Sauna Milano
I visited Milan's biggest gay sauna, Royal Hammam, during the Winter Olympics for their end of weekend cruising party.
As I walked across Milan that night they were busy building the Winter Olympics. Pot-bellied Dads in overralls holding power drills were standing at the tops of step ladders, swearing at each other in Italian with ciggies in their mouths. Giant letters that spelled A P E R O L were leaning at odd angles against some sort of basilica outhouse. “What the fuck are we doing with these?” an old man cried. “The VIP bar” another yelled, pointing at a plywood cube that a teenager was frantically painting orange with a roller brush. “Cavolo!” another shouted, which means “cabbage”. Italians shout the world cabbage when they’re annoyed.
I understand the tiniest bit of Italian, being a quarter myself, but I don’t speak it. My Mum is an artist and she was quite a “hands off” parent when it came to teaching me things that might be useful in life. She taught me how to be scared of spiders, how to draw cowslips with chalk, and how to see that my Dad was a twat. I’m also pretty hot on Bananarama lyrics.
Italy’s 27 different types of police force are proudly manning the streets.
There’s the Polizei, The Securita, The Polizei Locale, the Caribinieri, and maybe a few Castello guards chucked in for good measure. The Polizei Locale have the coolest cars in faded blue, they look like 1970s Micro-Machines. But the Caribinieri are the sexiest - tall young men with little black beards, massive arses and Craig David beanie hats. Italy is a nation obsessed with crime, the curation of it and the controlling of it, the entire peninsula is playing cops and robbers at all hours.
If you turn a TV on in Italy I bet there’ll be a police drama on the screen, they have tonnes - “Coliandro” “Blood On Rome” “Inspector Montalbamo” and one that is simply called “Donna” which I assume follows a police woman of the same name.
In the gay cafes there’s talk that Mariah Carey is here in Milan. Rumours are spreading around. Someone who works at the helipad saw her name written down, there was a booking to shampoo a dog, a twink who works at the Four Seasons saw a request for white chocolate ice cream. Few people care about ice hockey or curling, but Mariah Carey is big news. Just thinking about her makes me want to stop what I’m doing and stream her. My drag agency Rent-a-Queen has a Mariah Carey impersonator and she was booked by Netflix for their Christmas bash.
Milan stirs my heart. The gated villas along Via Togni are so hauntingly beautiful, I steal glimpses through chinks in long pistachio curtains and inhale with wonder at the busks and lamps. I wonder if the owners appreciate these homes as much as I would. How tenderly I would care for an apartment in Milan. I would spend all day preparing sauce, attending to my vines on the terrace, pinning boys down against marble or dusting my scandalous Neapolitan library perhaps. But for now I am an unknown man, lost in the middle of his life, dependent on gay bars and apps for cheap thrills with no obvious way out. As the old Italian men pass me in the street they look at my battered Nikes and know immediately that I am no-one, I’m just a piece of shit eating their tomatoes and fucking their sons.
I have an Italian friend, Gianni, who lives in Richmond and designs uniforms for Gordan Ramsay. He said to me “Darling, I hope you’re going to dress up for the Italians. I know you think this tracksuit is an East London vibe or whatever but the Italians will just think you’re Albanian trash” He’s not wrong. When I enter a cafe a silence settles, people quickly eye up their escape routes, but then I speak in warm loopy English and the diners audibly relax, the waitress skips off merrily to find me a more expensive menu and a small basket of extortionate bread sticks is placed on top of my head.
I am walking through sheet rain now to Milan’s largest gay sauna - “Royal Hammam” - I’m getting wet on my way to getting even wetter. It’s their Sunday end of week party, for men who didn’t get laid at the weekend, who are still too high to sleep perhaps. I like the word hammam. Turkish for bath house it literally means “heat” in Arabic. It’s a word that also sounds like a bit of a gay fiasco, like boys being eaten by PacMan - “ha-mam-mam-mam”.
I pass beneath the train tracks and turn onto Via Plezzo, a long graffiti-splattered back street. The painted eyes of rappers and aliens follow me as I pass a couple fucking in the back of a small car, Missoni heels against black glass. I’ve stepped off the edge of the guidebook now, into the suburbs of Udine. The handsome townhouses have been replaced by speckled concrete and wide streaks of rust, the city’s forgotten pizza crust.
