Sauna = embarrassing

I am in Berlin and had three lovely empty hours between arrival and show. My piece was typed, the email cleaned up, the papers read, so I thought I’d check out the spa on the eighth floor. I swam ten laps in the pool, lounged for about seven minutes in the whirlpool, and thought it would be good for body and soul to warm up a bit more.

Off to the steam room, which I always find a bit like the sauna for dummies. That’s me. I still had my swimsuit on, but I did see suspiciously many naked women around me, wrapped in just a bath towel. Damn. Sauna. That means naked. I’m really not prude and that negligible piece of fabric that I call my bikini leaves little to the imagination, but naked just feels so, so seventies. Snotty from places where snot isn’t meant to be. But I wasn’t the worst and so I wriggled my swimsuit out from under my bathrobe, threw an XXL towel around me, and headed to that steam room. I got images. Of other people who had sat here. And of course without a bath towel. I wondered how often they would clean this steam room. I also tried to banish the thought that I smelled sweat. That was the herbal soap. Organic herbal soap. No sweat.

I lasted two minutes. Then off to the sauna. Come on. Hup hup. Man, it was so dark there. I only spotted another person after three seconds. Without a towel. In lotus position. That means the genitals were quite uncovered. I was dealing with a pro here, because this person was sitting on the highest (and therefore hottest) bench, while I awkwardly scooted onto the lowest stool, still wrapped in my towel as if I were sitting by the fire at home in -10 degrees. I hadn’t even put on my woolen socks yet.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I saw very little breast on my fellow sauna visitor. It took seven seconds before I realized it was a man.

Then the bingo card ticking off began. If I leave the sauna again now, what does he think? That I’m a sauna newbie? That I’m doing this to seduce him? Like some kind of contemporary mating dance? Then he’ll follow me, I have to make a run for it and I’ll slip on the slippery tiles (which of course have just been mopped, you’ll see). Or he’ll complain because I opened the door twice in three minutes and that completely throws sauna professionals off their momentum.

Once outside, I also didn’t feel like standing under the communal showers in all my nakedness. And why were there suddenly men here? I had entered the sauna area through the women’s changing room, right? Suddenly I saw a second entrance. Right: from the men’s changing room.

Then into the plunge pool. Just to show everyone that I’m not a wimp (I actually want to write ‘sissy’ here, but I don’t dare to anymore). But yes. I had to go up six steps, in my bare nothing. To then go down six steps again. In the same outfit. And just at that moment, that Professor Sauna walked out of the wooden room.

There was only one thing to do. Quickly, very quickly into the women’s changing room. Pulling myself into my wet swimsuit (nothing worse than that, right?) and quickly disappearing to my room. I encounter an older lady who is blow-drying her hair. Ah, I recognize her. She was just here too. With bare shoulders and the rest. She smiles at me, but in her eyes, I see pity for my clumsiness.