Bumping this one up, because I'm starting to work on a story that involves a gay bathhouse/sauna type of establishment, and I want to hear about everyone's experiences. I've been to a number of adult video stores (even sucked a cock at one of them) but never a bathhouse.

Coincidentally, Minneapolis, my neighbor to the north, is holding hearings about re-legalizing them. It's a famously queer-friendly city otherwise, with lots of other gay establishments, but they banned bathhouses early in the HIV crisis for public health reasons. Oddly enough, much smaller Duluth, 150 miles north of Minneapolis, does have one that's been there for decades.

• If you've been to a gay bathhouse or sauna, did you have sexual contact with anyone, or did you just watch?

• If you just watched, did you jerk off while watching? Did you feel like that was encouraged?

• If you had sex with someone, did they approach you, or did you work up the nerve to go up to someone?

• How long were you there? Did it feel like guys were more coming in for a cum fix, or staying for hours, or a mix?

• Did the establishment have multiple spaces (rooms, showers, hot tubs, steam rooms, etc.), and which did you use?

• Did it feel friendly to you as a first time visitor, or did it feel "clubby?"

• If it was your first time, either at a sauna or with a man generally, did it feel like anyone perceived your newness and made an effort to "welcome" you, or did you feel kind of ignored?

• Did you feel like people were being mostly safe, mostly unsafe, or a mix when it comes to unprotected anal sex?

• How did you feel? Was it thrilling? Scary? Empowering? All of the above?

• What was the mix of ages, races, body types, gender expressions, etc.?

• Were the guys mostly cool, or did it feel like there were some creeps there?

OMG, that is a lot of questions. Sorry. Just trying to get an idea of what the vibe is like, so I can write a realistic story. Maybe I'll have to go to one someday.

For me, it was all of the above. The texture, taste (which was mostly skin, maybe a touch of precum), the smell, the feeling of a man's cock in my mouth ... the outer silky softness of the sheath, the spongy softness of the glans, the inner hardness. And then the warm deliciousness of him spurting his load for me to swirl around in my mouth and then swallow.

Of course you asked this on "Ask the Guys," not in the LGBTIA+ forum, so you'll get lots of "I wouldn't know" responses from the straight guys too.

Oh, I didn't realize the dark mode feature worked now! Have now enabled it on both my phone and my desktop.

One glitch: when you Like a comment or a photo, the heart symbol doesn't turn red, so if it's a page you've visited before, you don't know if you've liked it before - except by clicking Like again, and seeing whether the counter goes up or down. Minor but mildly annoying. Happens on both mobile and desktop.

No such luck in my case. Can't say I ever had a girlfriend who was quite that adventurous, although, I did have a friendship (and occasional FB relationship) with a woman who was pretty open. I believe I could have had either an MMF or MFF (or both) with her, had I played my cards better.

There was also a time I stayed with an old college friend and his male roommate while traveling. It didn't occur to me at the time, but In retrospect, I have come to believe they were probably lovers. We even watched some porn together the second night I stayed with them. It was straight porn and only went on for a few minutes, but had it gone on longer, I wonder if some bi or gay porn would have "accidentally" slipped in there to test my reaction. So there's a missed MMM threesome opportunity on top of the others above.

Although I've since broadened my scope, the reason I started writing erotica was to document my missed opportunities.

Pretty clear there’s a lot of (at least attempted) catfishing going on here. Even though my story readership is probably 80% male, I regularly get unsolicited “Hi” messages from female-identified users I’ve not otherwise had contact with. The are almost always new to the site, claiming on their profile to be looking for love, showing off a handful of too-good-to-be-true sexy photos, and giving no evidence that the intend to ever read or write a story here. I ignore these messages, or block them upon a rare second offense, and since I do not look to Lush as a dating site, it never goes anywhere and I rarely have anything to report. But probably somebody is falling for it.

So far, despite the flood of AI images in general, I personally haven’t yet noticed a lot of obvious AI in people’s photos purporting to be of themselves - though it's obvious that many members have been doing that with non-AI images for a long time. IMO the AI image generators are mostly not quite good enough to fool me into thinking the image is of the member in question, but based on the “you are so hot” comments people make on what to me is pretty obvious AI fakery, I am disturbed by how many are fooled. We may not survive the incoming slop-tsunami if we don’t all grow bigger critical-thinking balls. The bar is about to get raised again with the character-permanence features being rolled out on some sites, which will allow you to generate multiple images of what appear to be the same person.

