Baños San Cristobál and Baños Finisterre
Two Flavors of Gay Bathhouse Culture in Mexico City
“It comforts me to write letters: they remind me that there is someone listening on the other end. . . I’m writing; I invite you to my life.”
Happy Thursday and Thanks so much for Subscribing.
I’m pausing the quarantine series, for a bit, in order to share some personal experiences I’ve had in places that I cover on the website www.traceyparkertravel.com.
This piece is half travel blog description of Baños San Cristobál, a Mexico City bathhouse, and half creative non-fiction inspired by real events that took place there. A complementary piece, in the same format, about Baños Finisterre, will follow shortly.
In Mexico City, the winter turns to spring in an instant. One night you are shivering beneath your hand woven blankets that you bought in a Mercado Del Artisanias in Michoacan, an electric blanket, and your Baltimore Ravens ski cap that always gets compliments on the streets, but especially comes in handy on winter nights like these.
The next night you can find yourself leaving your windows open as long as you can before you realize that you’re literally letting smoke, fumes, dust, and pollen inside and and onto your furniture, just to let some of the hot air out of the apartment.
Days and nights like these I find myself dreaming of the Mexican beaches, all of which are at least 5 hours away from Mexico City, or any other type of water to escape the dry heat of February, March, and most of April.
One of the most convenient ways to satisfy this craving is to go to a neighborhood bath house. Stripping down naked and covering yourself with the thin piece of fabric they give you, calling it a towel would be too generous, while you wander between cold water that falls out of shower heads, and hot steam that rises from the floor of the steam rooms, while others greet you with their eyes, is invigorating any time of year.
Being from the East Coast of the United States, it actually feels counter intuitive to go to a steam room to escape the heat. But the refreshment I always feel when leaving these places has forced me to reconsider. What I’ve concluded it that it’s actually the dryness that you’re escaping as well as the intense sun.
The hot and cold contrast has always been a delight to my senses. I first discovered how therapeutic this was at Spa World, a Korean Spa/Theme park, outside of Washington DC, and one of the few places I found, in my hometown, where discreet male on male cruising still takes place.
Mexico City has its own bathhouse culture and a large Korean immigrant population, but unfortunately I have not found a Korean style Spa in Mexico City, like they have in so many suburbs of American cities.
I am almost certain that there are Korean families who have built private facilities in their homes and I’m dying to get an invitation one day.
My favorite Mexican Spa, Banos San Ciprián, in La Merced, has fallen on difficult times lately. While it’s always been a pain in the ass to get to, the closure of the Line 1 of the Metro makes it 10 times harder and people just aren’t doing it.
Banos Roccío, my favorite for community, and for prepared Mexican drinks, has also become inaccessible because of this closure. I can’t wait for them both to return to their former glory, and the construction was supposed to be done in January, so I really have no idea when this will be. It could be weeks, it could be years.
After living in Mexico for 5 years I have developed instincts and the ability to predict certain things, but if i’m being honest, this construction schedule is far beyond my ability to predict.
So I was forced to choose between two baños, neither of which I had been to since 2021, Baños Finisterre or Baños San Cristóbal.
Baños Finisterre is where I ended up going, but first I’d like to tell the story of my only visit to Banos San Cristobál. I feel that the two places offer a contrast between two sides of the gay experience of Mexico City.
Baños San Cristobál was my first choice, but it’s just so far away. It takes at least an hour to get there. Four more hours and I could be at the beach. It is located in the enormous municipality of Ecatepec de Morelos, known colloquially as Ecatepec, north of Mexico City.
If you meet a lot of guys in Mexico City, you’ll inevitably meet several from Ecatepec. It has a terrifyingly dangerous reputation but my experience there was actually quite chill and never once did I worry about my safety.
Instead what I found was a clean, nicely maintained, steam room facility that was well attended, on a Tuesday, by men of all ages.
When you go to a neighborhood baño outside of the city center of Mexico City, you’ll find a gay experience without the gay community. In the United States, these things go hand in hand, but in Mexico City, things work a little differently.
Most Mexican saunas have two separate steam rooms. One where the steam comes out thick and the lights are off, and it is only lit by either a small basement Window, up in the ceiling, or sometimes a crack in the wall that lets in a beam of light that often illuminates glossy sweaty brown bodies fucking.
The second of the two steam rooms keeps all of the lights on, it is often more hot, but less steamy, and used by men who really want to bathe and talk on plastic lounge chairs while nursing cold beverages with ice cubes that you can watch melting and hear crackling under the effects of the heat.
The downtown saunas have ambiente in both the dark and bright steam rooms. Sure there is more ambiente in the dark ones but even in the bright ones, most everybody has their cock out.
Ambiente is a noun that means gay male cruising. If a bath house has ambiente, it means that there will be male cruising and there will be sex happening in the open. If there is no ambiente, it means it is a bathhouse for the community and sexual behavior will probably lead to being asked to stop or to leave.
Baños San Cristobál is one hour away from downtown Mexico City. Here the bathhouses are not so plentiful, and the gays and straights have to share the one bath house in the Pueblo.
One of the really cool things about Mexico City is the ability to use different spaces to express different parts of yourself. Gays can go to Baños Finisterre to be part of the gay community. Trans women can sit with their boobs and cocks out in the steam room and people will talk to them as if they’ve seen this a million times.
In Baños San Cristobál gay men go there to be gay men on the downlow. Here, the gay experience takes place behind a wall of normality, and a charade of spontaneity and surprise. Is it at these places where you really never know what to expect.
I arrived with my friend, Elihu. Elihu is a young guy who lives in Ecatepec and loves the bath house scene. We met in a bath house in downtown Mexico City. We had kept in touch and he had promised to introduce me to his neighborhood bathhouse and its unique dynamic.
Upon entering, there was a family vibe in the place. Outside of the two steam rooms there is a common shower area. In the corner there is a large hot tub and children were playing inside of it. Their father, a muscled dark skinned Mexican man in his twenties supervised them from across the room as he talked with some other men his age.
Daddy and his friends were tattooed, muscled and clad in small towels. They seemed like a group you would see in soccer uniforms on a Sunday in a park playing soccer or football as they would call it.
They were the kind of guys who you would look at and try to imagine naked, as they were here today, their wet skin shining and their forests of pubic hair poking out of their tiny towels teasing the onlookers and igniting our desire.
The gay cruising area was limited to only the darker steam room. Once you opened this door you were in a different world. As I mentioned before, it was clean, dark, only slightly illuminated by whatever light came in through the small rectangle window that touched the ceiling.
Behind the cruisy sauna was a cruisy shower area. This was separate from the common family shower area, where heterosexual men and their young children stayed.
The cruisy showers area had a secret passage kind of vibe to it. I never read The Chronicles of Narnia, but I remember there being something about a magic world behind a wardrobe. That was the vibe back here.
There was a doorway that opened into a small, two story shower area that served as a maze for more cruising. This area was brightly illuminated by natural light that poured in through frosted glass block walls that faced a Spanish style indoor patio which probably served as a mechanical room. You couldn’t see outside through the windows.
If you’re a suburban American kid, like me, you are used to windows facing out, but in big Spanish cities, the windows usually face into a court yard offering lots of natural light without having to give up any privacy to the people looking right back in.
The cruising in the steam room seemed to follow a script. Everything started under the pretext of relaxing inside of the dark sauna. Men would look, then touch, suck, and seduce one another in the dark steam room until an encounter popped off between two or more men. At that point most everybody in the steam room would crowd around and watch.
Because when something pops off here, it really is something to see.
Once the guys became self conscious, they’d climb their way out of the steamy sweaty pile of onlookers to search for some promise of privacy in the cruisy shower area.
Others would skip the dark steam room and stay directly in the shower area the entire time, pacing up and down the narrow, wet, and slippery staircase, looking for a quick fuck without the foreplay.
With all of this sex happening it became easy to take it all for granted and maybe even get bored. But suddenly, somebody entered who was so beautiful, he reminded us all of the desire that brought us here.
He entered the dark sauna completely wet, after a shower outside. His thick black hair was slicked back in perfect rows. Everything seemed in perfect order from his shoulders to his two muscled pecs, to his abdominal muscles, that lead down to a v shaped lower torso where more of that shiny black hair exploded from beneath his towel.
The steam dripped off his shiny muscled contours and the light, from the windows, reflected off his body and onto our souls.
The other men began to devour him and he generously allowed them, one by one, as the rest watched in amazement from behind. From time to time he would get up and walk around.
At one moment I found myself sitting down and relaxing, my eyes glued to his every move. I saw my friend, Elihu, enter from the general area. He quickly walked straight through the dark sauna, headed straight for the cruisy shower area behind.
It was as if Elihu was making a conscious effort not to participate in the collective admiration of this adonis. Elihu was also a young guy who got plenty of attention because of his age. I’m sure he had been in the position of his counterpart many a time. As had I, many moons ago.
I noticed that the adonis, who later I learned was named Carlos, subtly looked at my friend with a desire that I had not seen him express toward anybody. He seemed to be the object of our desire and I hadn’t even considered that he too could desire someone as we were desiring him. Somewhere inside of me I knew that Carlos and Elihu were going to play around. I wanted to help the process along.
I caught up to Elihu, and whispered into his ear that I saw Carlos checking him out. But it was as if my friend already knew. Like they had already made plans on another plane of existence. He gave me his ear, listened to my advice, and continued walking around the sauna.
