The naked spa

So, this happened.

While in Germany for work, I'm enjoying the gym at the Hilton hotel in Gendarmenmarkt, because this is something that, in post-war Germany, you can totally do.

After workout, I notice that the gym has a naked spa, even though they prefer the term textile-free area of relaxation and mindfulness. Germans.

And I suddenly feel like you know what, I should go to the naked spa. I deserve it. 2019 has been a shit year!

I undress and head toward the naked enclosure. The no man's land for clothes. The event horizon of anything textile. I bleep the card against the door - don't ask me where I kept the card - and enter a large, warm, elegantly tiled room.

A few frames in, I ask myself: did I just enter the women's naked spa?

With this horrifying realization, I squeal and pull the clutch to do a hasty 180. Too quick in retrospect, because the slippery floor overcorrects it to a 360, sending me back to squeal one, while my penis is absorbing the momentum energy via a pendulum-like movement that captures everybody's attention.

I don't know if there is such a thing as a five seconds rule for being naked in a place one's not supposed to be naked in, but it seems reasonable to assume so. So I squeal again and moonwalk away from the place.

I now know that I have to leave the premises as I am - naked - before somebody gets the chance of calling the german version of 911. Nein-ein-ein.

Then I notice the stick figures on the sign at the entrance: a slender human shape clearly symbolizing a naked athletic woman and... hum... is that a Scottish guy?

It doesn't take me much more to understand that it's not the women's naked spa I just entered. It's the mixed naked spa! Where all sexes and genders can happily coexist as peers, enjoying the steam, the icy poodles, and their nakedness, inside a pre-original-sin Garden of Eden. In Germany of all places!

I suddenly feel like you know what I should go to the mixed naked spa. I deserve it. I can't stress enough how shitty 2019 was!

I get back to the enclosure with my po-po-poker face, trusting that nobody will realize that I am the same squealy pendulum-penised person that stormed out not thirty seconds before.

So there I am, naked, in this large hub room where everybody is chilling, like in one of those mangas for perverts, also called mangas.

I'm feeling like my Stendhal Syndrome is about to kick in, because everyone is extremely beautiful, except for that guy. So I brainstorm that my best course of action is to reduce the visual stimulus by hiding in the hammam, with its high steamy Silent Hill content.

The hammam is a small, misty, oval room, lit with orange light and jam-packed with naked humans sitting their backs against the wall, looking at each other like a Council of Elrond of naked middle-earth.

They all have to squeeze a bit to make space for me.

I realize that I'm not ready for this level of intimacy. This is happening way too fast for my culture shock to keep up.

People are chatting in German, but kindly switch to English once they get wind that I do not speak the black speech. They ask me what I think about the early Christmas decorations. I reply that we should probably pull in a favor from the eagles and be done with it.

I know that I must not make eye contact because, according to Heisenberg's principle, it's only when people look at you in the eyes that they realize that you are naked. So I blur my view as if watching one of those pictures with hidden shapes, and keep my eye-sight below the horizon so not to risk crossing the streams.

So there I am, sweating like a pig in a steamy room, with blurry wide open eyes, looking way south of the border where, fun fact, genitals tend to coalesce. All good traits of a Major Perv 🫡, which is probably why everybody leaves within minutes.

All in all, I consider my first experience in a mixed naked spa an outstanding success!

Then on my way out, I entered the women's changing room by mistake.