MOST clubs, including David Barton, Equinox, and the Y.M.C.A., have zero-tolerance policies. It's how you deal with it, and we try and deal with it." Tom Shanahan, a lawyer for David Barton Gym said: "What he's alleging happens everywhere. Sosa, who accuses the gym of allowing sexual activity to flourish in the men's locker room, said that on one afternoon in mid-November 2004 he went to the shower and saw that two men in adjacent showers had slid their hands through a gap between their stalls. (The gym has officially denied any wrongdoing.) Four months into his membership he complained about sexual behavior in the locker room, he said, but the establishment refused to let him out of his contract and refund his $950 annual fee. Last month, Carlos Sosa, 34, a restaurant manager in Manhattan, filed a $25,000 lawsuit against David Barton Gym on West 23rd Street. To some members, such behavior is offensive and detracts from their enjoyment of the gym. He said he regularly goes to an uptown New York Sports Club for "work and reward": a cardio workout, some weight lifting, then sexual activity in the sauna or steam room. "No one can really see anything," said Jonathan, a 43-year-old sales representative from Manhattan who gave only his first name. A closed door - or the fog of steam - make it easy for men engaging in sexual activity to elude detection. And at certain times of day, their showers and steam rooms are not crowded. Gyms are everywhere: the number nationwide has more than doubled in the past decade to about 26,000, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, a trade group. Of course most of those who engage in furtive sexual behavior are savvy about not getting caught.
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Gyms are reluctant to say how many complaints they get from members, and the New York City Health Department, which has the authority to close the saunas and steam rooms of health clubs that fail to crack down on sexual activity, rarely hears from gymgoers.
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Just how much sex occurs in gym locker rooms - and whether it's more prevalent today than in the past - is difficult to gauge. "People complain, and they shut things down, and then it creeps back up again." "It has always been there, and it has its ups and downs," Charles Kaiser, the author of the 1997 book "The Gay Metropolis," said of sexual behavior in locker rooms. And the steam rooms, showers and saunas at health clubs continue to be meeting places for men seeking anonymous sexual activity, much as bathhouses in New York and other cities were before fear of AIDS prompted a widespread shutdown in the 1980's. Men cruising men in the locker room is a near-century old pursuit.
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"I don't get the full benefit of my membership."
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"They're infringing on my right to work out at the gym without having to deal with that nonsense," said Cyd Zeigler Jr., a member of David Barton Gym and a co-founder of, an online magazine for gay sports fans and athletes. Not all gymgoers are blasé when they stumble upon locker-room canoodling. When he opened the door, he saw two men kissing and fondling each other.
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A FEW months ago Timothy Young, a comedian and puppeteer, headed to the steam room of a Y.M.C.A.