Royal Hammam is housed in a purpose-built complex with a heated outdoor pool and a bar which doubles up as a cafe, lounge and discotheque. There are two floors of areas set aside for having sex in various set-ups. Nextdoor to the sauna is a gay rave, ingeniously called “BOTOX” and so the Milanese lads leave the club horny on Sunday morning and flop into the pool which is open 24 hours over the weekend.
The staff at Royal Hammam are famously unpleasant with the exception of one elderly Filipino who is unwaveringly gracious. The sauna is owned by a Romanian clan, and if you read the Google reviews for Royal Hammam I think the kindest calls them “disgustingly rude”. But they have a hit product and they know it. What beats a cocktail and a blow job by a heated pool for 15 euros?
The trick is to teach yourself to love how rude the staff are and see it as authentic gay sauna charmlessness. After your twentieth visit the staff may begin to treat you begrudgingly and warily as a tepid associate, but there’s no guarantee. The locals joke about how cold the staff at Royal Hammam are, but as a tourist you are vermin, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.
As I approach the sauna gate, I take a deep breath, press the buzzer, and force myself to smile, imagining the devastated expression inside. The main receptionist is this bulky tattooed guy who looks like Bill Tarmey. After pretending I’m invisible for five minutes while folding a post-it note into a tiny swan he turns his head to face me with an expression like I just shat on his dining room table or asked him to rewrite his will leaving everything to Latoya Jackson.
“Entry for one please” I say in my daintiest voice.
“EHHHHH???” he says, as if I just spoke in Malagasy while hopping on one foot.
“Can I err... Come in please?”
“WE MAYBE CLOSE IN TWO HOURS!” he yells, as if I’m not standing right in front of him but am perhaps on the faraway shore of Lake Como.
“That’s fine” I say. Two hours is actually quite a long time. Imagine a feature length film in which all that happens is a flabby English slut bums a man called Fabio and then washes his hair. But they don't close anyway, they're open until Monday. Maybe they technically close and then open again and just allow their regulars to rollover.
“CARTA!!! ARCO CARTA!!!” he screams, slapping the desk.
This is the gay ID card that you need in Italy - the “ARCO” card - to enter certain establishments. Some say it’s Catholic corruption, others say it’s a police thing. I reckon it’s just Donatella Versace being nosy. She’s lying on a chaise longue at Villa Gesu watching the proceedings on her iPad while naked youths drop pancetta into her mouth.
The ARCO card can catch some tourists out. If you don’t have one they’re supposed to sell you one for 20 euros but if they don’t fancy the look of you they might just say that they’ve ran out.
As a professional homosexual, I’ve come prepared. I never leave the house without my Waterstones loyalty card or my Italian gay mafia paperwork. I actually remember when ARCO cards replaced ARCI cards some years ago, a major administrative reshuffle that definitely wasn’t part of a mafia rift.
I place it on the desk and he hisses before banging a locker key down, narrowly missing my radial artery. He presses the buzzer. I’m in. He’s given me a locker right in front of the CCTV. It’s nice to know that even when someone hates your guts they’re still curious to see your willy. I make sure to put on a strip tease for him, pulling each sock off slowly with a Marilyn Monroe pout.
I came to this very sauna for the first time in 2011 with my first partner Oliver. There’s a ghost of twink me being rimmed on a lilo by Liberace just a few metres away. Back then the gay scene was a novelty, I was just popping in while plotting some major career in magazines that never happened. I had no idea I’d become entrenched in this life of thin towels, haunted tiles and douche hoses - but twenty years later and here I am.
Two guys in the changing room are fucking at the end of a locker cul-de-sac, the bottom kneels on a bench, holding onto two towel pegs while the top slides back and forth absent-mindedly picking his teeth. Twinks hold fort at the mirror doing their make-up. One waves a small brush and says matter-of-factly to his friend “Guerlain è il migliore” - Guerlain is the best! - and his friend shrugs “Kiko funziona per me” - Kiko works for me! Men have to reach around them awkwardly to use the hair dryer but the twinks don’t move an inch, mirror space is one of their few rights. There’s something so fantastic about boys in towels applying lipgloss at 1am, and I love their little world of beauty products, there’s something very male about how they collect and compare, no different really to a man in a shed with his nuts and bolts. As I get older I catch myself just wanting to congratulate femme twinks, or to say something naff and empowering like “You are stronger than any police man. Don’t ever forget that” - but they would just look right through me or laugh.
