Old Time Favourite: the Glory Hole

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A glory hole is an opening in a partition that lets two men have sex without seeing each other. The hole usually sits at hip height between two cubicles, in sex clubs, gay saunas or video booths. You may already know these holes and have enjoyed a hard cock or two this way. The appeal lies in the anonymity, and so does the risk: you see neither who is on the other side nor how healthy he is.

How the term “Glory Hole” came to be

The expression is much older than its sexual meaning. A glory hole first described a junk room, recorded since 1825. From 1849 it also named the opening in a glassblowing furnace where the piece is reheated. In nautical use it refers to a storage room, in mining to a funnel-shaped pit.

Sex through a hole in a partition is documented as far back as 1707. Court records of the “Tryals of Thomas Vaughan and Thomas Davis” deal with an incident at the Temple Bog-House in London, a public latrine. The original wording: “a Boy in the adjoyning Vault put his Privy-member through a Hole”. That encounter was no coincidence. It was a set-up. Vaughan, Davis and their accomplices ran an organized blackmail operation and threatened men with a false accusation of sodomy. They were sentenced to the pillory and to whipping.

As a fixed term in gay usage, the glory hole is only documented from the middle of the 20th century. Its first printed record appears in the 1949 glossary of Swasarnt Nerf’s “Gay Girl’s Guide”. The definition there: a phallic size hole in the partition between toilet booths. Back then that is exactly where the holes sat, in public toilets. Gay bars and men’s saunas came later. As long as sex between men was a crime, these places offered a reasonably sheltered setting.

Decriminalization and growing acceptance made glory holes less important. The Aids crisis from 1981 deepened that decline, and San Francisco closed its bathhouses in 1984. One official recommendation still exists, from 2020. In its guidance on the coronavirus pandemic, the health authority of the Canadian province of British Columbia recommended barriers such as walls. Glory holes were named explicitly. The reason: they allow sexual contact while preventing close face-to-face contact.

How does a glory hole work?

A glory hole is an opening between two adjoining cubicles, which means the practice always needs someone in the booth next door. Contact happens through a glance into the opening, through fingers pushed into it, or through your tongue. That is how you indicate you are up for sucking, licking or fucking. What you see is never more than a section of a man, so no real eye contact occurs. A knock on the partition counts as the usual request in sex clubs and saunas.

If your neighbor likes what he sees, he will push his hard cock through the opening. Lack of interest is usually signaled by the hole being covered from the other side, or simply by nothing happening at all. Both are clear answers. This stays consensual only as long as both sides keep saying yes. Whatever comes through the hole is an offer, and you can stop at any point without explaining yourself. The darkroom etiquette guide spells out this wordless understanding in detail.

Tips for more safety: What to look out for when having sex through the glory hole

Anonymous sex means two things in practice. You know neither the health status of the man on the other side nor how he will behave. Three risks can still be kept small. The venue decides which law applies, since a commercial club is governed differently from a highway rest stop. The edge of the opening decides whether you injure yourself. And the practice decides how high the infection risk runs.

Only undisturbed pleasure is real pleasure

Laws on public sex differ from country to country. In Germany, the relevant provision is section 183a of the Criminal Code, causing a public nuisance. It requires three things at once: a sexual act of some significance, performed in public, and done with intent or knowledge that it causes offense. If one of the three is missing, the provision does not apply.

“In public” means that an undefined group of people could witness the act. Inside the closed cubicle of a commercial sex club, a gay sauna or a video booth arcade, that is regularly not the case. Access is restricted, and anyone entering such a venue has reckoned with sexual activity. Nobody has it forced on them, which is exactly what the provision aims to prevent. This reading follows the wording of the law and consistent assessments by German law firms. Court rulings specifically on sex club cubicles cannot be found.

Freely accessible places are a different matter. In public toilets, at rest stops and in parks, the “in public” element is typically met, because uninvolved people can walk in at any moment. Anyone caught there has a problem, and so do the bystanders. There are no reliable figures on how often the police check such places. Pick a venue with a clear setting instead, meaning a commercial club or a sauna.

First check look, then dick

Glory holes are rarely made properly. Someone cuts them into the partition afterwards, often with crude tools, which leaves the edges frayed. Wood splinters are a known entry point for inflammation and for tetanus. A quick look at the edge costs you nothing.

