(Edit - Updated because of last nights dream….and now i’m going back to Sauna Club)
All I wanted to do was lose a little weight.
I’m not, and never have been skinny. The problem is I’m short. If you’re taller you can hide those extra pounds all over the place before people start to notice, but for me it seems to take no time at all to start piling it. A few moments of indiscretion…a few pints after work, a few snacks on the commute, a few takeaways here and there, and suddenly nothing fits as well.I don’t want you to think I’m making excuses…but it’s my wife’s fault. We’ve recently found out she’s pregnant (yay.) and it turns out that makes a man body start releasing sympathy hormones so that you gain weight as well! I always knew that at some point I’d be settling into a bit of a dad bod but for now I’m not going down without a fight. Hell, I’ve got a gym membership. The least I could do is give it a go.
But here is where my weight loss journey gets a little…strange.I set an alarm for 7am. I thought ‘better to get it done before the day gets in the way’. And honestly the experience was FINE. I didn’t hate it anyway near as much as I was expecting. The pool was much busier than I thought it would be. Turns out 7.30am – 8.30am is absolutely peak time for the work hard play hard gym freaks who like to get in a pre- business swim in! I managed about 30 minutes of breaststroke before calling it a day. Even in the slow lane I couldn’t help but feel I was holding up traffic. 3 old dears behind me that I could feel rolling their eyes at the end of every lap.
It wasn’t great but it was a start and I thought I’d earned myself a little treat. The real reason I’d come…the sauna. I’ve always loved a sauna. It’s one of the few things that made this extortionate membership worthwhile. Those Scandi’s get it. I don’t know about the whole male female segregation thing, but is there anything more relaxing that slowly boiling yourself with a group of sweaty strangers?
Unfortunately after some googling one night my wife told me that sauna’s are so hot that they stop your balls functioning properly. So for as long as we were trying - that was that.
Now the deed is done and though and I can finally get back to business.
My wife laughs at me, but when we first bought our house it had a little shed at the back and for a while I was determined to turn it into a sauna…another one of my ‘half baked projects that I never see through the completion’.
I hung up my towel and entered the sauna. It took my eyes a moment to adjust in the dim, steam filled room to realise that there were a few others in there already.
It isn’t a big room. Maybe 3 square meters at a push. With three levels to sit on, ascending like big wooden steps.
This’ll sound stupid but I forgot how hot they were. It was like entering an oven (I assume). Like I was immediately uncomfortably hot. I climbed up a level and felt the heat intensify again and knew that I wasn’t ready for the highest step. I’d actually have preferred to have remained on the lowest step but for some stupid reason I didn’t want these strangers to knew that I could handle the sauna like a pro.
I sat down and started to bake, trying to work out what number was showing on the thermometer. Did that say 80? Too cold for Fahrenheit but surely waaaay too hot for centigrade?
I made a mental promise that I would wait for at least one of these strangers to leave before me. Unfortunately they all seemed deeply settled in conversation and in no rush to go anywhere.
“It’s all about the Wim Hof method”
“Here we go again.”
“Well it’s worth repeating. Wim. Is. The man!”
“Who?” giggled a new voice.
“Wim…the ice man!”
“Ice man?”
“Well there’s more to him than that, but that’s how he’s known. His thing is all mind over matter. Get your breathing right and the body is capable of all kinds of things. Cold plunges into a lakes in the middle of winter in Russia, fucking…100 mile runs…withstanding extreme heat…you just need to get your mind right and the rest follows”
“Here here” echoed every voice in the sauna. This sudden group chorus took me by surprise. What had I walked into?
“No work today then my friend?” There was an awkward pause and when I looked up I realised that the question was directed at me.
“Oh me?”
“Yes mate. No work?”
