A Night of Desire19 Images
The party had only just begun before I was already steamy, sweaty and nearly nude. In the subterranean lair of Wall Street Bath in New York’s Financial District, over 100 of the city’s literary-adjacent scene had gathered, mulling about on wet tiles from 10pm till well after midnight on a Tuesday. We were there for the usual bathhouse fodder of steaming, shvitzing, socialising and ogling at strangers in pursuit of something more, but under a different guise: an in-pool series of readings on the theme of desire.
The event, held on March 11, was organised by newsletter platform Substack and featured readings from Camille Sojit Pejcha (who also hosted), Brontez Purnell, Cat Cohen, J Wortham, Jaboukie, Liara Roux, Mary H.K. Choi, Old Jewish Men, and Sherry Ning. Each took the theme on their own terms: Sojit Pejcha explored the forbidden eroticism of workplace crushes; Cat Cohen read several laugh-out-loud worthy poems on desiring normalcy and being so thin and tiny you could ice skate on a dish of creme brulee; Jaboukie read “fan” fiction about fucking Mitch McConnell in his first poly encounter.
The real kicker, of course, is that everyone – speakers and listeners, Substack employees and even much of the bathhouse’s staff – wore a bathing suit, with both either in or around Wall Street Bath’s large indoor pool for its entirety. No need to imagine the audience in your underwear here.
Most of the audience relegated to the sides of the pool or the above-capacity hot tub, though the most fun members of the party spent the event fully immersed in the pool itself. Writer and influencer Harry Hill, for example, swam from group to group, resting at my lap for a set before paddling off to another friend.
Tickets for the event sold out within minutes, and a 300-person waitlist was quickly amassed. Over the last year, Substack has thrown a series of similarly popular events in unique spaces, from a reading in a massive church to a debate in a burlesque club (which I myself read at).
In planning the event, Substack’s Matt Starr and Sophia Efthimiatou worked with Sojit Pejcha to coordinate a night that broke the mold of the usual lit reading. “It was a kind of forced intimacy,” Sojit Pejcha told me. “We were thrown into this surreal environment together, at a time when so many of our interactions — especially on dating apps — follow a script. There was no script for this.”
A bathhouse presented a natural spectacle, playing on themes of ancient methods of socialisation and queer cruising spaces that made desire a natural topic of focus. In recent months, there’s been something of a bathhouse resurgence with a tech-y, New Age focus. Venues like Remedy Place and Othership here in New York City emphasize infrared saunas and cold plunges as part of a new type of social space.
This party, however, was distinctly not about wellness. To add to the naturally delirious effect of being in a humid Russian bathhouse at the turn of midnight surrounded by your colleagues and industry acquaintances in their bathing suits, the party of course had an open bar. Wall Street Bath’s bar, however, is special: in addition to whatever usual liquor you might have poured, they infuse their own vodkas in flavours of horseradish, lemon, black currant and raspberry. I’d intended on drinking a normal vodka soda throughout the night, but was quickly encouraged by staff to take shots of their creations, instead.
At the end of the readings, I ventured back down from the pool for a cheeky horseradish shot. Immediately upon imbibing, I was pulled by the hand over to the sauna area by a group of attendees and doused with buckets of cold water by bathhouse employees wearing classic banya hats. Soaked and freezing, I was then brought into a sauna, a small layer of towels forming a bed where I was told to lay on the bench. If you know anything about Russian bathhouses, you know what happened next: I was slapped repeatedly with oak branches. I could only endure about a minute before the combination of heat and horseradish liquor flagged to my brain that I might pass out.
But as I attempted to leave the area, I was doused once again with cold water, and then pulled into another sauna where the routine continued. I tried to flee one more time, which this time led to me being told to fully submerge in their ice-cold bath. I complied, and did indeed feel somewhat refreshed… before I was again brought into a sauna for another oak branch beating. After a few more minutes, I was finally able to convey with a series of words and hand signals that I truly could not endure any more and needed to drink water. Finally, the employee complied, wrapping me like a newborn in three towels and handing me a large bottle of Poland Spring water. “You’re gonna get rid of so much ear wax tomorrow,” a friend told me. Instead, I think I just got a bad hangover. Or maybe that was all the toxins the oak branches dug out of my system leaving my body.
It’s hard to say whether the event was truly all that erotic, though I was certainly staring like a pervert at many of the guests, myself. Across the room at the hot tub, I could see what appeared to be some flirty intermingling, with patrons sitting on each other’s laps. I have to imagine some numbers were exchanged, and maybe even a few encounters were had. “If anyone fucked or fell in love last night, please DM me,” Sojit Pejcha said the next day. While cruising undoubtedly happens everywhere, I’m unsure how routinely it happens at this particular venue, a place known for its sturgeon and borscht and being beaten with branches. But it was, undoubtedly, both vulnerable and fun. It’s hard to be on your phone too much when you’re either taking a shot, swimming in the pool or having buckets of cold water thrown at you. And isn’t there something erotic in that, alone?
