Homo Depot

The first time I visited Milan, about a decade ago, I was eager to get a taste of its queer nightlife.

In preparation for our trip to the city, my study abroad friends and I looked up the gay clubs and bars we might find there. We stumbled upon one that, as I recall, left us simultaneously titillated and terrified. It was called Depot, and I remembered its website featured large images of naked men in all manner of debauchery, presumably a preview of what took place at this establishment.

We quickly decided that this would not be the venue we—a group of baby gays—would be visiting during our weekend in Milan. Instead, I took one of my friends to a tamer gay bar called Glitter, and I had myself a grand (if not totally innocent) time.

But ever since that weekend, Depot loomed large in my mind. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe the sheer edginess of the place attracted me, a strait-laced boy who rarely risked anything. Or maybe it seemed so outlandish to my young gay mind (a club where guys were just having sex, out in the open?!) that I felt a kind of morbid curiosity.

Either way, the fantasy grew over time. Occasionally I’d mention Depot to my study abroad friend and we’d both laugh and pledge to visit one day, for the bit if nothing else.

But in the last year and a half (since I’ve been single) it started to feel less like a joke and more of a possibility, especially as I started to visit bathhouses and their ilk in the U.S.

Well, ragazzi, you know where this is going. Within a week of moving to Milan, I finally satisfied my curiosity and paid Depot a visit. But it wasn’t what I expected—and it left me, in some ways, disappointed.

Let me tell you what I saw.

I decided to go to Depot on a Sunday afternoon. Strange as that may seem, this is when the club hosts its weekly “naked party,” so obviously it was the ideal time for my first visit.

The club is on a side street in an otherwise quiet and unremarkable neighborhood. Once through the door, I go up to the window and ask for the membership card I already know is required to enter.

The clerk eyes me and asks if I live in Milan. “Yes,” I tell him. “And you know today is the naked party?” he asks. Yes, I reassure him, I most certainly do. Seemingly satisfied, he takes my information and in return issues me a key to a locker.

Stepping inside, he joins me and gives me the briefest of tours. Through a haze of cigarette smoke, he points out the lockers upstairs, bar on the ground floor, and basement where, well, everything else happens.

I go upstairs, strip off all but my shoes, secure my locker and then head back down. I don’t want a drink, so I skip the bar and descend another flight to the basement. It reeks of sex—not an unfamiliar odor in a place like this, but pungent nonetheless. The labyrinth that awaits me is dark: Brick walls painted black and red lights scattered about, just barely enough to see and navigate.

At first the space seems quite small, just a few hallways and private rooms with doors. My first impression is basically … “Is this it?” I couldn’t help feeling immediately disappointed. In my imagination, Depot was a gleaming, multi-story sex megaplex. But in reality, it is a tiny, grungy basement.

As I make laps, I eventually discover a few more hidden spaces, a back room with benches, and some more stalls. I’m feeling tentative, probably a result of my disappointment, as well as the language barrier. I’m not feeling very inspired by the space or the clientele at first.

I stick around, and eventually connect with a sweet 40-something guy who takes me into a private room and lets me fuck him for a while.

After, we chat and switch into English, exchange names and Instagram handles. When he asks for mine, I proudly spell it out, confident in my new knowledge of the Italian alphabet (which is not as easy to pronounce as it seems!). He’s sweet and charming, we laugh and it reminds me that, yes, this always makes me feel more comfortable in spaces like this: actual human connection. We part ways and, sure enough, when I open my phone later, he’s followed me on Instagram.

For most of the rest of my time there, I hang out in the back room where most of the action happens, serving as a top for a few different guys. The last guy I have sex with is so hot, I initially assume he’s out of my league. But he approaches, sucks my dick and then asks me to top him. It’s easily the best connection I’ve had so far in this place, but it’s strained slightly by the language barrier. He’s trying to ask me questions sotto voce and, when I struggle to respond, he figures out Italian isn’t my first language. When I tell him I live in Milan, he teases, “So how come you can’t speak Italian?” I feel a little judged, and too shy to ask for his Instagram handle, though I really wanted to keep in touch.

He’s the last person I play with before leaving. I trudge back up to the lockers, get dressed, and emerge back into the sunny afternoon. On my way to the metro, I grab a gelato, as if I’m just on a leisurely Sunday stroll.

When I got home and took a much-needed shower, I reflected on how this had lived up to my decade-long fascination. The experience was fun, for sure, especially once I looked past the grunginess of it all. My logical mind knew that the physical space (dirty as it may have been) was pretty typical, and didn’t matter as much as the people who gathered there. But I still couldn’t shake a sense of disappointment.

Had I visited Depot back in 2016, when I was so young and innocent, surely I would have felt much more excited (maybe even scared) by this kind of space. Even a year and half ago, when I visited my first bathhouse in upstate New York, I was more than willing to look past aging and grimy facilities in favor of the tantalizing sexual experiences that they enabled.

But now, having been to my fair share of bathhouses and back rooms, my tolerance has gotten pretty high. The mere fact of a sex club—of naked men all around, ready to fuck and be fucked—doesn’t really phase me anymore. That’s just the baseline of my new, slutty life. And when I’ve been to palatial venues like SteamWorks in Chicago (if you know, you know), it’s hard not to feel let down by a small basement in Milan.

To some extent, I think this is also the nature of fantasies, especially long-held ones. Sometimes they’re more vivid in our minds than they could ever be in real life. Over the past year and half, as I’ve lived out one fantasy after another, some have been deeply satisfying, while others have fallen flat.

I don’t think that means we should never seek to actualize our fantasies; I think we absolutely should. But perhaps we should do so with a bit of humility: an understanding that we never quite know what we’re going to find on the other side.

This week, I’m leaving you with a photo from my hike up into the mountains near Lake Como this past weekend. Enjoy, and see you again soon!