And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club's patrons still don't use them. Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man's primary responsibility - and homosexuality as a white man's perversion. Wallace and the other black men who frequented Flex in the early 80's worried just about being spotted walking in the front door. He was 22 then, and AIDS seemed to kill only gay white men in San Francisco and New York. Twenty years ago, Wallace came here for fun. (Flex recently shut its doors temporarily while it relocates.) Flex is on the East Side, and it serves a mostly black and Hispanic clientele, many of whom don't consider themselves gay. On the city's predominantly white West Side, Club Cleveland - which opened in 1965 and recently settled into a modern 15,000-square-foot space - attracts many white and openly gay men. In small rooms nearby, some men are having sex. A naked black man reclines on a sling in a room called ''the dungeon play area.'' Along a hallway lined with lockers, black men eye each other as they walk by in towels. In the basement, the mood is different: the TV's are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy. In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV's.
There's a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen.