Down Under was a gay men’s bathhouse that opened in Edmonton in 1998. The weeks leading up to the opening were filled with a great public outcry about what a business LIKE THAT would do the neighborhood. I was completely unaware of that outcry, living as I was in Lethbridge at the time. For me, I was just excited that Edmonton was getting somewhere for me to get laid if the bars or chatrooms didn’t pan out.
When I moved to Edmonton the year after, I wanted a gay job. That was really my only requirement. And Down Under was one of the places I applied. When I walked down those stairs to hand a resume to manager Eric, I had no idea that I’d be getting so much more than some part-time job to tide me over while I decided what to do with my life.
Down Under had three owners. One, Gretchen, also worked at The Roost. The second, George, was the owner of Boots and the Garage Burger Bar. The third, Jim, played the Chief in Edmonton’s Village People Revue, and he invited me to join. That was my gateway drug into gay employment. Really, those three people definitively shaped the rest of my life, with jobs to come at Boots, the Garage, the Roost. All three had been monarchs with the ISCWR, and my Village People days soon led to ISCWR involvement. Looking back now, it’s truly phenomenal what that job did to me and for me.
I remember when my mom found out where I worked that her first question was “do you give people baths?” That, of course, wasn’t the case. I handed them towels; they bathed themselves. Actually, come to think of it, there did come a time when yes, we did give people baths. Eric, old when I started, kept getting older, and he needed some help in and out of the shower and/or hot tub. By that point, he wasn’t just my boss; he was also my landlord, and friend. We’d even adopted his cat (Young Rob, the black cat is hovering). He’d been a professor at Macewan. He’d travelled. He had stories, and oh! Could he tell them! He could also creep along quite quietly for an old man, and more than once, he managed to sneak in to catch me and my co-worker Bobby watching Roseanne reruns on TBS instead of working like we should. In 2003, the combination of alcohol and anger led to me no-showing for yet another shift, and Eric had to call me up. “Young Rob, your services are no longer required.” That was the last thing he ever said to me, as not long after, he passed away. (Young Eric, your services are no longer required)
But the years I worked at Down Under gifted me new friends, new skills, new lovers. Oh, so many new lovers! The Ice Princess. The Lifeguard. The Twins. The Florist. The Flight Attendant, grounded by 9/11. The Buddys boy. The GLCCE chair. The Mistress. Some lasted just an afternoon, an evening; some evolved into friendship. All of them linger in my memory.
Whenever I get a whiff of sauna, I’m there again.