socially uncomfortable sauna

who put a jungle in the sauna?I've been hitting the sauna on and off (and probably more off overall) for about the last ten years... and whereas once upon a time I would have never expected to run into the same faces over and over again, let alone run into people I actually knew, let alone people I knew from my life that has nothing to do with the sauna...

I mean running into the same people time after time is alternatively somewhat boring and occasionally frustrating... and running into past sexual conquests (either from inside or outside of the sauna) is probably to be expected given the size of Adelaide...

But running into people you know superficially from the outside world is one thing... but running into somebody who used to be one of your very close social circle is another beasty completely (and one we'll refer to as Stallion, for a number of reasons, not all of them the obvious ones)... especially when he's there with his boyfriend...

Now there are situations under which I would have stopped and said hello... wearing a towel is not one of them. So, basically, I hid. I actually thought about leaving, but figured that if I hung around mostly the "dark" areas I would probably be able to avoid Stallion.

Which mostly worked out okay... except when I realised later that one of the guys I kept passing in the halls upstairs was actually The Boyfriend... but I only ever really knew him peripherally, and if it was dark enough that I didn't recognise him, there's no way he recognised me.

There were a couple of near misses though... and I'm not sure whether Stallion was also playing the "pretend we don't see you" game, or if I just didn't feature on the radar enough for him to even see me let alone realise who I was.

One of the near misses was equal parts blessing and curse... I'd kinda gotten bored with mostly hiding, so I was headed past the showers to the steam room, glanced at the body of the guy in the outermost shower, only to realise that it was Stallion, in the process of wrapping a towel around himself.

Oddly enough, I actually have no memory of how naked the back of him was (and if I did see his butt I didn't realise it was him at the time so I wasn't paying attention)... but I know that I didn't see anything else (like his namesake), but what I'm not sure about is if I could have done if I'd turned my head slightly at the right moment... and I'm also not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I didn't see "anything". I'm a visual creature, I like to look... and I'm a hoarder, I like to collect things, including visual memories... but what I would have done with that particular visual memory once I had it, I don't know.

Part of me isn't sure I should actually have bothered going... I mean, I've been in this whole "non horny" groove for a while now (probably since my last sauna excursion... which would make it officially two months)... but then there's that whole erection metaphor for Spring, and yesterday was really warm and sunny, and while my body wasn't making any demands on me, my brain was thinking it would be a good idea... stoopid brain...

The point where I officially called it a night though was while threading my way through the maze of rooms upstairs, I turned a very dark corner and there they were, literally right in front of me... they then proceeded to detour off into one of the rooms (I'm not sure there was actually any other choice) and locked the door.

And there are times at the sauna where you don't necessarily want to hear people in adjoining areas doing the Horizontal Polka, but do... and there are times when you maybe DO want to hear them, but can't really and know you shouldn't be listening anyway... guess which case this one was...

On the upside, at least I didn't have Marc to deal with on top of all that...

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4 comments:

Sunshine said...

Seriously, you should write a book about your experience. Would make a fascinating read. :)

Victor said...

A few years back I was enjoying providing a guy with the best oral service that I could in an extremely dark steam room.

I met up with him in that steam room and was not sure what he looked like or whether I had seen him earlier in the brighter areas of the venue.

We were getting on so well that we decided to move on from the darkness of the steam room to a private cubicle.

It was then that we saw each other clearly for the first time and were shocked to recognise each other as colleagues from work.

It was the first and and only time I have had sex with a workmate.

yani said...

I don't know that it would make a whole book sunshine... not enough actual sex... a vaguely pornographic pamphlet maybe...

And oddly Victor, I did look twice at one of the guys in one of the very dark rooms for the passing resemblance he had to somebody I'm working with now... wasn't him of course, but it was strange for a second there...

Tom said...

No, totally agree with Sunshine. Write a book. A novel though, not a how-to-pamphlet! Doesn't have to be word for word truth of your exact stories... but you must have lots of material to develop some characters.
:P