The sauna party is in full swing. The DJ is playing Raffaela Carrà, a disco ball is going around, and there’s a pretty serious lighting rig. A gaggle of men wearing nothing but dangly earrings and Gucci flip flops are cackling and whipping each other with brown towels, or wearing them on their heads striking ballroom poses, clutching each other in fits of giggles, spilling Campari and grappa everywhere, a triple measure down every arse crack. I make my way past them to check out the honesty library on a low shelving unit. ‘Rainbow Six’ by Tom Clancy of course, ‘How To Use Photoshop’, a generous spread of Umberto Eco, and Lee Child who gets everywhere.
I love the wallpaper, a cloudy mint ice cream colour, like an early 90s condolences card. The sofas are long white pleather affairs, the sort of thing Mary J Blige might put on Facebook Marketplace, and the coffee tables have these submerged vitrines, glass display cases, which someone has painstakingly arranged rose petals in, interspersed with those little glass pebbles that were trendy in the 90s. At the bar there’s a glass stand with pastries and pizza slices. When Monday strikes the boys can have a slice of cake for breakfast before calling their carriages back to the mountains.
The bar guy has his feet up on one of the sofas and is busy watching a Bruce Willis film, he looks surprised when someone taps the bell and wants a drink, but when he pours them they’re strong, you can tell he was hot once and his big tanned pecs are visible through his dirty loose vest, there’s no knowing what he’s survived but he has the face of someone who’s seen a lot of things. He writes down people’s orders against their locker numbers on a MacBook, you pay when you leave, and the drunk regulars have fun trying to slide their drinks onto each other’s tabs, “I’m Number 60” one squawks “No you’re not” another wails “you’re number 09 and your Dad’s a whore!” and they all laugh, knocking back their Creme de Menthe. In the background Bruce Willis blows a building up with some hand grenades and the CGI flames are reflected in everyone’s wet backs.
The disco is watched suspiciously by the escorts, cross-eyed hotties in fake Armani caps who lean against a window ledge with spliffs. You can tell when they’re gay-for-pay because their bodies tell the story of a straight boy’s gym routine - all shoulders and no ass. A terrible remix of Fate Of Ophelia comes on, the Italians all cheer and clap, but that’s my cue to go for a swim.
Around the large pool, naked boys lie in the dark on sun loungers smoking and sipping Morettis, whispering to each other. If someone swims a length a table of old men cheer and sarcastically clap, and they play a game trying to land peanuts on the swimmers’ backs. Every pool corner holds preludes to sex, newly paired-off couples kissing intensely and clasping each other. Nothing beats being held by a hot man in a swimming pool. In England a sauna would tell you off for making out in the pool area, or they’d soon send you on your way if you passed out, but in mainland Europe it’s quite acceptable to have sex anywhere or just fall asleep on a sunlounger for two days, they just mop around you.
Old men sit in the shadows of the jacuzzi room like senators, watching the daily catch. They’ve seen it all before and yet they keep coming back. For some gay dears the sauna is a habit, like turning on the TV after dinner, it’s a social blanket, a wet church.
A Moroccan escort sidles up next to me in the jacuzzi, putting an arm around my shoulder. His conversation is purely market research. Where am I from? What hotel am I in? What do I do for a job? I lie and say that I do PR for Carolina Herrera, the lie just comes out of nowhere and I try not to laugh as my own words surprise me.
“Ferrari?” he asks, tilting his head confused
“Yeah, Ferrari. Caroline just bought me a Ferrari” I reply and he looks doubtful while cupping my balls underwater. To shake things up a bit I ask him who his favourite Italian singer is.
He says that he doesn’t know any singer. But I press him on it.
“You must listen to music” I say “What do you listen to?”
He thinks for a minute looking around disinterestedly to see if there’s someone better to pursue. Privately I’d made a risky dare with myself - if he says Andrea Bocelli I’ll hire him for a shag and pay whatever it costs on my work credit card.
