I wasn’t - which hurt my delicate, 29-year-old ego, even though I would have been terrified had it happened. Quiet conversations, everyone there by choice.Īs I recall, John got propositioned twice.
John and I also spent time in the actual bathhouse part of the bathhouse - in a hot tub - and it was the same. The biggest surprise to me was how quiet it was, considering the number of people having sex. Occasionally, when a couple hooked up, the half-open door would close and that was that. Men were either in the rooms with the doors half-open, lying on single beds and offering themselves for sex, or walking the hallways looking for sex with the men in the rooms.
The bathhouse consisted of a series of winding hallways, marked every few feet by doorways into small rooms with a bed. What would I say if I was propositioned? Would there be orgies? If I saw someone underage being compelled into sexual acts, wouldn’t I have a moral obligation to intervene? The fact you had to check-in and be admitted through a secured door after paying your entry fee and receiving a towel didn’t help. On the night of our own Operation Soap, I was nervous lining up to get into the Romans II bathhouse on Bay St., mainly because I didn’t know what to expect. The police raids - Operation Soap as they were ironically called - were big news, and we both wanted in on the story. Our editors debated sending us, worried that should we be recognized as reporters, we might be assaulted, given the tense relations between the Sun and the city’s gay community at the time. I know, because subsequent to the raids on the four bathhouses in which 300 men were arrested for being found-ins or operators of a bawdy house, I was assigned by the Sun to spend the night in one with fellow reporter John Paton. 5, 1981 that marked the beginning of the Pride movement in Toronto were much ado about little. Looking back on it now, the gay bathhouses police raided on the night of Feb.