RuKsaK

Busier than Huggy Bear’s bitches nowadays, so here’s a bit if typing I produced in 30 mins this morning. Thoughts as always would be gorgeous.
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In the steam room old, soaked wood is all around you and seems hammered on by mythic, muscled soldiers made of water. The seams are glued by flung sweat; the light is pushed to the background by a cloud of floating water above the group of naked men. The heat is so solid that thoughts and feelings not physical are driven out – survival of your lungs, brain and skin is the only notion. It was like sitting inside a volcano’s wet fart.

I’d sit there with my extremities dripping with sweat, even my dangling cock was a tap of perspiration. The men would cram in as though on a windowless bus going to hell, all naked and groaning in the enjoyed, macho pain. With so few people speaking and the scorching, sodden air only allowing one, uniform pose to the naked human body, I’d lose all my foreignness for those few blistering minutes.
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The Georgians would come in, the only men wearing underwear. They kept on their briefs with such pride that in me would have looked like I was ashamed of my cock – with them it was politeness in keeping their penile beasts sheathed so we didn’t become embarrassed – that was what their gait said anyway. As always, if anyone was going to reveal I wasn’t Russian it would be a Georgian.

A fat one, and fat Georgians are men you don’t call fat, sat next to me. He had that kind of reassured, cocky swinging in his neck and a cumbersome frame that he used as a bullying tool, rather than a hindrance. It was the world’s fault for being skinny.

He instructed me in an amused growl.
‘Come on, move up little one.’

I moved.
‘Move more will you? Got to let my arse spread. You’ve hardly got an arse, that slither of skin you’re using to sit on doesn’t need a bench, does it? Does it?’

I let out a ‘da’ which had Russian and Georgian heads lifting from their statued positions. A ‘da’ which had a foreign whiff about it – not many of those in a ‘banya’.

The fat Georgian’s streaming, thick eyebrows showed playful interest in his new, immediate friend – me. His Russian was much better than mine, coarser, more commanding:
‘Ah, my friend – where are you from?’
‘I’m from the UK.’
‘What do you think about these skinny, stinking Russians?’

He had me cornered. I felt like the most naked man in the room. The Russians were staring at me and so were the Georgians. All the faces said ‘you better give a good answer.’
‘They’re good people.’

The fat Georgian, now coated in a complete film of sweat, let out a massive harrumph which spiralled a curling piece of steam in front of his face – wrong answer.
‘You don’t think they are stupid cunts, no?’

The Russians glared into me and the Georgians sat back in their confident underwear, enjoying the game. I felt more sweat, the sweat of heat had the sweat of worry joining it now – two very different sweats which the body lets out, as though using different pores – heat pores and worry pores.

‘Look – I’m married to a Russian and I think they are good people.’

The Russians were now glaring from their steam-addled eyes at the Georgians, coaxing more.
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But, as always the heat took us under. Their acting got punctured by a laugh and rasping slaps on my foreign back, my novelty existence.
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As the banya regulars we exited the steam room. Then plunged in the icy pool, screaming from the cave which gave birth to us. We shared a few beers, laughed at our ever more menacing jokes. And, I left, as I always did, with more stories, skin like polished mahogany and a grin full of beer.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

The sweating diplomat