davet

Whoa! That's cool.

I think most of us have done many things that were frowned upon by the State Department travel advisories. I guess I should start taking them more seriously, but they've always seemed designed for people who are afraid of anything foreign.

Keep us posted!

I first went in 2001. It was more or less the same in terms of quality, selection, and skills as now. Just prices go up and down according to the divergent graphs of exchange rate and inflation. That's why I hope that the scene will bounce back from covid-19. It's been a part of the culture for a long time. Despite the availability of online markets, I repeatedly meet guys who said they preferred the sauna because it was easier to bag 1-3 customers and go home. Then again, I thought about the Latin American porno theaters would never die, but they were done in by the internet, so who knows.

Question regarding "safe-foreplaying": If one is in that close body-to-body proximity for 15-60 minutes, I can't imagine that any prophylactic measure (masks, alcohol, whatever) is going to make much difference. You are in each other's aerosol and large droplets cloud, inhaling and exhaling heavily, with various respiratory tract fluids all over the place. Even a glory hole wouldn't be much less infectious.

The man with the numbers! This is actually better than I thought. Having come of age in the 80s, AIDS and safe sex are tattooed into my brain. I only recently caught up to the fact that the youth of today practically think that AIDS has been cured. Maybe it has. But I would rather slug it out with covid-19 than take my chances with the long, multi-faceted, major life change of AIDS.

Daayyyammn! This guy is the entrepreneur? But that means he won't have time to perform the other services for which he is unquestionably qualified. Have you confirmed that this will be a garoto sauna, whenever it opens?

The way I look at it is that I'm probably spending the same total number of pennies but spreading it around. Is there a Universal Economic Law of Rentboys? It seems the prices fluctuate but keep circling back to the US$30 range. But oh, to think of my first trip, when the rate was 3-to-1 and the quoted fee was 50R. And then to find out that was my sucker newbie gringo price - the fee they would have accepted was 30R, because the real during the 90s had been pegged 1-to-1 to the dollar. The real collapsed in the early-aughts but, surprisingly, inflation did not soar, so steaks were $3 and hotel rooms were $18! The current situation looks similar. The value of the dollar against the real has almost doubled since I was there in 2017, but the Lagoa entrance fee, comparing your receipt with my memory, has only gone up ~10%. Any other time, I would have flown down in a heartbeat.

@numazu1 Maybe the Golden Era is irretrievably gone, but what you describe is still probably the best concentration of talents in this field anywhere in the world. Nice as it was to leave the Old Lagoa counting how many other stunners I could have done had I not a flight to catch (or, frankly, had I not exhausted myself) but really, you only need 1-2 doable ones to have a worthwhile time and 4-5 to have a blast, and a few days of that to make it a worthwhile trip. It sounds like Lagoa can still supply that.

Hi Numazu, Are there public showers where the garotos can demonstrate their talents, as in the old days? I actually don't mind the semi-street-clothed atmosphere. Strange as it sounds, I find some guys to be hotter when clothed. As we now know, the unwrapping is part of any fetish (or compulsive shopping) and a house with 100 shirtless guys can get very same-same. Masks and face shields are another story. I don't know how I'd feel about that. But hey, hasn't the lock down caused you to notice how gorgeous some men's eyes are? And how do female hookers in Iran and conservative moslem countries (they do exist) do their marketing? With their eyes, of course.

There was a movie in the 80's called "Montenegro" about, IIRC, Balkan immigrants in Scandinavia. I've had a mental bookmark about Montenegrin men ever since. The other thing I heard when I was in the region was that Albanian men are gorgeous but utterly unavailable/unapproachable except, maybe, when they are outside their country.

Same here. Tassojunior, I hope you can go and report back or at least allow us to fantasize vicariously. I have to say that I envy your life, though I don't know if I have the resources mental and otherwise for the upkeep of hot 20-something Czechs.

Can you clarify this comment? I like the number of random people approach to statistic. Since any major Brazilian sauna on a good night has 100-200 people, and even post-reopening are likely to have more than 26 people, then, yes, there is likely to be at least one infected person present. However, since the attendees at a brothel-sauna swap spit rampantly with 1 to 10 or more others, how does one not assume that everyone present is at least seriously exposed if not infected?

Still eagerly waiting for the first on the ground (on your knees? on your back?) report from Paragonya and Thermas Barcelona.

@tassojunior - I know and share your feeling. However, I can't help but think that a mass choir is one of the most dangerous contexts for infection, and a rampant whorehouse would not be much different. YMMV. Maybe those full-body condoms will finally come into existence (now that the kids seem to have abandoned all condoms whatsoever).

Can you clarify? "Travel insurance" is mostly about trip cancellation so, yeah, if you want to cancel because the pandemic or your comfort level is getting worse, no coverage. However, wouldn't health insurance, whether you have such coverage on your own U.S. plan or you bought a specially-bought travel health plan, pay for medical expenses like these.?

I call it tongue-fucking. It's always been the top sensual activity for me. It's clearly very intense for the professionals because many would allow themselves to get fucked but not tongue-kissed. So yes, lots of fantasizing about kissing on my part.

I was told "sauna masculina" merely means it's not a whorehouse, i.e., no female prostitutes, as in the "sauna mixta."

"After seeing this I don't know what is going on in Brazil." If you saw this on social media, assume it's faked, distorted, or grossly out of context. Did you try to look it up in any reputable sources?

But not as fun as they were 25 years ago. Back then, before our age of infinite and ubiquitous porn, a sizable majority of the clientele in Latin adult cinemas was around 25 years old, all of them horny and many of them quite amenable. Now, the theaters are like those that used to be in the US: dark, dirty, and much older clientele. Perhaps they're the same 20-somethings now a few decades later.

Anybody with an on-the-ground report from Barcelona and Thermas? If it's even open, I assume it is lightly attended and with locals only. Can the Thermas guys actually travel to Zurich these days? Many of the boys' Brazilian and Colombian passports only worked to get them into Spain or Portugal, from which they traveled border-free throughout the EU. However, with Schengen now basically suspended, aren't they stuck in the Iberian peninsula? Without sauna work - and lord knows what other marketable skills they have - I wonder just what they have been doing.

This would be easier to answer if we know more about your language experience and history. In my case, for example, I didn't study any Portuguese. I just landed in Rio with a phrase book and started conversing. But you can do that if you know any decent amount of Spanish or Italian. If you learn better by ear, then tapes and videos would be good. If you learn better on the written page, then the options are different. If your weakness is memory and vocabulary, then flash cards are great. If your weakness is grammar, conjugations, and declensions, I'm afraid I haven't figured the solution to that myself.

I bet you know more interesting verbs than I do. Please share.

Who's going to send the live correspondent reports?

Wish I had known about these live auditions. That's one of my great unfulfilled fantasies: To BE William Higgins (or George Duroy, or even Chi Chi LaRue) and have multiple guys arriving every day begging to take their clothes off.