Do not read this book if wanna keep using Grindr, hookup with strangers or go to bathhouses.
Bath Haus by American author P.J. Vernon takes the dream of queer domestic bliss and puts it through a woodchipper. We follow Oliver, a recovering addict from Indiana, in his new perfect life with older, wealthier partner Nathan. With everything to lose, a bored Oliver still looks to shake things up with a trip to the gay bath house where things turn from roguish to downright murderous. And so starts the spiral of lie after self-sabotaging lie.
Dark, twisted and deeply disconcerting and had me scrunching my nose almost every time I opened the book. There were also a few audible gags that I let slip in too-quiet cafes.
Vernon has made a dream life of queer [almost] matrimony into a white-knuckle nightmare. His visceral use of imagery is transporting and all-consuming. Vernon clearly understands the geography of these spaces: the damp heat, the anonymity. He has done his research for this novel or lives the life himself 😉
I will say for readers wanting a queer “hero” you will not find it here. Every queer character is varying shades of toxic and unlikeable. It teeters on cautionary tale for most of the novel but push through, go deeper and it comes around in the end.
Despite the toxic queerness of it all, it was the first time in a long time that someone has written the queer experience in an accurate yet refreshing way – “gay guillotine”* is a new favourite phrase of mine. It is a sharp, clever observation that grounds the thriller in a very modern reality.
With relentless pacing and scathing depictions of sex, this made for an excellently distressing end-of-winter read as we’re about to go into hook-up spring.
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*The brutal crop of the headless torso shot that defines so much of our digital cruising