Journal [11.10] Eyes Wide Shut in Budapest I was surprised when I arrived at the address of the Kiraly Thermal Baths to find a late-18th century Hapsburg façade, which looked like every other building on the Buda side. It evoked pale people in powdered wigs waltzing to “The Blue Danube”, not swarthy characters with twisty mustaches and fezzes having a soak. But the façade would turn out to be just a façade—added to the 16th-century Ottoman Turkish bathhouse, I guess, to maintain the continuity of the Austro-Hungarian street that sprang up around it. In a way, it was a veneer over what must have been a violent transition from one civilization to another and the cultural debt begrudgingly owed the outgoing one by the one coming (back) in. To me, though, it would become a kind of metaphor for society’s veneer over an aspect of human sexuality it would fain disavow.

At the box office inside, which seemed to have been remodeled sometime during the 20th century (it was unclear whether Communism or capitalism was to blame for its chintzy materials, shoddy construction, and lack of upkeep), I slipped the equivalent of 50 cents under a murky pane of Lexan to the attendant. For a little bit more I could have gotten a massage, too, but it felt even better to get in for only 50 cents.

Past the box office, there was still little indication of the place’s real age and historicity, but as I followed the retrofit pipes that ran along the ceiling toward the heart of the building, I traveled backward in time. I passed a guy getting a rubdown during World War II. I passed another guy stacking towels in the Belle Époque. Finally, I arrived in a dank, dark changing room with walls of 16th century masonry. The pipes, from who-knows-what century, continued through the wall to their terminus in the baths. more...