MARRIED TO METH
Cops are now focused on the bathhouse drug trade.

by Steve Volk
Philadelphia Weekly

David Gilchrist scans through the numbers programmed into his cell phone, calculating how many friends he's about to lose.

He scrolls through a succession of first names-"Mike," "Brian," "Darren," 19 in all-and says, "I'm taking a big risk here. But I'm doing it because it's the right thing."

Gilchrist is just 18, a recovering crystal meth addict trying to get straight on his own. "I relapsed three weeks ago," he says. "I'm not gonna lie."
He says speaking out about meth will ostracize him from most of his social circle, which is heavily involved with the drug. He first started using meth when he was 15. He used fake IDs to enter city bathhouses, and learned the route to unparalleled sex.

"Sex on crystal," he says. "It's amazing."

Gilchrist's story isn't unusual. Crystal meth, also known as "tina," received a lot of publicity in the last few years for both its addictive power and for increasing the spread of HIV. The drug, which can be smoked, snorted or injected, is the purest form of methamphetamine available. The sustained energy rush it provides deadens pain, decreases inhibitions and increases confidence, leading some to workaholism and others to prolonged bouts of unprotected, anonymous sex.

Gilchrist confesses to a bit of both. High on crystal, he alphabetized the files on his friend's computer desktop.

He also spent a lot of time in the city's only remaining bathhouse, Club Body Center, located near 12th and Chancellor streets. "I might be in there for days," he says. "I'd come out, sleep at home for a whole day, and then go back in for a few more days."

He calls the relationship between the drug, sex and the bathhouse "a marriage."

Like others familiar with the drug and the bathhouse, he says users often obtain the drug inside Club Body Center. "I could get crystal there in five minutes," he says, adding that a dealer is present "all the time."
That's the other reason he's speaking out-to destroy one of his main hookups. "After this," he says, "no one's gonna sell to me."

Law enforcement has its eye on meth's movement through the city's straight and gay communities.

Assistant U.S. attorney Tom Hogan has been dealing with the issue in Philadelphia, leading several federal prosecutions. As for trafficking in the gay community, Hogan says he's seen the drug dealt "in bookstores, movie theaters, hotels, dance clubs and bathhouses."

Hogan won't name specific businesses. And he does say bathhouses, plural. (There's only one operating bathhouse in Philadelphia right now, but federal investigation may have begun before Club Body Center became the only game in town.)

"We've got video surveillance tapes from inside city bathhouses," announces Hogan. "We've got video of people using the drug inside."

"We're doing all we can," responds Jason LaCorte, general manager of Club Body Center. "It has been brought to our attention this activity might be going on, and we're going to be doing more to prevent it in the future."
The bathhouse at Club Body Center takes up five floors, including a sauna, showers, a gym and lockers in the basement; a snack bar, communal television and deck on the first floor; and three stories of private rooms where men can meet for anonymous sex.

LaCorte says the club will be putting out more antidrug literature and posters, and notifying customers that bags can be searched at the management's discretion. He also notes that the bathhouse may not have been as involved in the community lately because of the illness of the club's director of operations, Nelson "Neeko" Gross, who died in April after a long battle with cancer. The bathhouse has defenders, including Nurit Shein, executive director of the Mazzoni Center, which offers support services for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities. "A lot of cities, when HIV was first recognized, closed their bathhouses," says Shein. "Philadelphia didn't-and that was a positive move."

Shein says the bathhouse, as an institution, has played a role in gay life for decades. "Closing the bathhouse wouldn't change people's behavior," she says. "It would merely change the location of where that behavior takes place, drive it underground and make it harder for us to reach the people
who need to hear from us."

Shein credits Club Body's management with being accessible. "They've made it easy for us to do HIV testing," says Shein, "and to put posters and literature there. They hand out condoms, so safer sex is taking place as a result."

But Shein also knows the depth of the problem. Just a few weeks ago a client came into the Mazzoni Center asking for his case manager. He was ushered into an office, but when someone arrived to speak to him he was climbing out of a sixth-floor window. They reached him before he could jump.
"He was coming down off a crystal high," says Shein. "Thank God he knew enough, in that state, to come looking for help."

David Gilchrist isn't sure where to turn for help. The idea of entering the William Way Center's 12-step Crystal Meth Anonymous program, with its focus on a higher power, doesn't appeal to him. So for now he's doing it on his own.

There are other support services available, from programs at the Mazzoni Center to private therapists like Albert Luciano, who remembers a time when the bathhouse wasn't commonly associated with illicit drug activity.
"I haven't been there in many years," says Luciano, "but six, seven years ago, if they even smelled marijuana, a voice came over the intercom saying, 'We smell that. Put it out.'"

Luciano's office is at 12th and Locust streets, where the effects of meth abuse often come rolling right through his door. Like Hogan, he says the drug is dealt in numerous locations, including bars and hotels. "The bathhouse, the bookstores-these are great locations for a meth dealer," says Luciano, "because that drug is so closely associated with sex, they can find new customers there who are in a hypersexual state already."

Luciano says he and friends were talking recently about the ways the bathhouse seems to have changed. "Yes," he says, "there were people having sex upstairs. But people used to go there to visit, to sit on the first floor, or the deck if it was nice outside, and watch a movie on the communal
television or get something to eat."

The bathhouse hosted fundraisers and community events. But all those positives seemed to fall away with the introduction of crystal meth. "Is the bathhouse the issue?" asks Luciano. "No. It's that drugs are being dealt in there."

He says he'd like to see management install its own security-"to take the dealing seriously and drive it the hell out."

In the meantime community groups continue fighting against the drug's advance. PW first wrote about crystal meth and the gay community in February, profiling Jay Dagenhart, co-founder of the Philadelphia Crystal Meth Task Force. Dagenhart spent days inside various bathhouses, becoming
HIV-positive while in the throes of his meth addiction.

He's now celebrating 16 months sober, watching fellow recovering addicts drift in and out of the Crystal Meth Anonymous group he sometimes chairs. "It's heartbreaking," he says. "Because sometimes I feel like the drug is more powerful than any human being. All could be pointing in the right direction, and in the snap of a finger-someone falls."

One of his closest friends, who asked to be called "Chris," recently relapsed. "I was feeling frustrated," says Chris, recalling what prompted him to take the drug again. "Why do I work so hard and have nothing to show for it?"

It was a Sunday when Chris went to Club Body Center and made a buy. In the days when he used heavily he could score right away. But even without his usual connections he figured out who was dealing inside one of the club's private rooms within two hours. "As soon as I came down I went to a recovery meeting," he says, "and admitted I'd relapsed."

Chris has more than a month of sobriety behind him now, and is trying to break the cycle of recovery and relapse that often marks the addict's plight.
David Gilchrist is in that same cycle, contemplating the future. "I just don't want to live this way anymore," he says. "This drug turns people really cold, really bitter. I saw one friend die."

For him, the drug provided the fabric for his social connections. So letting go of crystal, at 18 years old, means pretty much letting go of the entire life he knows.

"I can't imagine I'll be able to go into the bathhouse after this," he says. "Some people are going to take a step back from me. I know that-and it's scary."