Steaming

“Come shower with me,” calls The Boy, my boy.

I walk into his bathroom, and see him naked in the shower stall, wiping its glass clear with old Wall Street Journals and a jug of vinegar. “Are you pickling your pickle?” I ask.

“You should hope not.” I stand there, watching him through the glass, as he looks over the snaky spaces in the carved Roman marble of the shower, eyes pausing on a New World black and chrome switch box. “I’ve never tried the sauna in here.” He presses its buttons, and we’re quiet, waiting. A couple minutes pass, and we hear the shower stall breath, transforming into the steamer of a giant espresso machine. “Hop in, Little Satan.”

I strip and slip in, sitting on the cold marble bench. Spirits of water begin to kiss me, clinging to my skin, and I watch the temperature climb on the black box. 65° F to 70° to 75°… The steam’s slowly exploding into our marble and glass world, and I steal a little breath, and cough. My lungs choke on the water in the air, but I breath deep, I make myself relax. The Boy sits next to me, and we lie against the marble walls on opposite ends, book-ending the space between us, our legs open to each other. Steam dances and beads on the glass, on the walls, on our skin, though I only see the drops through touch: the steam is fogging my vision. “Just breath deep,” says The Boy. “How calming is this?”

“Very,” I say, but my mind isn’t resting, it’s racing with the numbers on the silver and black switch: 85°, 90°, 95°... I wonder if this is how hell is: a selfish place fogged full of passive pleasure, forever? Then heaven must be like the marble slab I’m resting on: a dull swirl of timid grays and whites, an eternity of cold work for other people.

The thought evaporates, floating skywards on the steam. Eternity dissolves into only the present, to time stretched out like my legs, and the sauna’s too steamy for me to see my feet. We’re floating in our own little pleasure palace, a tiny tomb of sweaty stone. “Lean your back against my stomach,” says The Boy.

And I curl up against the sculpted ridges of his body, and he’s my throne of flesh and clean sweat, pretty little pearls of moisture. I melt into him, finally relaxing, my mind blank except for this story I might write.

The steam stops, and it’s quiet as a final rest, or the half-second after a climax.

The Boy sits up. “We need a cold shower.”

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