But then he says “Marra-Cash”, which is a relief because I don’t fancy bottoming after that small mountain of tagliattelle. I make a mental note of the name and Google it later to find a Sicilian rapper who looks like he could fit his gay fanbase inside a Fiat.
“Mine is Marco Mengoni” I say back, but he’s already left.
Later on I see him again, he walks up behind me and squeezes my ass this time.
“You want sex. You pay?” he whispers into my hair.
“I think I’m going to have a Cornetto in the cafe” I say “I only brought money for that, it’s expensive running a Ferrari, and I need to call Carolina” I say. “Where you from?” he says. “I already told you. Melton Mowbray." “What is Melting Mobile?” he asks. “I’ll see you later Youssef!”
There is one boy here who is astonishingly beautiful, about 24 and with the body of a Narnia centaur. His dark blonde curly hair has its own orbit of ghostly old men following him everywhere, hoping he might be into leathery jowls. The second hottest boy has clocked him too and it’s only a matter or time until they disappear into a private cabin to scroll TikTok in tandem.
Sometimes in a gay sauna you want to stop the deluded old men, slap them across the cheek and say “Baby - get a grip, it’s not gonna happen! You could be his granddad!” But the truth is, it does happen. A mouth is a mouth and attention is addictive. Hot Boy takes photos on self-timer for his Instagram, positioning his phone on a plastic chair, there’s something awe-inspiring about how he doesn’t cringe doing this in the presence of strangers, but he’s hooked in to his own fake fame. He probably has more followers than Kelly Rowland. She’s probably one of them.
He stands on the steps that go down to the swimming pool, making sure that his eight pack is above water level at all times. He strokes his own nipples and he can’t stop looking at his reflection in the glass doors. We look with him. He’s so vain I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled out a waterproof torch and just stood there shining it at himself. Or if he went back into the changing rooms and re-emerged with a headpiece - a giant flashing arrow pointing down. Imagine going to bed and that was your body under the duvet, to be that beautiful must be so wonderful and strange. I keep meaning to live in a gym and get super ripped, but first … Cornetto time!
At the bar I’m invited into a threesome with a Peruvian twink called Mauricio and an Italian man called Marzo who says he works in a biscuit factory. I don’t even ask him, but he’s endearingly proud of the range of Italian biscuits that he plays a part in creating.
The private cabins are slightly too small for my length, imagine if IKEA released a line of Catholic confession booths and then filled them with cut-to-size beige gym mats. I must kneel with my thighs spread. Me and Mr. Biscuit share a cigarette over Mauricio’s back, occasionally flipping him round. The cabins are open-topped and men stand on beer crates to peer over the walls. Mauricio looks at me as if to say “Are they a problem for you?” and I just shrug. He makes lots of noise which attracts a crowd.
Later Mauricio holds my hand in the dark between our sun-loungers and he strokes my leg absent-mindedly with his toes. The elderly Filipino cleaner is here pruning some potted orchids that nobody has ever noticed. As Mauricio climbs onto my sun lounger and kisses my neck, I watch the cleaner fish the peanuts out of the pool with his net, his sad eyes, his stooped back.
By 6am the place has become two tribes, a wild party in the back, and then the cafe which has become the living dead. The music has stopped and men snore on sofas everywhere waiting for the Metro to start up again. Mr Biscuit has invited me to visit him in his town, he lives by a Lindt factory not far from Lake Maggliore. I say Wednesday perhaps. I’ve always wanted to see Lake Como, where Gwen Stefani filmed Cool. Even though it’s February, I don’t know when I’ll next have the chance.
I float on the pool and watch rain streak down the glass roof. I try to copy some of the poses from the sketches that I saw in the Da Vinci museum, I watch the circles rippling out from my floating body like pencilwork. Da Vinci knew something we've forgotten. The conversation between our mental, digestive and sexual centres.
It’s sunrise and I can hear distant sirens. Little boys who never grew up, driving around me in ever widening circles with their special hats and their little bats, and their flashing cars that go “nee naa - nee naa”
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Last year I wrote about Sauna Alexander in Athens, you can read the piece here, called Greek Alphabet, until February 20th, at which point it will be a year old and only available to my paid subscribers.
This was such a joy to read. A very well rendered look into Milan!
Brilliant. So well written.