Let's Make A Deal
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Or, Please Don't Get Naked In The Sauna At The Health Club
Hi, Big Guy.

Yeah, I'm talking to you. When I go to The World's Least Intimidating Health Club, I like to work out a little, swim a little, soak in the hot tub and top it all off with a few minutes in the sauna before hitting the shower.

I don't mind the company; I like to hear people visit back and forth in the various places in the club, and I've had a couple of nice conversations in the past few months.

But I have a deal to make with you. Would you like to hear it?

If I just stipulate that your package is bigger, more manly and just so much more impressive than mine is, could we just skip the part where you parade around naked in the sauna?

I don't mind the naked part so much. I'm 45, been in the army, been in my share of locker rooms and have seen a lot of naked bodies. While I don't exactly look forward to the flash of the flesh, I'm hardly horrified by it, either.

But man, I hate it when you come into the sauna, all naked and sweaty, pouring cold water on the hot stones to make sure you get even sweatier -- and then you sit your naked ass down on the raw wooden bench!

Okay, here's the difference between getting naked in the shower and sitting naked in the sauna. That sauna is a dark, tiny room filled with sweaty bodies and nowhere to sit but on the wooden seats with the recessed metal screws that hold them together. That wood is untreated, my friend, which means that it absorbs moisture -- especially when it get heated up.

In a shower, there's a lot of room. There's tile everywhere, with drains that take the water (and the stuff that comes off of your body) away. The shower is a big breezy place with lots of good lighting to show off your Incredibly Impressive Package.

Maybe if I stipulate as to your superiority and say something complimentary in the shower, you could then avoid the sitting of your naked self down in the sauna? Could you at least sit on a towel or something?

I try not to think about it, really. But you know how it is: I'm in there, with my shorts or swimsuit on, reading or just relaxing, and you enter naked as the day you come out of your momma. You pause a moment or two and take in the heat -- sometimes you even stretch a little just to make sure you work up a sweat! So far, I'll admit that I'm a little uncomfortable, but I can live with it.

But it's when you decide to sit down, with your sweaty butt on that raw wood that I start to lose it. And you sit there, sweating out your butt crack juice and sharing it with the world -- or at least those of us who venture to the sauna at the World's Least Intimidating Health Club -- and I am at a loss.

I've tried glaring at you, but so far that has accomplished nothing. In fact, maybe you're thinking that I'm awfully impressed with your package or something.

I've tried to use my mind powers to make you feel cold, or uncomfortable, or even ashamed that your soaking the bench beneath you with fluids that should remain yours and yours alone. But that hasn't worked so far.

So now I'm up to bribery. What do you say? I don't need to see the evidence, your honor: I'll just stipulate for the record that whatever you have in your pants is so much more than I could ever dream of having in mine. So you don't have to prove it by getting naked in the sauna and sharing anything with anyone else.

What do you say?