Last Saturday, I spent the entire day in a bath house in the lower east
side of Manhattan. Seven hours flew by: I was in the zone, taking heat, plunging
in cold dips, sipping cold water. Hard to
believe I hadn’t been in a bath house in over two years.
My obsession with taking heat/schvitz started in Moscow, which I
visited 18 years ago. Everything about Russia was magical, chaotic, surprising, scary,
sinister, and beautiful, including its people, culture, foods. Then my Russian friend took me to visit a rundown
palace in the city with a working bath house. Lydia explained that before modern
plumbing people bathed once a week at the bath house--a communal, cleansing experience
people still sought in modern times.
The attendant gave us a bucket, bar of soap, wash rag,
and birch tree twigs. I sat beside Lydia on an old wooden bench in a room once a magnificent ballroom with pretty marble floors now lusterless. I dipped my soap in my bucket of water and scrubbed
my naked body, showered, and then I met the king
of the bath house, master of the most divine pleasure known to man:
intense, unbearable, life-saving dry
heat: The Russian Sauna was a monster,
and I could not take him head on, so I crouched my way to a wood bench in the dark wooden
cavernous room and stayed only several seconds at a time for fear I would instantaneously
combust.
I spent that entire afternoon mesmerized by the intense heat, which drew me back again and again. When my body temperature rose, Lydia struck me with the twigs, giving me a mini-platza. Then she poured a bucket of freezing water over my head--the experience made the blood in my body speed up, sprint through my veins, and resurrect my heart.
I spent that entire afternoon mesmerized by the intense heat, which drew me back again and again. When my body temperature rose, Lydia struck me with the twigs, giving me a mini-platza. Then she poured a bucket of freezing water over my head--the experience made the blood in my body speed up, sprint through my veins, and resurrect my heart.
I was determined to find a comparable heat experience on returning to Florida, but all the spas I visited never came close to the heat
of an authentic Russian Sauna. That is until my friend took me to the
Russian Turkish Baths on Miami Beach. Here was the love of my life, the king
of pleasure, the Russian Sauna, along with some other hot rooms, just as I remembered
it--a dark canverous room, buckets for cold water gushing from a faucet, and unbearable dry heat. I visited the spa every Sunday, and
I met seven wonderful men who I learned to take heat with.
They called me their princess, and I spent my afternoons with them: beautiful Brazilian Fabiano asked me to rub a clay mud mask on his back,
legs and shoulders before he entered the dry Finnish room; Paul shared stories of his once
brutal battle with heroin addiction in the Turkish hammam; Rodrigo taught me how to smoke pot in the sea
oats on the beach; John shared his homemade fruit salad in the bath house's restaurant while talking about his work week; Jerry requested I do his platza with twigs he bought
at the Russian store on Biscayne Bay;
Robert asked me to pour buckets of freezing water over him when he got overheated in the Turkish steam room; and Richard joined me in the ocean water Jacuzzi.
After I moved to Portland, Maine, I missed my beloved bath house and friends in Florida. When last week I found my way to the
one in NYC, I once again allowed the experience to consume me: I made new friends, took cold showers, got a platza
by a man who knew how to wield the twigs,
and spent the day taking heat in the cavernous Russian Sauna, which at one
point that evening made me feel like I had returned to the womb of my pleasure. Read my exciting memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at:
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