Sunday morning at the Turkish Baths

After a night of moderate drinking, I woke this morning to my roommate shaking me and telling me it was time to go to the Bathhouse. After a hastily downed cup of French Roast (Gourmet Garage), we took two trains and one bus and a 10 minute walk to land us in the lower east side of Manhattan where we entered the Turkish and Russian Baths. Apparently Sundays are "all-male" day, which I guess means that it is coed the rest of the week. There was a Hassaidic Jew replete with curls, etc. in front of us. As we came up to the counter we placed all valuables in a little safe deposit box, was given a locker key and pointed to the locker room. After undressing and wrapping impossibly small towels around our waists, we went down a narrow flight of stairs where there were 4 saunas, 2 steam rooms each of varying temperatures, and one ice cold dipping pool. We began in one of the steam rooms, and after 10 minutes went into the least hot sauna, slowly working our way up to the absurdly ridiculously hot sauna, and finally jumping into the ice cold water. It was quite a process, and my head was certainly cleared after all the snot ran uncontrollably out of my nose. After the two final temperature extremes, upon exiting the cold water, my body felt as if it had just been rubbed down with menthol. The other clientele were a mixture of gay men, and presumably straight Russians and Turks. Best of all...not one tourist. There was some discrete cruising but nothing tawdry or obscene. Once of the things I liked was that I never felt as though I had to pose. With sweat pouring out of every possible gland, and snot running down your nose, along with everybody else, you can just relax and not worry about looking pretty. In a city where appearance is everything, this is a neutral ground indeed. I probably won't go back, though. It was too cramped, damp and poorly lit for a truly relaxing experience. And I'm not sure all of the torture I put myself through in those temperature extremes was worth the effort. My head was clear, however, when I left, and since we were in a Polish neighborhood, we found a cute Polish diner where we had our first meal at 2pm. Perogies and omelettes on the patio.