I eventually find him sitting alone on a twin-size bed in a small room on the main floor. I go to Flex one night to meet Ricardo Wallace, an African-American outreach worker for the AIDS Task Force of Cleveland who comes here twice a month to test men for H.I.V. (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.