I understand that it’s caveat user, mostly, as far as the catfishing and other scams go. The advice in Jen’s link is good. I don’t know what else the site can do other than issue stern warnings to the community. This is the enshittified state of the world we live in.

Quote by Just_A_Guy_You_Know

"large hardon collider," amiright?

😀

Let me know if they need volunteers! Always looking for a fresh depositary. And I bet the suction feels amazing if you stick your dick in partway. Only partway.

In any event, better keep the jerk train running. The folks on the other end are peeing into their end of the wormhole.

What seeker4 said, but then I tend to prefer human bodies as God made them, and find bodily modifications of most kinds (piercings, large-scale tattoos, breast augmentation, hair removal, Mar-A-Lago face, labia removal) to be profoundly UNsexy and hard to comprehend why people do such things. So my opinion won’t carry much weight here.

Quote by Abbacus

I find Lush a place to try things I wouldn’t likely try in RL I find quite of few people act like this is a dating site and have serious romantic expectations. Occasionally there are opportunities to have a civil conversation but I would never entertain meeting anyone I made contact with in cyberspace. Far too many emotionally confused people with unrealistic expectations. The simple answer is NO!

It is amazing how many people come here for the dating and chatroom services, not for the stories. I'm far from a blanket NO, but I agree that there are a lot of people with unrealistic expectations on here. Not to mention questionable motives in all too many apparent cases.

Quote by Seeker4

What he said. Got plans for the weekend, Joe? 😉😁

Like my profile says, not currently looking, but as I said on the previous page, if that time comes I would consider some of the guys I've met Lush. You'd be on my shortlist for sure! ;)

Oh, you mean with another person?

My date let me touch her breasts, then we touched each other down below, I went down on her for a while and she jerked me to climax. First vaginal intercourse was a couple of months later. It would be almost a year later that I came in a woman’s mouth for the first time.

I've never really understood spitting anyway. If the taste or texture grosses you out, well too late to avoid that, so why not just swallow? It’s already in your mouth!

No, it’s fucking dead, because you “never, ever, ever” opened the box to feed it.

Quote by Just_A_Guy_You_Know

According to "science" if you stick both endings in a box, they'll coexist simultaneously as some kind of super-ending. Problem solved... As long as you never, ever, ever, open the box.

So the story ends with a dead cat?

Given my recent gay male stories, you may have forgotten about my amazing kinky girlfriend Daphne. Well, she's back! Bringing a third party into the bed, making me guess whose cock I'm sucking, penetrating virgin territory (as it were), and causing a very special, very big revelation in the process. Daphne's Rubber Ding-Dong is only my second strap-on story, and continues the wild ride that started two weeks earlier with Dating Daphne.

Contrarian here, apparently. Not being turned on AT ALL by shaved pussies, and having never understood the appeal in the thirty-two years or so since pube-shaving went mainstream, my lizard brain still needs to see at least a little hair on a woman. Trimmed is fine.

Likewise, I do not shave myself down there. I fucking love pubic hair! My one concession is that mine started getting longer with age and I do trim now. I leave the fuzz above my cock long enough to be soft and luxuriant rather than scratchy and scruffy, but I trim fairly close below. And that is as far as it will go unless forced to for surgery or something.

By the way, I run a brush through if I’m expecting to receive oral sex. That neatly solves the whole loose-hairs-in-the-mouth problem, and it stupefies me that the world has lost its collective knowledge of this simple tip.

Hot story, alphabeta! If you write it up as a full story, I’ll read it!

You can see the definitions of all the badges here: Badges | Lush Stories

Some seem to be, some don't. I do have my Author 100 badge, even though I only hit that level earlier this month. Maybe the numeric ones are more automatic.

I don’t think Enthusiast is active. I would have qualified for it at least a year ago, and started looking for it then, but don’t have it.