“er no. Well…yeah but…I’m self employed so…whenever really”
The man who seemed to be holding court smiled a knowing smile “Good for you mate. Nothing beats being your own boss.” I took him in for the first time. An older guy, probably pushing into his late sixties. Body like a barrel and the veiny legs of a triathlete. The kind of retiree who looked like they’d decided to take their health seriously. “So…have you sought us out?” He asked slowly, seeming to test the water with his question.
“Pardon?” I laughed, certain I’d misheard him.
“The Sauna Club…are you here to join us today?”
“The Sauna Club?”
“Ah” A cheeky grin flickered across the face of the four strangers.
“A happy accident then I guess” chimed in the old lady sat nearest the coals. “My names Jen darling. What’s yours?” Jen had kind eyes and no hair and a complexion that spoke to a rough couple of years that I hoped were now behind her.
“Mike” I replied. I tried to sound friendly but also final. I really hate conversations with strangers at the best of times and I certainly hadn’t come here to join ‘sauna club’.
“Nice to meet you Mike. I’m Andy, opposite we’ve got Lydia and Sak.” The retiree directs my attention to the bench opposite where I can just about make out two others in the swirling mists.Sak is probably a few years younger than me and in the absolute physical prime of his life. He has a body that I’m sure has had some chemical assistance and his body is riddled with tattoo’s. He looked like the kind of man who knew a thing or two about mixed martial arts. Lydia…well if I’m being honest I’d already noticed Lydia and I was trying hard not to stare. Lydia was a 10 and she knew it. The amount of skin on display was verging on pornographic. Just looking at her felt like I was cheating on my wife.
“and we are Sauna Club” smiled Jen again. Like that explained anything. “It’s nothing official.”
“There’s no joining fee” Andy let out a laugh that was more like a bark.
“We meet when we all feel we need…a visit” Everyone nodded at this. I’m not naturally gifted at conversation but this felt more obtuse than usual.
“Now’s ideal” Jen continued. “The sweet spot of the day. 8.45am…most people are off to work, but too early for mums and babies so it’s just us…”
“Retiree’s” chimed in Andy.
“Students” added Lydia.
“I’m a personal trainer” Sak added awkwardly “I just haven’t clocked in yet”
“Less likely to get disturbed”. A quick glance outside told me she was right. There seemed to have been a mass pool exodus and now all that was left were a few stragglers. Even the life guards seemed to have clocked off for a bit.
“We’ve sort of unofficially become the Sauna Club. What about you dear?”
“Oh…I’m just here to…” I stopped. Jen’s face was still smiling sweetly, willing me to go on, but I realised I didn’t quite understand what she was asking…and once I’d opened my mouth I realised I didn’t really know how much I wanted to tell these strangers…but it was too late. I’d started so I had to finish. Whatever came out my mouth next was either going to be over sharing or just sounded stupid.“Go on mate” said Andy coachingly.“I’m just here to er…lose a bit of weight”
I looked at Lydia when I said it. I don’t know why and I wished I hadn’t. She gave me this shit-eating sympathy grin and I hated myself and my body all over again.
“Well you’ve come to the right place” Andy rallied. “People underestimate the Sauna as just a ‘end of work out treat’ but this is where the magic happens” Another weird cultish nod and murmur of approval from Andy’s gathered congregation.“This is where jockeys come before a big race, where boxers come to shed those few final pounds before a fight. It’s crazy what we carry around in water weight”
“Yeah but-”
“No man. It’s no small thing. You come and sit here a few times a week, I promise you’ll notice a difference. But if you come and join us…join Sauna club…”Another grin…a grin that if I wasn’t mistaken was erring on the side of…
“It’ll change your life” Lydia drooled in a voice that was no way near as hot as her body.
“It’ll save your life” nodded Jen sadly.
“It’s…fucking something” Mumbled Sak. From the corner.
“We forget but…Sauna’s are ancient magic Mike. Ancient magic. From Nordic mages, creating smoke houses to commune with the gods, to Native American’s using fire pits to see into other times and places.”
“Okay” I nodded, thinking this would be a good time to make my exit. It had all become a little more intense than I’d planned on and besides, I was proper sweating by now.
