I met a woman at the gym last week; we had seen each other from time to time, and started chatting after a polite introduction. In a sea of younger faces, some of the older people tend to nod a silent hello to each other as if to say, "Ah, you are here too, beating back time."
We talked about our jobs and found we were in the same field (health care), and of course as older people do, we talked about the past. The past, that world of rose-coloured glasses, where people make-believe that the old days were better than we remember. I talked about northern Ontario, being raised Finnish, and enjoying a steam bath on Sundays. I think Andrea was sussing me out, and finally came to the point. "Are you straight or gay?" she asked me. "Oh, gay, very gay," I replied. She apologised, but didn't have to, and I told her so. It is a downtown gym, after all.
In one of her stories, she mentioned an 'Uncle Dan,' who started a business with some partners in 1941. She used the word 'spa'. I asked her if she was talking about The Oakleaf. She was flabbergasted and surprised that I knew of the place. I told her it had been something of an institution in the city, one of the few proper steam baths around for decades. It's been closed for about ten years now, and in its final incarnation was more a destination for homeless men than Scandinavians. Recently, in the Ford, I drove by it on Bathurst Street. Boarded up, the plastic sign is now punctured and the hoarding covering the windows smeared with as much graffiti as the bricks. I never asked her, but wanted to know if her uncle had ever married, or was a bachelor.
There are a handful of steam baths in the city. I call them steam baths, not saunas, because this was the family term. It was often my job as a kid to 'light the steam bath'. A wood stove, and a metal box full of rocks. Back in February I had gone to the Southwestern Bath House south of the airport. It is quite far afield from where I live downtown, but a nice place, family run, with a dry sauna and a wet one, and a plunge pool. It has a mixed, and a men only and women only schedule. Having gone, I realised how much I miss it. How good it feels to soak your bones for hours.
The only equivalent close to me is a proper gay spot out on Dundas West. I had never been, so I decided to go a few Sundays ago and take advantage of the steam. I only wanted that, and would do my best to avoid any sticky situations, so to speak.
I was actually somewhat nervous, going for one thing when all the men in the place had their minds expressly fixed on something else. I got my towel and found a place at the top of the benches. Not squeamish or modest, I folded my towel and sat on it as I would have done at the farm.
I was soon hit upon by a chatty fellow who told me he was quite talented at massage. "I take no money for it," he told me blankly. The Massage Artist's hand went to the top of my left shoulder. "You're tight," he said. Next, he gripped my thigh between his thumb and middle finger. "Let me know if you'd like me to stop," he said, but having started without asking me, the logic of his comment was very much the cart before the horse. Of course I knew what I had gotten myself into, and advances are to be expected. After a minute of being half-heartedly and somewhat nervously kneaded, I let the fellow know I was okay and got up to check out the Turkish equivalent. I am not one to have a stranger's hands on me without some kind of sympatico.
I had noticed earlier that I was being benignly and silently stalked by a fellow in a Speedo. Once I had established myself in the Turkish room he entered. I suspected he may have been on the spectrum because he stood less than a metre from me and stared at me through the steam. It was extraordinarily odd. I did my best to ignore him as he stood in the middle of the steam room facing me while I sat on a bench. After enduring another uncomfortable minute I put my hand on his shoulder, patted it, and said, "Relax man, relax." He let out a sigh, shifted his footing, but kept his eyes fixed on me. In spite of myself I started feeling rather self-conscious. I got up and went to the showers to cool down. After that, I returned to the dry sauna.
With cruising on the minds of the majority of the men, I did notice that the door was opened a lot. This was annoying as the precious dry heat was escaping. I saw a new man among our motley group once I had settled back in the dry room. He was a tall handsome fellow in the corner, at the top bench. He in one corner and I in the other. Men came and went. He stayed. He was chatted up by the Massage Artist and his thigh was also kneaded. He spoke in an accent. After the room had mostly cleared out I asked him what the origin of his accent was. He hesitated. Then he said, "Russian." It all made sense.
We started a conversation that ranged from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris to bears and blueberries. He mentioned Monday Begins on Saturday by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a book of which I had never heard. Earlier, in one of the breaks from the heat I watched Alex (for this was his name) walk into the shower room cupping his genitals. It seemed to me, for some reason, a very straight thing to do. While showering between bouts of steam I said, "Excuse me, I hope you don't mind my asking, but are you straight?" He hesitated again. "No, no, I'm gay," he said. He had come for the same reason I had, which was not sex, but steam. After a few more stretches in the dry heat it had gotten past six p.m. Coming on to seven, he said, "One more, then we go?" I agreed.
We changed, dumped our towels, returned our keys, and bade farewell to the Massage Artist. On the street I went to shake his hand. He shook it, but grabbed me and gave me a tight and very real Russian hug. I shook his hand again, and then we parted.
