This old story – nearly thirty years old - story has two parts. This is Part One:
My first visit ever to America, was with a boyfriend, in the very early eighties. He took me to friends in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco. They were a nice couple, with two little girls.
While we were politely chatting in the living room, over a tea, they asked the usual questions of a newcomer: How was your trip? How do you like America? How do you like San Francisco?
Then the husband asked: Do you want to try a hot tub?
Now, I didn’t even know what a hot tub was. I looked to my friend. He nodded. Sure, I said.
That very moment, the three of them got up and started stripping – right there in the living room. If in Rome, do as the Romans! So I undressed, too. We went out on the porch where I got to see my first hot tub, and got to sit in one, continuing our polite coversation.
As a European, of course, I was no stranger to public nakedness. But in the living room of people I had just met half an hour ago??
Part Two: About two years later, I visited Boston for the first time, interviewing for a job. Tired after a stressful day of traversing the city and encountering hospitals and Chiefs of Medicine, I wanted to take a sauna in the evening. At that time, I was boarding with a friend, but she was away for the weekend. So I tried on my own to find a reviving sauna. First thing I learned that there were no public saunas in Boston. I was desperate – in Germany, it was so much of the culture to go once a week and relax in dry heat. Nada here.
I called around. On a Saturday evening nearly nobody answered. Somebody suggested going to a women’s spa. I found one that had a sauna, but I needed to be a member. After a lot of cajoling and explaining my visiting status, I finally succeeded in convincing them to let me use their sauna once, for a fee.
On that Saturday night, the women’s health club was deserted (I learned later that on Saturday nights EVERYBODY here has a date). I had the whirlpool all for myself. By now, I had experience with hot tubs, of course, and happily dunked there first. A lone woman came by, looked down at me and said: My, are you white!
Now I am a redhead with very white skin, that’s true – but to comment on that I don’t tan like other people? I said nothing, not sure I really had heard what I had heard.
I retired into the empty sauna, feeling right a home – in spite that American saunas are not as hot as ours. But at least I had arrived where I wanted to be this Saturday evening.
The door opened and a very bulky woman moved in. I wiggled to the side and made room for her. Her breathing made funny noises and she gave me some sideward glances. Then she spoke up: I am not offended by your sight.
Number one, I found it a strange English sentence. Number two: What was so remarkable about me that everybody had to comment on me? I said nothing – especially did I say nothing about what she looked like to me.
Again she said: I am not offended by your sight. This time I looked her full in the face, asking what she meant??
She must have gotten that I was utterly baffled, and that I had an accent. Delicately, she pointed out that, in America, you wear a bathing suit in the sauna.
Yes, the huge woman was wearing a tiny-teeny bikini. And here I was, embarrassed and white-skinned, sitting naked in a public sauna! The little guest towel I had brought from my friend’s house, did not even wrap around me.
And wait a second, I wanted to scream. If there’s no nudity allowed in America - what was that in San Francisco then??
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