Everything happened so quickly from there. Carlos took his cock out of the mouth of whatever lucky mouth it was inside of, stood up, and for the first time you could see his entire hard cock leaning down from its own weight, but curving up and looking to devour my friend. They exchanged a few words to each other before they retreated to the cruisy shower area.
I decided that it was a good time for a joint. I went outside of the steam room into the enormous corridor of changing rooms that was at least double the size of the actual steam room. There was an area in-between where staff worked folding towels, making drinks, charging people before they exited, etc.
While the staff at most of these baños are ancient old guys who seem to have been working there for ages, San Cristobál has a team of young, bright, smiling, masculine guys, all in polo shirts that framed their little square muscled pecs, covered their brown arms but stopped short to show off the bottom of their biceps.
I asked one of them if I could have a lighter to light my joint and offered to share it with him.
He told me No he didn’t have a lighter, No I could not smoke in this building, and No he did not want to smoke with me.
He did it all with a big smile on his face and while looking ever seductively into my eyes. He said everything in a way that made me say, without thinking,
“Ok joven. No te preocupes.”
I walked away from the interaction a little disoriented by what had just happened.
Before I could even begin to process it, another one of the staff approached me with a lighter and the master key to all the doors.
“Fumamos.”
It still amazes me how in Spanish they can fit so much meaning into one word.
Now I really didn’t know what was going on.
I had to consider the possibility that he wanted to do more than smoke weed with me in my tiny changing room that was already half full with my and Elihu’s belongings.
But it would have been naive to get my hopes up.
And if he did hook up with me, would this be a trap to demand money after we were done?
I did a quick risk calculation in my head
[1- (the chances that he wants to actually hook up with me)]*(The chances that I can talk myself out of paying after we fuck)*(the chances that he will charge a price so low that I’d happily pay in an instant) = Go for it!
He opened the door like it was the door to his own apartment. This was a big part of his job. They don’t give out individual keys in Mexican baños. A member of the staff always carries the master around his neck and you have to ask him to let you into your changing room each time you need to access it.
The confidence of this guy was oozing out of his every pore. He entered first and, as I followed him inside he had already begun hanging Elihu’s and my jackets on the wall hangers, lining up our shoes along the floor under the bench, stacking our bags on top of the shoes, so that there was now plenty of room for him to sit down on the bench and tap the area beside him while he looked at me and said
“Sientete guapo.”
I took a deep breadth and exhaled as I sat down next to him. Our energies fed off of one another. We adopted the straight, masculine, stoic vibe. It came naturally to both of us. Somehow it fit the situation.
My anxiousness that I felt outside of the changing room disappeared and suddenly I felt like I was sitting with my best friend.
This is called ‘confianza’ in Spanish.
I was still in deep relaxation after spending the past few hours in the steam room.
I pulled a joint out of my jacket, hanging neatly on the wall, and he handed me his lighter. I lit up the joint and soon the changing room was just as foggy as the steam room. We both nursed the joint in the masculine technical way that I’ve noticed so many take on when they smoke weed.
The weed was making me really high, and I could tell that for him, it was just putting him back to normal.
He passed the weed back to me. I had lost count of how many times we’d passed it back and forth. I told him that I had smoked enough but made it clear to him that he was free to keep on smoking as much as he wanted. He spit so that his spit would land right on the part of the joint that was on fire. The joint made a faint hissing sound as it absorbed his lougie.
His name was Joel.
He got up and placed the joint on the metal ledge beneath the mirror. He looked at himself cockily in the mirror. He turned around and faced me. I was still sitting down. His groin was immediately in front of my face. The end of his penis began to show itself, making his loose pants rise up in a dome which seemed very far away from where I knew it began.
I sat there patiently, I don’t remember what part of him I devoured with my eyes in the time between when he unbuckled his belt and quickly pulled out his penis.
I went ahead and grabbed my poppers quickly, breathed in, and opened my mouth. He inhaled the poppers too. His penis got softer so that it could fit into my mouth without any trouble.
I pressed my lips up against his thick pubic hairs that bursted out of his lower torso. My entire mouth was filled with his thick salty cock. I just breathed in and out and focused on how my breadth covered every inch of it. I could feel how the sensation was causing goosebumps to break out off over his skinny muscled torso. I started to feel his nipples.
Somebody began banging on the door.
“Joel!”
“Que,” he replied
“Que haces.”
“Que te importa?”
“Dame la llave puto.”
“No me estes chingando.”
In one motion he removed the lanyard off of his neck and threw the keys over the door so that they slapped the other side with just a little bit of sassy attitude.
I loved this guy! His cock was still inside my mouth.
The next thing we knew the door was being unlocked and soon Elihu, Carlos, and the guy with the key were all looking at me with Joel’s cock in my mouth. We all started laughing.
