Amrou Al-Kadhi is truly a jack of all trades. Actor, writer, drag performer and stand-up comedian are just some of the hats this renascence man wears.
He is also a writer, being a senior editor to The Inkling. This is a magazine celebrating writing in the essay form. This past February he wrote a piece for the Inkling, a gay sauna essay.
He writes
“I impulsively walked into a gay sauna. It’s something which had always caught my curiosity, and there was one in the flesh, right there in front of me. I thought my experience at the sauna would be productively meaningless – just excessive desire for desire’s sake, with no emotional logic to what I was doing. And how wrong I was. I have never been so turned off and un-aroused in the entirety of my human existence. I couldn’t have wanted to have sex any less, actually. I left completely untouched and totally unsatisfied. What’s so odd about a sauna is that everyone is already there, naked, ready to have sex. You don’t need to work for it. No flirting is necessary – there’s not even any talking: nothing. All signifiers of desire are dispensed with for a very literal, non suggestive-experience.”
Interested to read more? Go to Uncloaking Desire: Experiencing the Gay Sauna. This is a terrific gay sauna essay