La Viotá Comunista

The history of “observation” in sauna research abounds with aporia,

contradictions and flaws reflecting the tensions inherent in the task. At its origin, as it were, stands the figure of R A Laud Humphreys: postgraduate student, Episcopalian pastor, ethnographer, husband and father. Humphreys was the first social scientist to explicitly position himself within a public sex environment as an observational researcher (Humphreys, 1970). In Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places, a reworking of his doctoral dissertation, he described in detail how he studied sexual encounters between men in nineteen public toilets in an unidentified US city (the toilets were known to their sexually active users as “tearooms”, thus the “tearoom trade” of his title). In an unprecedented use of fieldwork observation, Humphreys adopted the role of a lookout or “watch- queen” within the nineteen tearooms, and, from April 1966 to April 1967, was able to observe and record 120 acts of fellatio without disturbing the tearoom “scene”, that is, without taking on an “overtly sexual” role. Or so he claimed. The possibility that his watchful presence, on the alert for the approach of unwanted intruders on behalf of the men engaging in fellatio, might also sexually satisfy exhibitionist urges in those same men is a possibility he never entertained [in print]. Nor did he ever acknowledge the erotic pleasure afforded to him as a researcher in intermittently being able to observe the sex-acts he desired to see:

one might wait for months before observing a deviant act

he wistfully noted, before adding parenthetically

(unless solitary masturbation is considered deviant) (Humphreys, 1975: 6)

—which only begs the question of how masturbation can be “solitary” if it is being overtly observed.

Also in Tearoom Trade, and rarely discussed, if at all, Humphreys reported making observational visits to gay baths in order to compare (Humphreys, 1975: 152-160). He noted, for instance, how picking up a partner takes longer at the baths, but strangely, given that he is so detailed in his accounts of his

observational practice in tearooms, he did not describe the organisation or structure of his observational practice inside gay baths at all. His silence in this matter niggles, given that the lookout or “watchqueen” role he performed within the tearoom scene would have proven redundant within the enclosed world of

the baths. Further, in his discussion of gay baths, he offered, in passing, the telling detail that a man entering a gay bath surrenders his watch and wallet in exchange for a locker key, shower clogs and a towel that is “always too small”. This towel “always too small” suggests a depth of experience and an accumulation of knowledge incommensurate with the passing references he otherwise makes. How Humphreys knew it to be true, that the towel was “always” too small, is not, by him, disclosed (see Simes, 1998: 56, 72).

Following Humphreys, whom they cite, Weinberg & Williams nominated “fieldwork observation and informal interviews” as the key methods used in gathering data for their study, “Gay Baths and the Social Organization of Impersonal Sex” (Weinberg & Williams, 1975: 125), yet offered a mere three sentences outlining what the “fieldwork observation” entailed:

Five gay baths - all relatively new and modern - were studied in cities in the southeastern, midwestern, and western parts of the United States. Observations were conducted at different times (e.g. afternoons and late in the evening, weekdays and weekends) in order to obtain as broad a picture as possible. Fieldnotes were taken in private areas or

immediately after leaving the bath, and observations were interpreted and validated by interviews with bath patrons contacted and interviewed away from that setting.

In reading their summary account, questions arose as to what they actually did: Were the five “gay baths” that were studied intended to offer “a representative sample” of some kind? If so, of what and how? If not, on what basis were these baths selected for study? How were they distributed in relation to the [three, four or five] “cities in the southeastern, midwestern, and western parts of the United States”? Over what period of time were the observations conducted: hours? days? weeks? Was this period of time equally distributed between and reflected across all five gay baths? Did the researchers observe together or separately?

