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For twenty-three years, since the first shoots of curly black hair began to sprout in my Netherlands, I've really wanted to have sex in a steam room. Here's how the fantasy goes: I've been schvitzing for a quarter-hour, so I'm slathered with a fine salty sheen. The air is thick, but the steam has dissipated. Then the door opens.
Her face and the rest of her body depend on my passing celebrity interest of the moment. But I consistently see the same legs. They're smooth and perfectly formed, slanting upward into a deep blue one-piece bathing suit.
"It's sticky in here," she says.
"Yeah," I say. "It feels so good."
She notices my very appealing body for the first time.
"There's sweat all over your muscles," she says.
"I hadn't noticed."
We hear a hiss. Steam, smelling of both lavender and menthol, oozes out of a hole in the wall. Within seconds, a hot, wet cloud consumes the room. She sits down next to me. I put my index finger on her calf and run it up the inside of her thigh, where I gently place my palm. She gives a little moan, barely a murmur. Her face turns to meet me. Our mouths puddle together. Invisible and anonymous, we melt into the mist.
I should begin the "Bad Sex" portion of this tender essay with an acknowledgment: If I were gay, and I really wanted to have sex in a steam room, there are as many options available to me as there are brands of beef jerky in a Colorado convenience store. But I'm not gay. For the straight man in America, wanting steam-room sex is like wanting vodka in a dry county when you have a suspended driver's license. I began to realize this early.
My senior year of high school, I dated a Swiss exchange student, about whom I've talked in this space
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You might think it's erotic to stand naked next to your friend with your legs spread…
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before. Her host family had some money. One winter weekend, they took us skiing in Park City, Utah. The lodge had a steam room.
I spent the first day with my skis in a V, slowly going over moguls the size of quarters, while my girlfriend did spread-eagled flips on triple black diamond runs with names like Beezelbub's Anus. Suitably exhausted, I suggested that after supper we retire to the steaming chamber to soothe our sobbing joints. I had my hand on her thigh before the door closed. She looked around nervously.
"They'll send me home if they catch us," she said. "I don't want to go home. I hate Switzerland."
I leaned in to kiss her.
"Come on baby," I said. "It's only me."
"Don't," she said. "I'm so scared."
Scared, I wanted to say. Right. This was a young woman who once had sex with an Afghan freedom fighter. But no problem: I had the rest of my life to fulfill my fantasy.
Eighteen years later, I was still seeking my chance. A 2002 trip to the famed St. Mark's Russian And Turkish Baths in New York yielded only a relaxing afternoon with a three-dollar bottle of juice. The lone woman present among the four-dozen-or-so bathers, was an attractive Puerto Rican who'd learned by necessity to tune out the voices of men while in environments that exceeded 100 degrees. In the '90s, I attended an Indian sweat-lodge ceremony in Skokie, Illinois, and tripped my nuts off on a cup of mushroom tea. My shaman was a bearded social worker named Billy. During my Amsterdam period, I visited three separate steam and sauna establishments. They were all totally relaxing. Plenty of naked women roamed around. But my odds of having sex would have been better in a department store. Damn the Europeans and their utter lack of bodily taboos!
For several years in Chicago, I belonged to a neighborhood gym at the end of its line. It featured a steam room that hadn't been repaired since 1945 and hadn't been cleaned since 1975. My years of membership yielded no potential partners: I just couldn't develop a special kink for an Assyrian juvenile probation officer, a middle-aged Korean brothel owner, or a 400-pound black barber named Bunny. The health department finally shut the place down after the police discovered the owner in the steam room, dead from an after-hours coronary.
I continued to search. One afternoon, my friend Jim and I visited the Division Street Baths, Chicago's most revered ancient steaming chamber. You might think it's erotic to stand naked next to your friend with your legs spread against a mossy wall while an ancient Pole lathers you up with a brush made of eucalyptus leaves and Jesse Jacksons Sr. and Jr. receive massages at open-air tables not more than fifty feet away. But I can tell you from experience that it's not.
Steam havens are still infinitely valuable to me, just not in the way I once desired. I've determined that, for straight men, steam rooms aren't erotic settings at all. Rather, they're places where we can blow snot without fear of criticism, dump buckets of water over our heads and flap our lips in the manner of, and at the volume of, horses. I tossed my sexual fantasy into history's dustbin of discarded lies.
One afternoon last summer, I found myself driving around metropolitan Los Angeles, because I figured that L.A. really needs another overeducated Jewish guy trying to write funny screenplays. Three of my appointments had canceled, so I had about six hours between meetings. Driving down Beverly Boulevard, I passed Brooks Massage Therapy, which had a sign out front promoting a "Steam Sauna." The sign also indicated that the business was celebrating its fiftieth year.
Brando might have steamed there!
I paid my twenty bucks. A sign indicated that no sexual contact would be permitted in the baths. Well, then I
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His eyes were attempting to lock on mine. Don't look down, I said to myself. Whatever you do.
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definitely belonged. A few minutes later I was basking in meditative bliss. Some great screenplay ideas popped into mind. Somehow, I knew that this was the place where I'd come up with the story that would make my Hollywood mark. Hell, I thought, if that goober who wrote Traffic can win an Oscar…
The door opened. In walked an even skinnier version of William S. Burroughs. He sat down across from me. I gave him a quick nod and returned to my meditation about how the protagonist in my screenplay would best react to the inciting incident.
"It's perfect in here," the man said.
"It sure is," I said.
"Mmm," he said.
His eyes were attempting to lock on mine. I twitched my head around even more nervously than usual. Don't look down, I said to myself. Whatever you do.
I looked down. A throbbing knockwurst of a cock hung out the right side of his towel. He pumped it slowly. His mouth moved as though he were chewing gum.
That's what I get for trying to steam within walking distance of West Hollywood. But why couldn't I have at least been fodder for some modern version of Montgomery Clift? Then I might have gone for it just to end my streak. But no. I had to draw Dr. Benway in the lottery.
"Goddammit to hell!" I said, and stormed out of the sauna.
I hope he got what he was looking for. n°
Bad Sex With Neal Pollack appears monthly.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Neal Pollack is the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature, Beneath The Axis Of Evil, and Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel. For a daily dose of his satirical brilliance, visit his website, www.nealpollack.com. He lives in Austin, Texas. |
©2004 Neal Pollack and hooksexup.com
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