My friend, Xavier, had gotten a new job, which was a big deal during the summer of economic downturn that President Bush had ushered in with Operation: Oops, There Are No Weapons in Iraq and Hundreds of Soldiers Died for Nothing.

Xavier was laid off from his job at General Electrics Panametrics, which really pissed him off because he had a lot of self image tied up in the fact that GE paid for him to have business cards with his name on them. Men are strange. We sat down at Uno’s and waited with bated breath for him to divulge his secret job.

“Male Escort!” I squealed, angering the old people at the next table who I glared at while holding my knife in my lap in the ‘ready’ position.

“Not exactly,” Xavier replied.

“Janitor!” Alex yelped in between sips on her cocktail.

“Well, not really, but kind of,” Xavier said.

“Escort Janitor! Your name could be Big Mop Handle!” I cut in eagerly.

“OK, receptionist” Todd offered. Todd is the sensible one.

“Well, you could say that too,” Xavier said, shrugging, still not giving up the goods.

“Oh my God! You’re a Male Escort who cleans up the apartments of your ‘clients’ and sometimes files and answers phones before during and after sex!” I yelled and smiled a teethy grin at the aforementioned AARP sitting to my left.

“Thomas, shut up, I work at a bathhouse, ok?” Xavier said and then looked down.

Then we all stopped talking for a long time.

“Well, what do you do?” Alex asked, trying to draw him out.

“I answer the phone, hand out towels, clean the rooms, and make sure that the guys don’t beat each other up or break the furniture.”

“So I was right, a sexually provocative janitor who can transfer a call with the greatest of ease,” I quipped and then cowered waiting for a big slap from Xavier.

“You’re insane,” Xavier said, laughing.

The mood had lightened, but it was true, Xavier was working in a bathhouse in Providence. A bathhouse is a “gentleman’s club;” it’s basically a gym with showers, a sauna, and rooms with beds in them for clients to “sit and talk”. Men go to these places to have sex. They were quite popular in the 1980s until the AIDS virus swept through the bathhouse community and the peripheral gay male community quickly when a regular client had contracted the virus. San Francisco, the most popular bathhouse community (second only to New York City) shut down its bathhouses to stop the spread of AIDS. Other cities followed suit. Some bathhouses turned into clubs like the one my friend Xavier works at.

“You’re all coming to visit me,” Xavier said sternly as he looked at me.

“Fine, I’ll come for 15 minutes, but keep those scary men away from me, Big Mop Handle, I’m only doing this because I might get a column out of it.”

Friday night came and I was hanging with the homos, or in proper English, going to a gay bar. The guitarist of my band called me. I told him I was going to a bar, but before the bar I was going to stop by a friend’s work. He didn’t know what a bathhouse was so I told him.

“You’re a dirty whore,” Billy said and hung up.

“NO!” I screamed and called him back. He didn’t answer, I knew for sure he was laughing his head off so I left a message, “Billy, when I see you tomorrow I’m going to shank you. I don’t want to go to the bathhouse, I have to, my ill-conceived friend, Xavier, got a job there and I’m trying to be supportive, so I’ll say hi to your step-dad when I see him there tonight.” And then I swore and said some offensive things about sexual relations with his brother.

The gay bar I was going to was 15 minutes from Xavier’s bathhouse, so I walked over. Xavier, who looked tired, greeted me; it was midnight. The place looked like a very well furnished YMCA. If it weren’t for the moaning of gay porn on the television in the common room and the hallways of rooms where men were undoubtedly having sex, one would think it was a YMCA-sans ropes course. Xavier told me that it was a busy night; the place was supposedly full, except there was no one in sight.

I sat down on one of the couches while Xavier did some office work. I read magazines with the background moaning of the very newest Jeff Stryker feature. Suddenly, in the hallways, the heads of men in towels peered out. I was being watched, basically because I am young (and hot) and the only one besides Xavier who is wearing clothes. A half dozen men in towels crept up from the hallways to catch a glimpse of me. They were like zombies from the “Thriller” video.

Xavier, who is considerably big and tough, stuck his large head out from the office as though he knew what was happening. The zombies disappeared. I was startled, however, by the sight of something I didn’t expect to see them wearing: Wedding rings. I watched as some men checked in and checked out of the club catching a glimpse of their wallets and seeing pictures of young boys and girls whom they resembled and I realized that this place was not just a “gay place”.

After some investigation and prodding for details, I knew this: men from all over New England came to this club, business men, married men, gay men, men in the army, men who have children. They checked in for a few hours, did their business and then left until the next week. The club even had a lunchtime “businessman special”. Then I thought about making fun of Billy saying that I would see his stepfather there. I surely didn’t see Billy’s father there, but I saw some other kids’ fathers and some wives’ husbands and some other mothers’ sons there. It was depressing.

I thought about these men’s families and then I thought about the past, wondering if perhaps these men resembled men who had come before them, men who had tragically contracted the AIDS virus. I thought about the prospect of these ghosts roaming around the place, ghosts of gay men who had wives and children who had to go to a bathhouse to be who they truly are, making big mistakes by not asking about their partner’s sex life and contracting terrible diseases. I was saddened by the prospect of kids in the 1980’s burying their dads who had died from a mystery illness, wives not knowing how their loving husbands had gotten such a thing as AIDS.

I looked at these men as they checked in and out, wondering, “did you wear protection, did you ask him if he’s been tested, did you divulge your health status, were you honest with him…” – all things that I share and ask of my boyfriends before we become sexually active (safely 100 percent of the time) in our relationship. I realize that I am different from these men, but the issue remains the same, we all have a responsibility to one another, male and female, gay and straight. We must disclose our health, we must wear protection, we must get tested.

As I walked out of the bathhouse in Providence, I turned around and saw more men entering, men that looked like your father and mine. I realized that these men are ghosts-living, for now, that they are the ghosts of a disease in the past. They are the premonitions of our future when we do not take responsibility for our health.

Thomas Naughton is a Collegian columnist.