Downtown Lima – Sketchy and Surprisingly Gay – Home to the Lima Gay Underground

About Me, Tracey Parker

Most people only stay in Lima a few day to one week, at the most, on their way to Machu Picchu or the Amazon. I wanted to spend more time to get a feel for what it was like to be gay there. I have lived in Mexico City for 6 years and there I found a totally different type of gay life to what I had been accustomed to in the United States.

Here is a little taste of what I discovered in Lima and why I think it’s a city that is worth your time.

Gay Cruising in Mall Bathrooms in Lima Peru

Joao’s grindr message was just what I needed. I opened it while standing inside of a shopping mall bathroom underneath a modern grocery store in Barrio San Miguel in Lima Peru. I had written on my grindr profile that i was looking for cruising, and a guy in my neighborhood told me that there is cruising here. He told me that they show up after school and after work between 4:00 and stay until 9. 

He was right, there was a steady stream of guys who entered, did their business, while simultaneously looking around and making eye contact with each other. There were some normal guys who also entered and left without noticing what was going on. 

One young guy was camped out inside of the bathroom stall. He would periodically come out, with an erection plainly sticking out of his sweatpants. 

He’d come out, walk around the bathroom, and then retreat back inside. I was sure he was the blank profile on Grindr that was 4 feet away. I had messaged him, and he continued to ignore me, just like he was doing in real life. 

Nothing was happening here. I saw plenty of guys, but none of them were talking to one another. I wanted to leave but there was obviously something going on, and I kept bargaining with myself to stay in this smelly bathroom for 10 more minutes so that I could find out how it worked down here. 

Suddenly I got a message from an anonymous account. There were a lot of those in Lima. He sent about 4 photos and he was my type. He was better looking than all the guys I’d seen in here. Even the cute ones, and there were many. 

He cut to the chase. He wanted to meet me. He told me he lived in one of the outer barrios in Lima but that he’d be happy to come to meet me downtown. 

I told him I was staying in San Miguel. I told him my airbnb didn’t allow guests. 

He suggested a hotel. 

I told him that I had discovered a beautiful bathhouse downtown called Sauna Club 240. I suggested we go there and enjoy the place together.

He agreed. I could tell he was down for anything. He told me it would take him two hours to get into the city. I was about 30 minute uber ride. I was a 40 minute walk from home. I’d already cleaned my hole, unnecessarily, but the night, or in my case, afternoon, was young. 

I was still early in my trip to Lima. I had arrived the past thursday, spend the weekend exploring museums and cafes, and walking along the magnificent coastline, which was what brought me here to begin with. I was still taking Uber everywhere. Later this week I’d venture onto the public buses, which were a blast to ride and full of great people watching. 

We sent each other out locations on whatsapp. As soon as my uber dropped me off I could see him coming down the sidewalk. He looked better than his pictures. I was hoping I didn’t disappoint him. 

The club had an attendant outside the front door who just sat on a bench and watched what was going on out on the street. We would have to say our awkward first date hellos with him as our audience. 

This is the part I never consider when I make plans with strangers. I imagined ourselves, already comfortable with one another, already inside, fucking, sucking, ourselves and others and giggling all the way. I had no plan for how we were magically going to get comfortable enough with one another to be able to do this. 

Luckily, Joao was an easy one to get to know. We got naked, akwardly, put our things into a shared locker, and then began to walk around the club. It was crowded. We were attracting lots of attention. Our difference in age and nationality was obvious. I could tell everybody was listening to our conversation and since we were talking in spanish, evedryone could understand. 

The club was beautiful. The first floor was clean, modern, and dark. The steam room was split into two parts. There was big shower area where everyone showered on display for the others. There was a three story atrium, with comfortable patio furniture, perfect for sitting or fucking, that opened up to Lima’s cloudy evening sky. On the other side of the patio was a cruising maze.

We went up to the second floor and took a seat in a dark, rectangular bar area. It was empty and loud and finally we had the privacy we needed just to break the ice. Each of us sat with one leg on the floor and the other rested on the bench, our towels rose up so that we could stare an obvious glance at our half hardened, hairy, sweaty cocks. 

Joao grabbed mine in a flirty way that really surprised me. That was really all that was needed to put me at ease. As the older one I always feel that the younger one can change his mind at any time and turn me into an aggressor. I was happy, and relieved to assume the role of the pursued.

*****Below the story continues*********

Plaza San Martín – Gay Male Prostitutes

Starting around 4 in the afternoon male prostitutes from all around Latin America come to Plaza San Martín to do business. They are discreet, in their own way, but if you are looking it is very obvious who they are.

The police are there too but they do not interfere with prostitution.

Prices vary widely. The word on the street is that they all charge between 30-40 soles, but I was quoted prices between 30 and 80. The guys will offer to go to wherever you want, but will also show you the way to one of several hotels that specialize in providing space for this activity.

There is some sort of collaboration between the hotels, the police, and the men. The guy I went with showed a credential to the hotel and they kept it while we were upstairs. When I asked him if the police would bother us he told me no, and then mentioned something about the hotels having to pay the police im order to do business here.

My big takeaway is that this is a well established and accepted expression of homosexuality in Lima. It is safe and I encourage gay travelers to come and at least take a look. Before dark you will be among normal people because this plaza is a high traffic area for ‘normal’ people too.

If you want to partake, I think you’ll enjoy yourself.

I did, and I wrote about it in more detail on Substack

Open Deck – Gay Bar/Cocktail Lounge in Miraflores

While most of the gay places I loved in Lima, were located in El Centro, there are also several gay bars in Miraflores. Miraflores is a neighborhood in Lima Peru, with beautiful ocean views, which is famous for being where al the foreigners live. For this reason, all the businesses in the neighborhood try their best to recreate whatever they are doing as if they were doing it in foreign countries.

If you want a westernized gay experience complete with drag shows, expensive drinks, minimal cruising, and loud music, there are a few choices in Miraflores. The newest, cleanest, and most likely to have bilingual staff is called Open Deck.

Many gay travel websites are made with the idea that gay life consists of drag shows, bars, and the occasional bathhouse and that the state of gay marriage laws tell you everything there is to know about what it is like to be gay in that country.

I try to make content that shows off a totally different orientation toward being a gay male that I have found exists in other countries.

If that’s not your cup of tea, and you’re looking for a place to watch Drag Race with some locals, and talk about yourself to them in English, then you’ll love the bars in Miraflores. Open Deck is the newest and it seems very clean and well maintained. Not my scene but if it’s yours, I think this is the best place to start.

Museo del Arte De Lima – MALI

Very impressive Art collection in an even more impressive enormous colonial mansion set in a fenced in park, right next to Club/Sauna 240. I cover this museum in my ‘not so gay’ post about my favorite museums in Lima.

Tracey and Joao Finish our Evening at Club Sauna 240 in Downtown Lima

He whispered into my ear something about all foreigners having little penises. 

I looked at his, it was a monster, uncut, ugly and clean at the same time. The young and their sexualities are always full of contradictions to ponder while you’re eating them alive. 

I offered to buy him a beer and he declined. I needed one. He appeared to be relaxed already. He was the youngest there and the other customers all wanted to eat him alive. 

We walked into the steam room, where nobody else was talking and he began chatting me up. I desperately wanted to stay quiet, but I also wanted to take advantage of his efforts to make a connection. I decided to begin kissing him to get him to shut up. We fumbled around with our legs and never really found a position that we could relax into. Somehow we got up and moved upstairs. The bar area has three rooms. One of them had 6 beds/platforms/mats in the middle, and a bench around the perimeter. It would have been perfect if 6 couples, set up on each of the beds while others jerked off and watched from the bench. The room was built for that, but on this Tuesday afternoon it was all empty. 

Upstairs was a maze of private rooms along with a dark room. 

The club was kind of empty but the dark room was packed. Joao found a place on the wall and kept me in front of him. He was using me as a human shield. Many were still interested in him. His eyes must have been inviting them over. He reached out to touch them, I was still in between. 

I began dry humping him and rubbing our hard cocks together. 

He was caressing my buttocks and the third guy was searching for my hole. 

Joao opened my asshole and the other guy began trying to stick it in. 

The way this was happening was extremely sexy to me. Joao was new to all this, and he was using me to try out things that he wasn’t ready to do. 

Unfortunately the guy behind us was a bumbling idiot with an enormous cock that he was trying to stick inside me without any foreplay or lube. 

Sometimes I feel like a fool because of my attraction to young guys. My culture, the United States looks down on relationships with large age gaps. I feel foolish that as I grow older and older, the objects of my affection remain the same age. 

But nights like these make me remember that maturity does not always accompany age. How could this guy who hangs out in bathhouses regularly have no idea how to insert his huge cock into an asshole without destroying it or instantly coming inside of it and terminating the encounter. 

I decided to keep on enjoying Joao, the one who everybody wanted and only I had access to. 

Next we went down the staircases, briefly surveying the second floor bar, the first floor steam room/main floor/entrance, before we made our way down to the basement, which consisted only of a large dry sauna, split into two sections. 

Down there we met another guy. He was probably in his thirties, and he really liked me. He was trying to figure out what was going on between me and Joao, and so was I. We all chatted each other up, but behind all the noble chit chat, the question on both our minds was what would Joao do if we both began to do something with one another. 

Joao never really gave us any indication. We settled for the third guy sucking me off while Joao and I continued talking. He’d come up for air and join the conversation from time to time.