Often the edges are covered with tape, precisely to prevent such injuries. The widely repeated advice to clean that tape before use has no medical basis, though. HIV loses 90 to 99 percent of its infectivity within a few hours outside the body, and transmission via surfaces has never been documented. Gonorrhea and syphilis need direct mucous membrane contact. Against those three, wiping an edge does nothing. Tougher pathogens such as hepatitis B survive on surfaces for days, so cleanliness at the hole still has its value.

Checking the cock that comes your way still makes sense. Open sores, blisters or discharge are a reason to pass, since syphilis is transmitted through contact with an ulcer. The overview on syphilis infection shows what such an ulcer looks like.

Signalling before “shooting” is helpful

Part of the appeal is that a glory hole gives you no eye contact. That creates a practical problem: you cannot read on the other man’s face that he is about to come. Not everyone wants cum in his mouth, and those who do usually want to know beforehand. Preferences on swallowing or spitting differ widely.

So announce the orgasm. Through a thick partition he may barely hear you, and then a knock works as a cue. Men who use glory holes regularly tend to sense the moment anyway and let their hand finish the job.

Don’t forget protection during glory hole anal sex

Anal sex through the hole carries the highest risk. For the receptive partner, 138 out of 10,000 exposures to an infected source lead to transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). For insertive anal sex the rate is 11 per 10,000, for receptive oral sex 1 per 10,000. Those figures come from the American disease control authority CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). They always refer to an infected source and assume no condom, no pre-exposure prophylaxis and no effective treatment. Real-world risk is usually lower. Some men use glory holes not just for sucking but to get fucked through the opening, holding their ass close against the hole.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reliably protects against HIV, while every other infection stays untouched by it. Condoms lower the risk further and at least cover the main contact area for other pathogens. Treatment as prevention is scientifically solid too. In the PARTNER2 study, around 77,000 condomless acts with partners on successful treatment produced not a single transmission. In anonymous sex you cannot count on it, though, because you simply do not know the status of the man behind the wall.

More relevant day to day than HIV are the other sexually transmitted infections (STI). Gonorrhea often sits in the throat and frequently causes no symptoms there. Add chlamydia, syphilis, human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes, hepatitis A and B, shigella and mpox. Germany’s Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) recommends hepatitis A and B vaccination for gay and bisexual men. Since July 2025 an extended recommendation covers the mpox vaccine as well. Regular testing is part of the deal precisely because so much runs silently. Where men regularly miscalculate their safer sex protection is set out separately, along with the real risk of oral sex.

Finding glory holes

Glory holes turn up in three kinds of places today: commercial sex clubs with a darkroom, gay saunas and, far more rarely than they used to, video booth arcades. What such a club looks like from the inside is shown in the portrait of the Catacombs sex club.

Beyond that, searching for the term glory hole together with your town usually works. Cruising guides with maps tend to come up first. Cruising means looking for spontaneous, mostly anonymous sex in public or semi-public places. Apps like Sniffies and platforms like Squirt.org list venues, some with a dedicated glory hole filter. Read the reviews, as they often tell you whether there is one and what condition it is in. For everything else, the guide to cruising has the details.

FAQ

What is a glory hole?

A glory hole is an opening in a partition, usually at hip height between two cubicles. It lets two men have sex without seeing each other, and it is used for sucking, for handjobs and for anal sex. You mostly find them in sex clubs, gay saunas and video booths.

Is sex through a glory hole legal?

Laws differ by country. In Germany, inside the closed cubicle of a commercial sex club or a gay sauna it is generally not an offense. Section 183a of the Criminal Code requires the act to happen in public and to cause offense intentionally or knowingly. No court has settled this for sex club cubicles, though. In public toilets, at rest stops and in parks, the “in public” element is typically met.

How high is the infection risk at a glory hole?

That depends on the practice. For receptive anal sex, the CDC puts HIV transmission at 138 per 10,000 exposures to an infected source. Receptive oral sex comes in at 1 per 10,000. Both figures assume no protection at all. More common than HIV are other infections such as gonorrhea, chlamydia or syphilis, none of which PrEP protects against.

Where does the term glory hole come from?

The expression first described a junk room, recorded since 1825, and from 1849 the opening in a glassblowing furnace. The first printed record of the sexual meaning appears in the 1949 glossary of the “Gay Girl’s Guide”. The oldest documented incident itself comes from a London trial in 1707.