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I always end up with the health nuts as boyfriends and they always want me to change for them. Work out. Quit smoking. Eat right. Be tidy. Nag, nag, nag. This is the story of how one of those little bastards tricked me into doing something good for myself, and how I discovered what has become one of my greatest joys the Young Men's Christian Association.

From their graves, the YMCA's 19th-century founders should be welcoming me to their flock. The organization, after all, has been historically committed to the development of the "whole man." That's still true, but that mandate has broadened in ways the Y's founders would have found difficult to imagine.

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Let's start just like the YMCA did with men's bodies. In particular, this man's body. Those pretty physiques you see on all those pretty boys reflect the old-fashioned virtues of effort and discipline. The YMCA wants you to get virtuous and have one of those bodies, too. I knew when I started dating this sexy medical student named Jacques, who was one of those pretty boys with the pretty bodies, that he was going to want me to get off my lazy fat ass.

It came as expected. The gym request. Jacques wanted me to start working out with him at the downtown YMCA in the Canadian city we both call home. I understood that going to the gym was in itself a good thing and that it was important to play along if I wanted to keep Jacques. Only problem was, I had all these neurotic little fears about gyms, rooted in junior-high-school terror. Post phys-ed, I'd never gone to a gym. I thought any not-explicitly-gay gym would be full of giant, straight muscle guys who hated fags and would snicker at you for bench-pressing 20 pounds.

Jacques took no for an answer for about a day. He said I would really like it when I got into it, that I'd see real physical benefits. Then he said he really didn't mind if I didn't want to go, he would just work out with his old boyfriend. Someday, Jacques-the-brain-surgeon would dominate an operating theater with martial precision. Right now, he wouldn't suffer even my looking at other guys. But he talked about his ex all the time, and I was sure he was still hopelessly in love with him. Manipulative prick. I agreed to go to the gym.

At least he was gentle. We set a date and said that's when we would start going to the Y together. He gave me a week or so to let it sink in.

The day came, and I put on my bravest face. Walking into the changing room with Jacques for the first time was my first real awakening. Yes, there were a lot of big, beefy, intimidating guys at the gym, but they were naked and I got to look at their cocks.

Locker rooms are such erotic places, my postpubescent self discovered. You suddenly feel like you could be in the porn movie you watched the night before. All very nice, but I'm still thinking I'm going to stand out in the gym, and feel a little tense. Then, as Jacques and I walk out of the locker room toward the weight room, I see him. He's this really cute, really fit young man of about 22. He gives me a thorough once-over as he passes by. Jacques notices and says "Oh, yeah, and I forgot to tell you, you're going to get cruised here."

"Really?" I ask with a little too much enthusiasm. He notices that, too.

I expect to find a bunch of Navy Seals having a weight-lifting competition as we walk into the work-out room. But the reality was very different. It looked like a room full of normal people. There were a couple of impressively-chiseled physiques, but mostly everyone looked average. Some were fit, and some weren't. I might fall toward the "weren't" end of the spectrum, but that didn't make me a stand-out at all. Fear evaporated.

Jacques was again merciful. He only made me lift a reasonable amount of weight in short sets. I was managing to get through my first work-out just fine when I saw him again. The cute guy who cruised me earlier was back. He made a point of walking right past us and saying hi to me on his way. "I guess he likes you," Jacques said. The whole work-out thing wasn't so bad, and when we wrapped up, Jacques said it was time for the fun part of the gym ritual a long shower and a sauna.

Problem erection

He wasn't kidding. Standing in under the shower watching hunky guys coming in and out really is fun. The next day, every muscle in my body hurt. Jacques asked how I was feeling, and I lied and told him I felt great. He was glad, because he wanted to go again that day. I tried to look enthusiastic, but in my mind I was cursing him.

I got through the work-out, and back to the fun part. But this time in the shower, I ran into that cute guy that had flirted with me the day before. And naked, oh-my-God was he hot. And he gave me an intense, I'd-do you-right-here-if-I-could look. This was a well-populated shower at the Christian Association, not the gay baths, and I felt suddenly back in junior high, my tumescence a potentially embarrassing problem. I turned the water to cold and hoped that would do it. It didn't. The only way I could control myself was to not look at him. Would Jacques walk in and see? But Mr. Beautiful didn't linger. He finished his shower and left. The problem had resolved itself by the time Jacques came out of the sauna, and I tried to just act casual.