“They are thin places Mike. Know what I mean?”
“No” I stood up, aware that I was leaving behind a sweat print of my butt cheeks and trying not to feel too embarrassed about that.
“Places where…in the right conditions…we can do something extraordinary. Ask for…the things we really want…really need.” There was no murmuring now. Andy, Jen, Sak and Lydia were looking at me as if they believed in this spiritual shit with all their hearts. Their eyes pleading with me to understand it.
“So what do you want Mike?”
“I just wanted to lose a little weight…I should get going.”
Andy stands and pushes me back to sitting. It’s friendly but firm. It’s an invitation and a challenge.
“We’re gonna get started now Mike. That’s why we’re here. And if you don’t want to stay I won’t force you…but if you give us 30 minutes of your time and it’ll change your life. I promise.” I looked around exasperated, limping searching for a easy way out but the truth was that Andy had peaked my interest.
“Fine”
“Good” Andy smiled and the rest of the room smiled with him. Lydia shuffled closer to me on the benches and reached over to take my hand.
“You won’t regret it” she sounded like ever yoga teacher on every home yoga video I’ve ever seen my wife do…but beneath the words there was something else. Something sincere and…scared.Also her breasts are unreal and leaning over like this I couldn’t help but drink in an eyeful. Despite my better judgement, this was when I decided I was in it for whatever the so called ‘sauna club’ had planned. I decided to stay.
“You’re going to think we’re nuts Mike because what I’m gonna say next…it goes waaaaay beyond hippy-dippy gym-lad pseudo-science shit. What I’m going to say next makes no sense at all!” I had already stayed way longer than I’d intended and I was now really starting to struggle with the heat. I was starting to pant without even speaking and I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I hoped Andy’s little demonstration wasn’t going to last much longer.“The only way for you to understand is to be part of it…if that’s cool?”
“I’m actually…I’m pretty cooked…”
“Just breath mate. In and out. 5 minutes from now you’ll never be the same again.” Lydia squeezed my hand again and nodded…like it would be awful if I left now and carried on just being the same chubby loser I am.
“We think there’s rules to this, but I won’t lie Mike. We’re working this out as we go along.”
“What…rules?” I gasped, trying to wipe sweat out of my hand but just moving it around.
“First off. No matter you do, never stay longer than the timer.” And with that he dramatically rotated the 15 minute egg timer on the wall. “Next…More heat, more smoke.”
“No…” It came out as a whimper “I really can’t” Lydia shuffled closer and moved her hand to my knee and I completely lost track of what I was doing and what the fuck I’d stumbled into.
“Sorry mate, the heat is key. One more scoop for each person in the Sauna at the time. And then something all together for luck.” Andy picked up the large wooden ladle from the bucket by the coals and poured over the first scoop of water. The room was immediately filled with a loud hissing sound and a brand new cloud of thick white smoke. I lost sight of all of Andy’s torso and head, but watched his arm reach out and pass the ladle to Jen.Quick on her feet for such an old lady, Jen swapped places with Andy and added her scoop to the coals. The hissing intensified and before I knew it all I could see was white.Lydia’s hand on my knee had started a gentle circling action. I could hear motion in the room and then another hiss. I assumed Sak had added his ladle to the coals.
Lydia’s hand disappeared and I felt the steam by my side shift to fill the void where she had just been. Another hiss. The wall of white steam was so thick now that it almost felt solid. I was losing all sense of where I was, even though I hadn’t moved. I knew in my head that 4 short steps would take me to the glass door and back to pool side, but that seemed a million miles away. Even looking down I couldn’t see my nipples any more. The heat was unbearable. My eyes felt like sand paper and whenever I breathed in there was a sensation of burning that travelled straight up my nose.
