Gay saunas are trying to stay afloat, weakened by rising energy prices, monkey pox, Covid and inflation.

On Rue Saint-Marc, at the intersection of Rue Vivienne, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, a doorbell flirts with the side of a blind door. Opposite, on the sidewalk, a woman bustles around her stroller, a waiter mechanically sets a table for his first customers. It's still mild, but higher up, the sky is gray, that of a Thursday in October.

Behind the anonymous facade of number 10, when the door opens, Euromen's reveals two subdued levels flanked under the promising banner of an " initiatory journey made of luxury and voluptuousness in a subtle blend of colors and shapes" . And, also, a sauna, a hammam, a jacuzzi, a bar, a video room where gay porn films are shown, to watch alone or with others, changing rooms to undress, private cabins to isolate yourself with a stranger and a "lounge area" to laugh and converse, like in a tea room installed in an ancient Roman decorum. Everywhere, self-service, condoms and lubricating gel.

There, as in the twenty or so other gay libertine saunas in the capital, beats the pulse of an underworld, where young and old, thin, curvy, racialized or not, mingle: artisans, bankers, workers, local shopkeepers, curious students, tourists on a spree, movie and TV stars who come to forget themselves, naked, in a fleeting anonymity. And free couples, lonely but wise singles, laughing friends. The well-built, the slender, the well-endowed, the nobodies, who know that here, no one will care. At the bar, we exchange a few words, a look, a hearty laugh, to later drown our modesty and shyness in the steam of the hammam, the bubbling water of the jacuzzi, sometimes a bit of poppers, a cigarette in the smoking room, the darkness of a backroom, the dry heat of a sauna, our fantasies.

You enter by ringing the bell and paying an entrance fee of around twenty euros. A little less, 16 euros, for those under thirty, or when you arrive after 5 p.m. You get a smile and a towel at the cash register. In the changing room, where you have completely undressed, you trade your life outside in a locker for tropical humidity, a bit of darkness, the smell of bleach and incense, and the hope of a one-night stand, sometimes the start of something. An hour, or an afternoon, or a whole day, with a partner, or several others, or simply to relax, see and be seen. For a few more euros, or sometimes for free, you can even, once the entrance fee has been paid, come back later.

It's just another day, this Thursday, at Euromen's, and since its opening in 1976, the place, at the time one of the largest establishments of its kind alongside the now-closed Continental and King Sauna, has seen many things. But after the happy times of the 1990s and 2000s, a little after the dark hours of the HIV massacre , which is now dissipating a little, business has become more bitter. "Everything went very well until 2008, when business slowed down a bit with the financial crisis ," explains Arnaud Pépin, who closely monitors the business of his father, Jack, 85, who has owned the place since 1995. "And then everything happened one after the other: in Paris we had the ' yellow vest ' crisis, which drove away a lot of customers. Then the health crisis linked to Covid-19 . We had to close for nine months, since we are listed with the INSEE as a gym."

Since then, Euromen's hasn't fully recovered its clientele: around fifty of its loyal customers have been swept away by the coronavirus. Many others have remained wary, for fear of being contaminated in a place designed for intimacy and promiscuity, and where masks don't protect a community traumatized, at least for the oldest, by AIDS. Then there were the anti-vaccine pass protesters, then the anti-vaxxers, who couldn't be accommodated. Then monkeypox , which drove away a number of customers. "Before these ' great torments' ," continues Arnaud Pépin, " we were around 180, 200 customers a day. Now, we're more like 140 to 180, during the winter. A little less in the summer, since people are on vacation, or don't necessarily seek out places where it's very hot."

That was without taking into account the time of inflation , the war in Ukraine , the galloping price of electricity , and the incompressible, increasing costs. Like a curse. "We are open 365 days a year, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., during which time we consume electricity," says the forty-year-old, also a producer in the audiovisual sector. "A year ago, that represented around 2,500 euros excluding tax per month. Today, it's more like 3,000 euros excluding tax. During Covid, we received aid, but now... we have to pay it back. With inflation, we were forced to increase our employees' salaries a little, but therefore also our prices, while our customers have less purchasing power, and therefore less desire to spend on leisure. The paradigm has become extremely complex for us."

By November 1st, he will increase his entry fee by one euro: 24 euros, rather than 23. "It doesn't seem like a lot," he sighs, " but I know we're going to lose some customers. But I have no choice: I have five employees, two cashiers, and three general workers. We're down to one euro, and I have to renegotiate all my contracts with my service providers, for example, for cleaning, to maintain business."

"We're clenching our buttocks and waiting for it to pass: it will be fine, I'm not worried, but it's become very difficult to plan ahead."

Arnaud Pépin

to franceinfo

"We have to pay attention to everything and be 100% impeccable to avoid losing customers," continues Arnaud Pépin. "Especially in terms of reception, hygiene, and discretion, where we have to be impeccable, affable, and welcoming: a single negative comment on Google can cost us a lot of customers." His room for maneuver is slim: for the past few months, a community manager has been running an Instagram account created to attract a younger audience. The effort seems to be paying off: Euromen's has picked up a few new, slightly younger customers who have spread the word. A more effective strategy, assures Arnaud Pépin, than when he was buying advertising space in the trade press.

Its competitor, Les Bains d'Odessa, nestled in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, has to deal with the same constraints. Bernard Sellem, who has owned the premises for twenty years, has also noticed a drop in attendance. "Before, we had around 100-140 customers per day, but today, with inflation, it's more like 100-115 customers," explains this former antique dealer, 72 years old, in "great shape" , "100% heterosexual" and who confides his infinite tenderness for his homosexual clientele, "in contrast", balanced between "sometimes a lot of sadness" and "a lot, a lot of happiness" .

