...Hawks is a maze. It's a scatterplot of dressing rooms with netted ceilings that allow you to peer in from the tops of curvy landings. The glass doors of the steam room and the silver shower faucets dotting the walls make for funhouse mirrors.

I asked T about Jane's whereabouts. He said he had had his fill and was ready to leave. Having encountered something sentimental, I also felt fulfilled. We set out in search of Jane—he said he thought he saw her last in the middle of an orgy with a gaggle of older men.

This was believable: I estimated that out of 50 or so people, the average person at Hawks was about 45. On bi night, the split was about 70 percent men and 30 percent women. Most men were lone wolves...

...The gray-haired guy gazed at me and asked if we all wanted to grab a drink. I surprised myself by asking him if he had any interest in pairing off.

"Sure," he whistled.

I signaled to T that we would be quick. The gray-haired guy and I started making out around the corner when an earlier hookup of his found us and proposed a threesome.

I opted out of the ensuing romp. Watching from the sidelines, I fought back chuckles against the theatrical war cries. Unlike my perception of the disco days of gay and the height of the HIV epidemic, everybody at Hawks was cautious about using proper protection. (With the possible exception of the guy Jane hooked up with, who claimed his vasectomy was all he needed to stay clean.)

The gray-haired guy thanked me for our brief, but decidedly spiritual experience. The camaraderie was akin to having tripped on acid in a storage unit with someone for 12 hours. Gathering T and Jane, we fled to the car, proudly chanting, "Now, that was a night!"

Looking back, I continue to debate the online hookup apps that many people, especially non-millennials, seem offended by. These same people tend to look down on physical manifestations, like bathhouses, as being archaic or unsanitary.

It's easy to denigrate a bathhouse as a human buffet, but at least nobody's eating alone. When ordering Postmates for one, you dislodge from the subtle intimacies: the dinner table chatter, the polished silverware, the cooking, the bond formed through the process.

If anything, Hawks is a potluck. It's not about selfishly piling up your own plate—it's about bringing something to the table to be shared. In this case, it happened to be genitalia.,,