Consistently? If separately, how was parity assured? Were fieldnotes made in collaboration or discretely? How immediate was “immediately after leaving the bath”? Were fieldnotes ever subject to editorial revision? If so, at what stage, for what purpose, and by whom? How many bath patrons were contacted for follow up “informal interviews”? How were they selected? How were their contact details obtained? Was each gay bath studied equally represented by one or more of its patrons? If so, in what ways? If not, what form of sample did these patrons constitute? Where precisely were the “informal interviews” conducted and how were they documented? In what ways were the informal interviews “informal”, and how did this informality inform the research? Were some informal

interviewees more informative than others? In what ways? Were all interviewees offered a standard questionnaire? How were disagreements between

interviewees, if any, resolved, if at all?

Most of these issues, or ones akin to them, were addressed in detail by Humphreys, who mentioned, for example, how an assistant, “a cooperating

respondent”, made “30 systematic observations” on Humphreys’ behalf using the same standard observation sheet that Humphreys had devised and used [and the

pro forma of which he published in Tearoom Trade]. Humphreys then adds that his own observations and those of the respondent generally agreed but notes that the respondent tended to concentrate on the details of the sex that occurred rather than on the interactions leading up to it, and that the respondent’s estimates of participants’ ages amounted to an average lower than Humphreys’ overall (Humphreys, 1975: 33-34). Weinberg & Williams’ account comes nowhere near this methodological aside in the level of detail offered. And the scale of the problem—for it is a problem that they disclose so few of their procedures, a consequence being that their work emerges phantasmagorically, effectively metaphysically, within the scientific scene—becomes clearer when I read ethnographic descriptions penned by them (?) such as the following:

The orgy room is equally crowded. Two males are engaging in anal intercourse on a central bed, surrounded by some 15–20 spectators. Throughout the room, cruising and sexual activity are taking place. When they come into the room, patrons move clockwise around the room, squeezing through the crowd. The room is very hot and humid, with a great deal of traffic and no conversation. (Weinberg & Williams, 1975: 127-128)

What is the status of this passage? As a plain depiction of what Barker has scathingly termed “the quotidian real” (Barker, 1995: 2-3), the description offers its readers [apparently] unadorned information. Yet more questions are raised than resolved: Which of the two scientists observed this scene? Did both? (In the interests of avoiding an ongoing “he/they” entanglement, let’s assume “they” both did.) From where in the room did they observe? What precisely was the form of their “observation”? Were they included among the figures who are described? How did their presence[s] contribute to the event’s spatial and social

construction? Did they, too, on arrival move clockwise through the room? Did they later join the crowd through which new arrivals squeezed? How attractive or repulsive did they appear in [or out] of a towel? And to whom? (Not flippant questions: the terms “attractive” and “repulsive” register kinetic impulses that dynamically inflect erotically charged space.) What necessary tactics, if any, did the researchers deploy in order to maintain professional focus? Did the observed figures present as anonymously and interchangeably as they have been described while they performed their various roles? Were there no “stars” among their number? For how long was this scene observed? Did the observed details present themselves consecutively and evenly to attention as described, that is, as if they constituted a tableau vivant? To what specific purpose, apart from compliance with convention, were the observations, written down later, cast in the present tense? Were the five sentences that constitute the description written initially as printed here or were the notes later polished or revised? If so, by whom, and for what purpose; with what effect in mind? Were similar scenes witnessed on other occasions? In what ways was this witnessed scene typical of the five gay baths

studied, and in what ways was it unique? How did the researchers choose these particular notes for inclusion in their report, and with what intention?

I contrast this passage with one penned by the novelist Rita Mae Brown, also published in 1975. Assisted by her friend Arthur (Bell? see Bell, 1994), Brown claimed to have toured incognito through New York’s Club Baths for several hours on 21 March 1975 wearing a towelling robe, a padded jock strap and a false moustache glued to her upper lip (Brown, 1994). Not the last woman to tour a male bathhouse in the guise of a man (see Kozyra, 1999), her account of what happened in the Club Baths’ orgy room offers a yardstick against which the shortcomings of Weinberg & Williams’ supposedly plain description can be measured:

At last the Maze spills into a dark and unbelievable orgy room. A large square bed, about the size of four double beds placed together, dominates the room, with about four feet of space around it so men have a place from which to observe. The silence amazed me. Seventy-five to one hundred men packed into that room, seven of them on the bed, and not one word was spoken. Heavy breathing, sucking, and a few timid moans were the only noises. Everyone watched the bed where a black man assfucked a white man while another white held his balls waiting for the surge. One couple valiantly tried to pull off sixty-nine without choking each other to death. The two other men on the bed circled each other like wrestlers trying to get the proper hold. [new paragraph] Inching around the bed, I felt like I was sliding by a picket fence - all the erect penises behind me were hitting me in the small of my back. People reach for your genitals as you pass. (Brown, 1994: 72)

Brown offers what Weinberg & Williams withhold: an account of her engaged presence in the scene. The contrast between her orgy room and theirs lies not in the physical properties of the room itself, about which Brown offers more

physical detail anyway, but in the articulation of her experience, or rather, of her knowledge of her experience, which is explicilty foregrounded and which

permeates all that she has to say: the “picket fence” of penises hitting the small of her back (oh, so she’s short), the evocative economy of “the silence amazed me”, and the varying levels of attention she invests in the participants in the scene ranging from the baroque spectacle of the inter-racial trio (not her way of phrasing it) to the “everyone” (75-100 men) watching them.

In the decades since Weinberg & Williams’ article was first published, there has been no published interrogation of their working methods. Quite the reverse. While their paper has been cited as a key reference repeatedly since publication (Styles, 1979; Richwald et al., 1988; Bolton et al., 1994; Santana & Richters, 1998; Tattelman, 1999; Flowers et al., 2000; Tewksbury, 2002), the precise form of their “fieldwork observation” remains obscure. As researchers in the field, their presence, while generally acknowledged, cannot be traced reliably; they, a duo, are reduced absurdly, but conventionally, to the status of a single disembodied, omniscient, Cartesian eye; and the object of their enquiry, “gay baths”, is offered up generically as a naturalistic theatrical spectacle, one laid out benignly as if

beyond a fourth wall, believable [above all] and [seemingly] immediately before the spectator’s equally disembodied gaze. In these respects, their project typifies

bathhouse ethnographies prior to the outbreak of HIV/AIDS (Hoffman, 1968: 48- 52; Bell & Weinberg, 1978: 239-241; Delph, 1978 135-148) with the US gay bathhouse emerging in the discourse (that is, on the stage) of the human sciences during the same period as a coherent cultural form, but with the construction of that form depending in turn on an elision of the means of its production, on a phantasmagoric procedure more readily associated with naturalistic theatre. In 1976, Taylor challenged this practice in part by mapping himself explicitly within his studied field, the clandestine homosexual subculture of Mexico City’s

public bathhouses (Taylor, 1993), but it was the aforementioned Joseph Styles who reversed the trend with his reflexive critique of adopting “outsider” and “insider” roles in “researching gay baths” (Styles, 1979). In Styles, we have the first ethnographer willing to explicitly position himself within the US gay

bathhouse scene. In doing so, he effectively dismantled bathhouse ethnography’s fourth wall. What’s missing in his case is the ethnography that he researched. It remains unpublished [in written form], and like Styles himself, who ominously disappeared from the scene of bathhouse research immediately afterwards, it sadly remains lost.

Following Styles, it was almost twenty years before sauna ethnographies were next attempted (Keogh et al., 1998; Santana & Richters, 1998; Tewksbury, 2002). Whether this was due to the spectre of HIV/AIDS or the embarrassment to science posed by Styles’ good-natured revelations remains unclear. By the time fieldwork observation did resume within the English-speaking world, the protocols of what would properly constitute an acceptable methodology were sedimented. In none of these more recent ethnographies did the researchers participate in sexual activities while observing, or so they stated. In all of them, the observational procedure was described in more detail than before. And in all of them, the research protocols and the physical and social organisation of the venues under investigation imposed major constraints on what could or couldn’t be actually observed or otherwise known, frustrating attempts to produce understandings grounded in verifiable data. Not that this inhibited Richard Tewksbury: