This week New York’s literary crowd took a break from the library and hit the spa. Sam Falb joins Camille Sojit Pejcha’s ‘A Night of Desire’ and reports on the speedo-clad affair.
Down a nondescript outdoor staircase and through a glass door, a world – wet, steamy, literaphilic – unfolded at New York’s Wall Street Bath & Spa 88 on Tuesday night.
Where the Eastern European attendants speak nary more than a few English phrases and the maze of rooms spills deep into an underground cavern (rife with dim light and swirls of chlorinated air), Camille Sojit Pejcha and Substack laid their scene.
This was A Night of Desire: a pulsing, warmly lit sanctuary for literary indulgence.
“Are you ready to hear some readings about desire?” Substack’s Writer Relations Producer Matt Starr shared, shirtless, to cheers from the gathered swimmers, lazing about in sensual recline across the main pool area.
Sojit Pejcha and Substack, on behalf of her rising-star newsletter Pleasure-Seeking, called in a masterclass of artists, comedians, writers, and creatives to spill their deepest ruminations on topics they hold dear into the steam of the bathhouse. Brontez Purnell, Cat Cohen, J Wortham, Jaboukie, Liara Roux, Mary H.K. Choi, Old Jewish Men, and Sherry Ning all took the stage with various tales. These included the highs and lows of drug use, ice cream sandwich inflation, the class conflict and victory of sleeping with Luigi Mangione, sensuality in the workplace, queer life in New York through the decades, and a (theoretical) polyamorous sexcapade with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his wife Elaine Chao.
The night’s uniform was a mixture of speedos, bikinis, and a hand-selected black and gold Agent Provocateur number worn by host Sojit Pejcha. The Substackstress spent time with Starr and Head of Writer Relations Sophia Efthimiatou scoping out locations across the city’s array of watery enclaves, biding their time until the perfect match could be found.
“Every time we went to check out a bathhouse, I would bring my swimsuit, thinking we were actually going to use the facilities… And Matt and Sophia would be like, ‘This is a work day, Camille.’ So I’ve basically been edging myself for months, and was so thrilled to actually be at the spa,” Sojit Pejcha shared after the event.
The late-night literary marathon sold out in minutes, garnering a waitlist of hundreds for the latest of the platform’s string of buzzy events in New York – a fashion and culture literati round-up at The Georgia Room featuring Hunter Harris of Hung Up, a church-based reading with Rayne Fisher-Quann of Internet Princess, at which 500 would-be guests showed up with a line wrapping around the block, and an intimate (literally) gathering featuring Jessica DeFino of The Review of Beauty on holes and hole care at a burlesque venue.
“We had 100 half-naked people in the pool listening to readings at midnight. It was beautiful,” Starr reflected.
Leading the roster for the night’s presentations, Sojit Pejcha kicked off the readings with an exploration of the undeniable but forbidden desire of a coworker affair. Cat Cohen followed with a roster of comedic poetry that left the room in varied states of laughter, cheers, and splash-laden applause.
Mary H.K. Choi regaled audiences with exactly what she would do with Luigi Mangione (and his eyebrows) should she be given the opportunity, J Wortham shared that the event tapped directly into their “fantasy-dream of queer communities taking over late night bathhouses,” and spoke from an early iteration of a larger project on the body, dissociation, and the first time they dropped acid. Sherry Ning spoke about the aching yearning for beauty “that makes poets and artists shed big, opalescent tears.”
Liara Roux waxed poetic about the Mapplethorpe of it all – tying him back to a gay world of the eighties and nineties facing HIV/AIDS and the decimation of so much of a queer, creative generation. Jaboukie unleashed the aforesaid Senatorial smut on the gathered audience, while Noah Rinsky of Old Jewish Men was responsible for a fiery discussion on the state of ice cream sandwich economics in his home neighborhood. Brontez Purnell closed the night with a marathon of fiery proportions on his love/hate relationship with substances and their long term effects on his lifestyle and identity.
Reflecting after the night of outlandish, wet fun, (with more events surely on the horizon) Sojit Pejcha shared: “What a great origin story for a friendship or romance: ‘We met on a Tuesday night in a Russian bathhouse, getting whipped by olive branches, taking shots of horseradish vodka, and hanging out in the pool while writers shared what they most desire.’”
If that doesn’t sound like a recipe for literary revelry in the Substack age, what does?
“A fever dream of prose and pleasure”, one might describe the night after walking out of the underground warmth and into the downtown chill. Whether soaking in the pools or swapping friendly introductions between rounds in the sauna, guests left with the echoes of Pleasure-Seeking in its entirety: sensual, unexpected, slightly comedic, and always charged with that unmistakable cocktail of intellect and indulgence.
Words by Sam Falb