“One more Mike…just walk towards my voice.” Don’t ask me why…Maybe it was because I couldn’t see my lumpy body and I was actually enjoying that…maybe it was because I must have sweat out nearly half my body weight by now…MAYBE it was because of the semi I was sporting in my swimming trunks that I couldn’t just up and leave…but I walked towards Andy’s voice. Through the smoke I saw his hand clasped around the wooden ladle. He’d already filled it for me. I took hold and felt him guide me towards the coals. Something about the moment felt…pure…ceremonial even…which feels stupid to say about anything at a local leisure centre but Andy had been right. There was something primal about this moment…the world did feel thin here.
I poured.
One final hiss. Smoke on smoke on smoke until nothing existed any more. Nothing but an insufferable heat that was smothering me…and I loved it. I knew I needed to leave soon or I might actually collapse but suddenly I didn’t feel like leaving. The heat soothed me. Hands appeared on my shoulders. Both sides. Impossible to say whose.
“Good. Now…face forwards and spit. With whatever moisture you have left. Spit on the coals.”
It was too hot for questions. The only thing for it was to spit. I gathered whatever spittle I could in my arid mouth and spat forwards. 5 pathetic pops as we all found our mark and then silence. All of us gathered around the coals waiting for something to happen in a perfect white veil of steam. I wondered why the life guard wasn’t coming over to open the door when this was clearly not safe behaviour in the steam room. I wondered what it would look like now to open the door and let this flood of steam pour out across the pool.
“What now?” I rasped. My voice was so starved for moisture that it came out like no noise I’d ever made before.
There was no reply and I realised there was no longer any hands on my shoulders. “Andy?” a sudden fear settled into my thumping heart. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t hear them. I was certain that none of them were with me anymore. But that wasn’t possible. The only way out was the door to the pool and if they’d left I’d have felt the temperature change in a heart beat. It was too hot. Too hot to be here alone. Too hot to be playing whatever stupid game we’d started. This was how people died. I didn’t want my pregnant wife to read that her stupid fat husband had died at the local leisure centre because he’d sat in a sauna too long and left her kid without a dad!
I reached out towards the door and felt…nothing. I took another step forwards. Slowly for fear of touching the coals, but still nothing. I circled my arms either side of me, moving forwards and backwards, quicker now, desperate to feel anything. But it was as if the four wooden walls of the sauna had vanished.
“Andy!” I tried again, louder “Jen? Lydia? Argh fuck” I screamed as I felt a sharp sudden crack in my big toe. In rotating I’d stubbed it on a wooden beam. It was a shock of agony, but on the plus side I’d at least found a bench again. In pain, exhaustion and dismay I collapsed to sitting and lent over to try to catch my breath. This wasn’t happening. This was a heat induced delusion. You can’t get lost in a sauna. This is the fantasy of a man who has lost too much bodily fluid. I looked up. Some of the steam had began to dissipate and now the room was visible again. Only it wasn’t the same room. It was still a sauna, of sorts, but now it was significantly larger than the one I’d entered. The floor spanned nearly twenty metres by twenty metres. If it was just the scale that had changed I could have put this down to my continued heat delirium…but it was everything.The floor tiles that had previously been a glossy porcelain were now obsidian black, the grouting a deep red. The wood was no longer varnished oak but something much older…much much older…’ship like’ was the only word that came to mind.But the thing that made my stomach…The thing that made me want to scream for this crazy fever to end was the levels. The seats…which had previously been three tiers tall, now went up and up and up, ascending like steps for a species much larger than a human. Steps for a…I counted at least 10 levels rising up before they were enveloped by the gloom of the room. Something in my stomach told me they went on though. On and on and on. But to what?
I also noticed that on the left and right of the room, at tiered intervals, there were exits. Dark wooden tunnels set into the steps that lead off in long corridors away from the sauna. Their darkness an invitation to explore.
I blinked myself back into my body, fighting the urge to go any deeper into this odd chamber in which I’d found myself.It was then that I spotted them again. The rest of the Sauna Club. Perhaps the steam had just cleared enough let me see them but I was sure they hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Where…where were you!” I tried to yell but a wheeze was the best I could manage.