In! Blowing Smoke

I have thrown my hat into the ring of the Elements writing competition with Blowing Smoke. Two lone backpackers join forces to save, and maybe change, each other’s lives as they experience the terror of near-death and the joy of life, out amongst all the Elements of Air, Earth, Water ... and Fire!

Favorites are bi male, gay male, lesbian, hotwife, cougar, MILF, various configurations of group sex, occasionally watersports. Almost anything set in the great outdoors, too.

I quietly avoid stories involving degradation, dominance, submission, cuckolding or family members. Or any kind of sex so rough that it qualifies as violence. Hard turnoffs.

Yeah, I'd edit and Unpublish it back to Drafts. That'll pretty much accomplish what it is you want to do.

I've come to embrace how the tight word limits of some of the comps have forced me to focus my writing, seriously considering every single word and thought. What bits are tangentially relevant and might enrich a longer version of the story, but don’t really add more value than they take away from advancing things along?

This one didn't win any honors, but I'm still happy at how much sex and adventure I crammed into just 2000 words with Buff Bluff in Banff. I believe the first draft of that one was more than twice that length. This was when my only Recommended Read so far was a sprawling 9000-word thing, so I did have to retrain myself a bit.

Point is, don't let the word limit deter you. You can tell a fantastic story involving the elements within 3000 words. You can do this!

Got my first full draft done! Yay, that's like 5% of the work! The journey of three thousand steps begins with the first ... uh, shitty three thousand steps.

I also have the cover done (without AI this time), though I want to keep my plans secret for now. I will say that the story involves all four elements, Fire playing a disproportionate role.

EDIT, 3/21: Story complete and submitted!

Quote by Shyexhibitionist

I must be the odd one out here. I haven’t a clue how to use AI. MY covers are either my own pics or pictures I’ve found with my pal Safari. 🤣

Perchance AI Image Generator is ridicu-easy to use. You need to create a free account and do a per-session PG-13 filter override to generate NSFW images; otherwise, you don't even need to do that.

I think I have a good idea taking shape that involves fire as the main element, though the others will be part of it too.

Quote by Seeker4
That said, I am probably starting over. First attempt headed into territory that I found a bit too familiar (i.e. taps into elements of past stories of mine).

I see what you did there.

Quote by LuceDevlin

Oh yeah, I love me a good ellipsis as well ... LOL

Dot ... dot ... dot ... damn, that's hot ...

Did I like it? Yeah, when I ate my own cum last night, I think I did like it. It’s something I do pretty often.

When I was younger, I wasn’t quite as fortunate as alphabeta, but I could regularly get as far as licking the tip. My body always tensed up when I came so it was always from at least a couple of inches away, but I have jacked off directly into my own mouth many times. Due to the increased distance, I can't easily hit the target at my age now.

IDK if it’s an American thing but it is definitely a thing. When I lived in Pacific Northwest and the rain was a light steady, unthreatening mist for a few months at a time, it wasn’t usually as noticeable.

But here in the Midwest, we get a lot of no-fucking-around weather, and Mother Nature can kill you any day of the year if you’re not careful. People were killed by tornadoes in Illinois and Indiana just this week, for example, and it’s likely the blizzards hitting the Great Lakes right now will take lives. Those hazards also include big scary-ass thunderstorms, and yes you often can smell the ions in the air before it rains as well as during.

There is a scientific basis for this, so unlike a lot of things going on in my country, it is not a mass delusion. Heavily ionized air (or is that ozone?), as caused by strong rainstorms, especially those with a lot of electrical energy, has a very distinctive scent. We are not making this up.

I’m with Kimmi and wxt in liking the purple one most, but with seeker4 on the second being a very close second. And while I suppose her boobs are effectively the same size in all three, in the third one they seem more out of proportion, plus the look on her face is really blank.

Quote by LuceDevlin

Question, does the use of AI include using AI art for the cover art for the story? Cos I've seen some cover art for stories that looks like AI art to me, which is saying something cos sometimes I can't tell, but I'm trying to get better at discerning what art is AI and which is just some human artist's digital art.

Yes. AI is allowed for the cover art, just not for the writing. I think almost everyone is doing it now.

Personally, to keep myself fully legal copyright-wise, I’ve gone to the trouble of replacing almost all of my previous story covers with AI-generated ones.