I continued with the fellacio, partly becasue I was enjoying it so much and you’d have to pry it out of my cold dead hands to get me to stop, and also to see exactly how much this scene would progress given the new development.
But he took his cock out of my mouth, placed it sideways across his lower torso, so that he could zip up his pants and buckle his belt, all while it was still hard. He gave me a wink, and stepped out of the dressing room. The smoke followed him. I stood up as Elihu and Carlos entered. I began to leave too, but Elihu stopped me.
“Quédate donde estas,” he wispered into my ear.
He was so close to me and I could smell cerveza on his breath. It was a sharp contrast to his young innocent beautiful face. The cerveza smelled so mature and the contrast turned me on.
Carlos quickly got down on his knees and began licking Elihu from behind. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy who just earlier was sitting indifferently as one guy after another sucked off his beautiful penis. Now his indifference was gone and he too was part of this maze of desire that we all found ourselves in.
Elihu asked me if I had any more mota. He talked to me as if someone was not eating his ass at this very moment. I told him that Jose had taken it with him. All three of us, began to laugh. I pulled out my poppers and we each inhaled them. We passed them around and Carlos started to fuck Elihu.
He placed the tip of himself inside of Elihu, and then let Elihu take the rest of him in slowly. Elihu stared right into my eyes as he slowly allowed Carlos to enter him.
I stared into his eyes and noticed something different inside them each time he blinked. As if they were alternating between the perception of pain, and pleasure, and the desire for more.
I was also alternating between feelings of jealousy and of profound trust, or confidence or confianza. Jealous because a year ago, I had found myself in an intimate encounter with Elihu, but he didn’t let me fuck him. But here he was now, sharing this encounter with me and staring into my eyes as if I was the one he was having sex with.
How often had they done this with other guys? How often do they do this? Was this their first time? They were acting like it was. Were the staff here even gay?
I wanted to shout out all these burning questions but instead I just stared back into Elihu’s eyes, a kaleidoscope of incomprehensible answers.
The three of us finished up, and kind of went our own way after it was all over. Carlos told us he was going to be late to his job. Elihu returned to the steam room for a shower that seemed to take another hour. I chose not to go back into the sauna area. I was starving and to my surprise, they had a full menu of food available.
I ordered a chicken salad. Salads, like sex, both exist in Mexican and U.S. culture, but express themselves entirely differently. I love the way Mexican’s do sex, but their salads, not so much.
They are iceberg lettuce heavy and garnished with sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, a chicken breast, then dried cranberries and a mix of amaranth and other nuts and grains. A strong cheese and a creamy dressing would have been the perfect way to cover up the shortcomings and bring all of this together, but they really don’t use dressing here.
You have to include a piece of the juicy seasoned chicken in every bite or it becomes totally tasteless.
With all the Mexico City taco tours available I can understand why foreigners think that Mexican’s eat nothing but tacos. I can understand why they all believe that they love Mexican food. I’ve tried to explain to foreigners why I don’t like Mexican food by telling them about this salad. But it’s hard to teach something to somebody when they believe that they already understand it.
Maybe this is what Elihu felt when I asked him,
“What just happened?”
as we walked out of the Baños and onto the streets of Ecatepec de Morelos.
The bright sun that we were originally trying to escape was setting. The sky had turned a magnificent shade of bright orange, and was framed on two sides between two mountains with patches of cinder block houses and green trees all over them. The lights of the houses were beginning to light up the sky in place of the sun.
A cool breeze blew the last beads of sweat, that had formed after our final showers, off our foreheads. Soon we’d be a little cold.
“Que rico, eh?” he replied.
The same response that he would have given me had I offered him a bite of the tasteless salad that I had just eaten.
That’s really all he had to say about the afternoon which would surely live in my mind forever. This need to understand it seemed to be something uniquely mine. I was fine with that.
In typical Mexican fashion, not ready for the day to end, Elihu offered to give me a tour around San Cristobál. In the midst of all of this sprawl, was a Pueblo Mágico; A traditional Spanish Baroque Style Mexican church, A Gazebo, Convent and Catholic School that had now been repurposed. This was once a separate Pueblo before it was swallowed up by the sprawl of Mexico City.
The church was likely built from stones from an Aztec Pyramid which the Spanish tore down to build their own religious monument. Elihu explained all of this to me, the way many Mexicans do. I had heard this history many times before.
The Mexican’s are not big on direct answers. They seem to be content with knowing that the answers lay beneath layer over layer of history, on top of which we stand today.
History that was either never recorded or burned by the Spanish conquest.
Thank you so much for your comment Bea. I'm really happy you enjoyed it. So many more stories to follow. :)
So you used to live in CDMX? If you would like to contribute a story I'd love to talk about it.
I simply cannot wait to experience CDMX from your perspective