"It's a bit tough at the moment, but we're pulling together and making do. Before, I could make my forecasts three weeks or two weeks ahead, but now it's day by day, it's really up and down."

Bernard Sellem

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His clientele, he says, is not really the "young-young" : "The average is 35-40 years old, and up to 70, especially the bears, the bearded ones, the tattooed ones, the... nice ones!" he smiles. They have remained loyal and they are coming back, for the moment. So, to keep them in his walls at a reasonable price, in an era of tight margins and galloping electricity bills, Bernard Sellem, a wise entrepreneur, has played his best card: pragmatism. "Before, " he explains, "we left everything on during cleaning from 9 a.m. until noon, even the changing rooms. Now, we turn it off as we go, and we no longer leave the light on in the laundry room when we're not there. And I had presence detectors installed so as not to waste."

Eleven arrondissements further north, on Boulevard de Sébastopol, Sun City, a steam-powered annex of the Dépôt, the iconic sex club for "Total Beur" nights, closed since the health crisis and which may never reopen, boasts solid foundations and an international reputation. However, it too has not been spared the backlash of crises that have hit the economy of such establishments hard .

" The increase in energy prices in our businesses, which are extremely energy-intensive, is a new challenge for us," emphasizes Michel Mau, artistic director of the sauna, around thirty employees, themed evenings, and the promise of "3,000 m2 on three floors dedicated to relaxation, sport and flirting" , a spa, a swimming pool, a hammam, a cinema-bar area, a gym and a "flirting and sex" area, 7 days a week, from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. And until dawn, 6 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and the eve of public holidays.

"We consume a lot of electricity: we have pools, saunas, we dry towels with gas, we have a boiler. And our premises aren't always very well insulated."

And then there's the price of everything, which is increasing, as it is everywhere in France: toilet paper has gone up by 40%, and a container of laundry detergent, explains another Sun City manager, is now five euros more expensive than before. " Before, we gave out unlimited towels, but now we only offer two, and we charge one euro for the next one. We've also lowered the temperature of the pools a little. And it's likely that in a few weeks, we'll be forced to pass these costs on to our entry fee and increase it by one euro."

Sun City, like many other French businesses linked to the LGBT community, is a member of Sneg, the Union of Party Venues and Diversity . "We see these difficulties among all our members in our very specialized sector: in cafes, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, saunas," explains the union's executive director, Rémi Calmon. "To receive government assistance , energy expenditure must represent 3% of the company's turnover and the unit cost of energy prices must have doubled. These conditions, set by decree, determine who will be eligible for energy aid. Will all establishments be affected? At this time, we have no way of knowing."

In the midst of uncertainty, saunas have a few arguments to make. The arrival of dating apps like Grindr , Scruff, or Tinder , which allow, or at the very least promise, quick encounters with a neighbor, could have sounded the death knell for these establishments. But ultimately, it didn't. "We lost a few customers at first," admits Michel Mau. "But they came back because they realized that apps sometimes involved a lot of mythomaniacs, a lot of blah blah, wasted time, hours spent in front of your phone for nothing, whereas with us, you can't cheat on the photo: what you see is what you get."

After the age of apps, it was the queer steamroller, a happy invitation to mix, to intergender, to the dilution of sexual and sexual boundaries, which imposed itself easily, first among the younger generations and then among the older ones, moving the formerly specifically gay population into mixed spaces. Saunas did not have to resist: "There is always a need for places of sexual consumption, which correspond to a specific sexuality, man-man, notes Michel Mau. The politically correct side of other evenings means that we can offer places that are objects of fantasy, attractive, exciting. And that's what we offer."

Resilient, reassured by their unique position in the entertainment offering aimed at a specific clientele, these establishments also act as lookouts. As actors and spectators of the reality of sexual encounters between men, who better than them to provide a framework for it?

The ravages of chemsex , which consists of taking psychotropic drugs (mephedrone, 3MMC, 4MMC, NRG3, MDPV, crystal, methamphetamine, cocaine, etc.) with the aim of having sexual intercourse, whether as a couple or with others, is eloquent in this regard. "It clearly became problematic during the lockdowns ," analyzes Michel Mau . "Those who could not go out to nightclubs because of the lockdown turned to private parties, with slam practices ["claquer", in English: slam refers to the injection of psychostimulants in a sexual context] and chemsex, and who stayed there . Or they came back, but with an addictive problem that we have to manage within our walls. And it is not always easy."

"Establishments like saunas are very effective prevention relays: this was already the case during the HIV crisis," adds Rémi Calmon. "We are neither judging nor stigmatizing: customers do what they want, but we clearly have a role to play in supporting them."

Every Friday, Sun City offers free and anonymous screenings for sexually transmitted infections with the Aremedia association, in partnership with Fernand Vidal Hospital. "We are outposts in terms of prevention," insists Michel Mau. "We can reach people who would not necessarily take this step elsewhere and we can educate them on responsible behavior. " "Moreover, since the law on marriage for all, the number of homophobic acts has jumped," adds the forty-year-old, emphasizing that homophobic speech has since become less inhibited. But we offer a safe environment for a whole bunch of people who cannot live their sexuality openly. We are there to supervise, filter and ensure everyone's safety, so that everyone can live their sexuality as they wish, in a calm and stigma-free environment."

Noon has struck somewhere in the distance. Behind the window of Sun City, an employee, rag in hand, is polishing the front, like in any other business. Someone has just rung the bell at number 62, and the sauna door has closed behind a smiling thirty-something. It's opening time, time for the first customers. He'll stay for an hour, or maybe until evening. He'll leave alone, or in more or less good company. And there, no one will tell.