“We all had to pass through the steam. Some times it’s quick…I told you Mike…we’re all feeling our way through this. I don’t know much more than you do.” Andy stood, 7 tiers up, stark naked and staring down at me, as unabashed by his nudity as only a 60 yr old male can be.
Jen was to his right, down a few levels and stood beside one of the exit tunnels. She was also slowly disrobing. As she peeled away her swimming costume I noticed that both her breasts were missing, the scaring beneath a tell-tale sign of a recent mastectomy.
On the opposite side of the room was Lydia. Only one step up from me and with a single ping, the top piece of her bikini sprung off. I was so busy trying not to stare at her perfect breasts that it was only then that I noticed the scaring on her arms and inner thighs. Sak was the only one who didn’t want to hang about for any of my shit. All I saw of him was a taught ass disappearing down one of the tunnels before he was gone.
“Why are you all taking your clothes off?” I gasped.
“It helps.” Andy shrugged. “I told you Mike. You’ve got to see it to believe it. Remember, just breath.”
“Where the fuck have you brought me?”
“Don’t get mad…You can leave any time. Just spit on the coals and this’ll all be over. You’ll be…back. BUT if you want to stay…and I’d highly recommend staying…then this world is ours to explore. I can’t tell you were to go. That’s not how this works. Just remember, don’t outstay the timer.”
I clocked the timer on the wall. Different again. Longer, the grains of sand more ashen.
“Wherever you go, remember your way back and if you get too hot, leave! This isn’t a dream Mike. Whatever happens here, happens. I learnt that the hard way.”
I had so many questions but Andy was already turning to leave.
“Oh” Andy paused “and never, NEVER go out there” He pointed to the wall behind me. I looked around to see a glass door leading out to the poolside. This I was certain hadn’t been there before. Through the darkened glass I could see the pool beyond but again…changed. The dark black tiles continued to the pools edge where the water looked stagnant.“No matter what you see, you can’t help them. That’s not our world.”
I looked back to see Andy climbing, step after step, up and away into the blackness. A man with a mission. I looked to Jen for some semblance of reason
“What’s happening? Where’s he going?”
“Andy always goes up” Jen smiled like that was the most perfectly reasonable thing in the world.
“Why? What’s up there?”
“We’re all here looking for something.”
“What?”
“It’s personal. You need to go and find yours?”
“I don’t understand” Jen smiled patiently “you’ll find it or you won’t. Just be careful who you trust.” And then she was gone. Off down a tunnel.
Lydia took a step towards me and I noticed that she was gently crying. Crying whilst still trying to preserve that odd fake smile of hers. “Take it slowly. You’ll get the hang of it.” I turned my head away, back to the world beyond. For some reason the poolside filled me with a terror I couldn’t express. It was all the same and yet…broken.
There were still swimmers in the water but…but when was the last time they had taken a stroke? Or come up to breath? For that matter they weren’t swimmers at all. They were just…bodies, floating idly in the lanes. All around the pool sat lifeguards in their high metal watching chairs…9 of them…dark watchers in thick waders and anoraks…and they were old. Impossibly old…Keeping a careful eye on the bodies as they drowned before them. Behind them I could see the glass windows leading to the outside world…Or what should have been our world. Instead all I could see was barren land and scorched earth. Orange clouds in a blood red sky hurtling by as if they were in fast forward…so fast it looked like the whole world was rushing through time and the only stationary thing was the sun, but that was…
“You can’t go out their Mike. Really!” Lydia’s hand seized my wrist. Nothing cutesy this time. A vice like grip and she meant it. “Tell me you won’t?”