Body beautiful

The YMCA quickly became a normal part of our routine. We would go three or four times a week. Often the cutie was there, and we would discreetly share a stare. Before I knew it, months had gone by. I was lifting twice as much weight as when I started, and my belly was flatter. I had grown to like the gym and my more defined body.

But there were clouds on the horizon, bugs creeping into our love-nest. Jacques insisted we go to the Y up to six times a week, and this being Canada it was getting colder and colder outside. The trip was getting less pleasant every day. Never an athlete, I found the constant working-out a strain. The gym thing seemed less about fitness than some clever way of killing me to collect the insurance money.

Jacques also spent a lot more time talking about his old boyfriend and how much he missed him. He did it constantly. To my face. That bugged me, especially given his jealousy about my wandering eyes. When I found out about this whole weird drama that was going on between the two of them behind my back, I knew my days with Jacques were numbered.

As part of our divorce settlement, I told him I was keeping the little gifts he gave me, and the YMCA. I liked it there, and wanted to keep going without him. So I gave him the boot. Maybe we'd be friends later, but for now separation was what the doctor ordered. I told him to find another gym.

Winks & nods

One night I was home alone thumbing through a gay rag when I saw it. A picture of that guy from the Y half naked, with this article about him. The magazine was featuring local porn stars, and he was their favorite. It turns out that he had put that divine little body of his to work. He did live sex shows on the Internet and was about to make his first Falcon video.

I knew the owner of the Internet sex business and figured he wouldn't mind if I called one of his models. So I did. I told him that I was the guy he had been flirting with at the YMCA and that I was available for a drink if he was interested. He said yes.

This was too good to be true. I lost Jacques, but I ended up with a date with a porn star, compliments of the YMCA. We met at a coffee shop, talked for a while, and then he invited me home to watch a movie.

We never got around to the movie. Sex with him was better because there had been this long period of intense and forbidden cruising first, where we could only look and not touch. Now I got the real thing, and it was worth waiting for.

Porn boy was a lot of fun, but he was definitely not looking for a boyfriend. He had his fun, and moved on. That's alright with me. I enjoyed it, and now I get to say I had a porn star.

It took me some time to get into a routine of going to the YMCA alone. It was a bit uncomfortable at first, but I soon relaxed and discovered the benefits of being there by myself. I could now freely look at anyone I wanted, and I was free to do whatever I wanted. What that came to mean was more cruising and less working out. As I got to understand better the scene's ins and outs, I almost forgot I was at the Y, rather than simply some variation of a bathhouse. But unlike a gay baths, it's all done very subtly and carefully, and mostly without apparent detection by the heteros in the place.

It seemed like almost every day there was at least one guy who I would be drawn to who would respond in some way. Some would simply demonstrate an interest with frequent glances, some with a warm smile. All clear enough signals to the intended recipient, but innocent enough to everyone around so as to go completely unnoticed. It's a completely erotic environment when you're engaging someone, but only you and he know it. Everyone else is off in their own world, mostly unaware of what's going on around them.

Except in the change room. I'll bet most men have some idea that someone might be looking. That means a number of different things. Some of the men aren't happy about it presumably the straight ones or maybe the gay ones deepest in the closet. They get their clothes on and get the hell out of there as fast as they can. But most don't seem to mind the occasional glance or stare, and some even like it. A number of those apparently straight guys are really into themselves and showing off, and they don't seem to care much who the audience is. They're the ones to take a long time in the shower and are slow to get dressed, ensuring everyone who wants it a good look. It turns their crank to have people hot for them, whoever it is.

The gay guys, on the other hand, are having a great time. Naked boys everywhere. There's just no sex, or virtually none. The people who run the YMCA are well aware of the homosexuals in their midst, and have engineered spaces hostile to privacy. There just is nowhere to have sex that you won't get seen and caught. All you can really do on-premises is be playful and look.

No cigar

I came close to having sex in the shower room only once. I had just taken a long sauna and came out to find one other man in the showers. He was handsome, about 30, with a muscular body. It was immediately obvious this was one horny guy. He was in intense cruise mode as soon as I came in. He moved close and stroked his cock several times. Then all of a sudden, he was completely hard and jerking off. He moved closer still, but never touched, and then came quickly. He took a very big chance, but it was over fast, and nobody but me saw anything.

The X and the Y of it

Walking home, I couldn't help but think to myself: "Has this place always been like this?" The answer, I discovered, is no. It used to be better.

