spoiled dogs, Flannery and Fitzgerald. He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2012.

Reviews

[Mitchell Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful and important reminder of the upkeep of queer spaces.

[Jays · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly niche book about a specific business run in a particular city during a limited time. As such, your enjoyment of the book is going to entirely depend upon how much of your lived experience overlapped with that very narrow lane of existence. I happen to have a pretty good amount of that overlap, so all of that is to say I really enjoyed this book and reading it made me feel all manner of things from nostalgia to sadness to regret to wonder to just pure joy. If you're not someone who ever experiences Man's Country or Bistro Too or the Eagle, it's totally fine to feel very differently.

All that is to say this isn't really a biography of Man's Country or of Chuck Renslow as much as it is a remembrance or an appreciation of both. Keehnen focuses his attention on trying to convey the experience of being in these places and what it felt like to go to them more than trying to recount how they came to be or provide a narrative or timeline of their existence. This is why I say if you didn't experience them yourself, your interest may be limited (unless your interest is purely academic, in which case you've got lots of great primary anecdotal and qualitative data to peruse here).

Also though I'm not sure if Keehnen intents this or not, reading it made me think about all the ways that modern iterations of Bistro Too or the Eagle or Man's Country are failing to live up to their reputations. I'm not sure a discussion about how today's queer spaces should be in dialogue with older ones that are no longer around is within the scope of what Keehnen was writing about here, but boy would that make for an interesting inclusion.

Particularly in the LGBTQ world, it's a constant struggle to not fall victim to the idea that the party was always better 10 minutes before you got there. Nostalgia hides a lot of flaws. That said, it's awfully hard to read about how fascinating and unique a place like Man's Country was and not wish it was still around or that the amazing antics of its heyday don't sound a whole hell of a lot more fun than most of the bland options we have today.

[TA Inskeep · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was eager to read this because of its subject matter, but it’s surprisingly poorly written and not at all edited. A real disappointment.