“I won’t”
“Good. I need to go…I need to…search. Will you pray with me a moment Mike? I might really find him this time.” I watched her close her eyes and start to mutter words of prayer. Before her eyelids closed, for the first time I’d noticed just how dilated Lydia’s pupils were and wondered if that was an effect of the heat or whether she hadn’t taken something before this little adventure began. Then her eyes flicked open and she backed away from me, retreating towards one of the tunnels. Her eyes and body an invitation to follow…
“Is it safe?” I asked dumbly.
She giggled “Every maze has its minotaurs” and with a wink she was gone, leaving me standing there. Alone in the chamber. Not knowing whether to go up, left, right, back or…My heart was slowing. Pounding.I wanted to…I needed to…I spat on the coals and in a blink I was back the sauna.
Not that ghastly eternal sauna or whatever the fuck it was, just a normal leisure centre sauna. A moderate temperate. Outside a normal pool side of normal people, doing normal lengths.
And I was alone. No Andy, no Jen, no Sak….just me.
The only one not brave enough to explore further than the chamber.
I felt embarrassed then. I’d bottled it…like I always do.
The feeling of shame was sudden but fleeting.
A second later it was replaced by intense nausea and I threw up all over the floor. Before there was anyone to notice or blame me I up and left. Left the sauna, left the gym and got home as quickly as my fat little feet could carry me.
In the days that followed my broken toe ballooned…my only tangible take away from that strange place in the mists. On the second day, I was so sick of the swelling that I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed it until hot red pus began to ooze from the side of the nail and is it did I saw a dark wooden slither of wood slide out as well. An ancient looking splinter that belonged to…a world that shouldn’t exist.
It’s taken me a few days to type this up…a few days to find the right words. But in those day’s I’ve felt…great. There’s no way to say it other than - I have a fire in me. And honest to god I think I’ve even shifted a pound or 2! Something in my body keeps telling me to go back…to go back and sit with the sauna club again and…to be a little braver this time…to maybe explore a little further into that chamber that haunts my dreams and see what I missed out on in the Sauna game.
Because…I do want to change. I want my life to change. I want…I want something that maybe I can only find in that baptism of steam?
True to form I spent a while dithering before deciding whether I’d show my face at the sauna club again. Until I had the dream.It was one of those ‘didn’t even realise I was dreaming until I woke up dreams’.
I was back at the pool, swimming lanes with the morning crowd. Not for nothing but I was good. I was no longer holding up old biddies but really tearing up and down the fast lane.
Then I remembered the sauna and between strokes began looking in through its glass doors. It drew me in and someone else was in there. A single figure stood in the centre of the room shrouded in white mists. In his hands he held some kind of old marble basin. The figure was deep in ritual, bowing their head over the bowl and drawing a deep breath, so deep that they drew tendrils of steam from the basin to their nostrils. The wisps seemed to seek out a way into the man’s body. With each long drag from the bowl his body seemed to change.
I’d take a stroke and when I looked again his biceps were larger.
Another stroke and his thighs had bulged.
Another stroke and his neck flared.
Stroke.
Abs.
Stroke.
Jawline.
Stroke.
Pectorals.
I finished my length and on the about turn saw that the man still wasn’t done but now the changes were taking their toll. Unpleasant white veins began to work across his body. Each deep inhale caused the man to grit his teeth in agony. The white of his eyes turning red.I knew this man. It was Sak. Another breath and his muscles were beyond ‘well defined’. The bulges looked stretched to burst while the crevices looked like trenches, like Sak was both tearing apart and collapsing in on himself. Another breath and I watched his skin change between strokes. First tan, then sun kissed then burnt and then charred. His tribe work tattooed seemed to glow a fiery red.
Sak screamed but he couldn’t help himself. A final deep breath. Deeper than the others. The steam filling his lungs to bursting. I watched as his clenched teeth broke in his mouth as his eyes began to melt from their sockets. Saks skin flaked away from his perfect muscles. Steam poured from his eye sockets.The basin fell from his hands and just before it shattered on the floor of the sauna I finished my lap and woke up.
It was 7am and I knew today would be the day I returned to sauna club. I’ll update you later today on how I get on.