A friend suggested I read this book called Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA, written by John Gustav-Wrathall (University of Chicago Press, 1998). The book details the history of the YMCA and cruising. I popped into the local gay bookstore and chatted up the manager as he wrapped my purchase. He had a few stories of his own about the Y.

Gustav-Wrathall's book documents the evolution of the YMCA, which was founded in 1844 in London. It was started by a clerk in a dry-goods establishment who worried about the poor living and working conditions of his fellow employees and the effect on the men's moral and spiritual lives.

The early meetings were "mostly prayer groups and bible studies," Gustav-Wrathall writes. The group proved very popular and spread, landing in North America simultaneously in Boston and Montreal in 1851. The primary focus of the early Y was evangelical, recruiting young men to Jesus Christ. Rather than risk treading on the toes of the established churches, the YMCA eventually developed its signature "Triangle" approach, focusing on the "whole man" mind, body, and spirit. The physical component of the Y grew to be the group's greatest form of outreach. The Y's early membership was made up mostly of young, single, white, middle-class men: clerks, bankers, doctors, and lawyers.

The organization did some outreach to the working classes, but only to make them "good and pious," not to improve their lot in life. The group also did some charitable work, forming ad hoc crisis intervention committees in cases of epidemics and disasters, as well as setting up food lines.

The group's focus may have been to foster "Christian brotherhood," but they did a lot more than that. Men desiring sex with men were a part of the clubs from the beginning. There's evidence of cruising going all the way back to the 1890s, and perhaps further.

Gays were attracted to the YMCA because it was safer to cruise there than other places, like parks or brothels. You could share a room with another man without suspicion. Men could congregate with other men under the umbrella of Christian fellowship.

The Y had a couple of early major scandals over homosexual sex in their facilities, which only served to spread word of the action to other interested men. The Y leadership did next to nothing to stop sex and cruising for fear of more bad publicity, and out of a genuine desire not to bring harm to the men who would be caught or accused. So sex flourished, reaching its heyday from the 1940s through the 60s.

My friend at the gay bookstore confirmed this story. He was a 19-year-old student in the early 60s and struggling to come out. He did a lot of reading and intellectualizing about homosexuality before deciding to drop out of school and go where he thought the boys would be New York City's Greenwich Village.

He found his way to Manhattan's Sloan House YMCA. "Little did I know what I was checking into," he says. He discovered that in fact that's where the boys were. His first clue was when he looked out his window onto the courtyard and saw cute young guys yelling out their room numbers to eager onlookers who would then go up and have sex.

One day in the shower, he found himself next to a rather aggressive Catholic priest who put the moves on him. "That was my first experience with the Catholic Church," my friend said with fond recollection. He worked his way into the cliques by chatting up the guys in the cafeteria. He discovered many older gay men who were happy to explain to him the way things worked, and many young men who were willing to give him practical lessons.

He says a lot of the young guys were long-time residents, and many were friends and lovers by day, and hustlers on 42nd Street by night. He met a hot 19-year-old hustler whom he fell in love with and who took him to the stroll and taught him about the trade. He found that most of his customers were married men in need of queer companionship as much as sex, and he did his best to accommodate them.

Later, while visiting Denver, my friend again stayed at the local YMCA. He walked into the washroom, he told me, to discover a "massive orgy" in progress. There was this studly cowboy putting on a show, and numerous glory holes being put to good use. "When in Rome..." he says of his response to the situation. He says that scene was one of the most erotic moments of his life and, almost 30 years later, it haunts him still.

So if YMCAs used to be these big sex palaces, what happened? Well, in part, gay liberation eclipsed it. In the 70s it became easier to cruise and meet guys in explicitly gay venues. By the time the Village People memorialized it in song, the Y was growing passe. Around the same time, the YMCA's popular reputation was flavored more and more by the homo activity, which was more visible in society at large and thus, ironically, harder for Y management to ignore. So the Y clamped down as never before. The party was over.

But not completely anymore. With gay bathhouses and clubs flourishing for a generation now, perhaps the pressure has been taken off the Y-- both the pressure on the Y be an outlet for gay lust, and the pressure for the Y to stamp it out. If my experience is any guide, the Y is regenerating as gay venue, like a pine forest after long-delayed fire. At the very least, those Christians are still very good at getting young men to take off their clothes. I've got Jacques and Jesus Christ to thank for a few cheap thrills and a better body.

Author Profile:  Joseph Couture

Joseph Couture is a journalist based on London, Ontario.