Day 176: Who's Your Hammama?

Paris, Day 5. I spent the past four hours surrounded by breasts. I'm talkin' boobies, man, EVERYWHERE. Naked ladies in Paris.

This sounds waaaaaay sexier than it was.

Inspired by friend Shea, I went to a hammam, a Middle Eastern bath house/spa type deal that I'd never heard of until she told me. She chickened out on going to one when she was in Paris and I don't blame her. Hanging out naked with a bunch of strangers is not exactly an average afternoon.

At the front desk, the lady took my money and rattled off the LONGEST set of instructions for taking a bath I've ever heard. I stared at her, took the giant pile of paraphernalia she thrust upon me and stripped down to my skivvies.

Most hammam goers wear bikini bottoms, but as if I brought a BIKINI to PARIS in FEBRUARY. I had to settle for Hanes Her Way. Suck it. I'm from Canada.

I put on my robe and walked fearfully down a curved staircase. Through a glass door, I could see dozens of topless woman lounging around on a marble platform. I didn't recall the front desk lady saying anything about a marble platform, so I ran back upstairs and asked her to repeat everything.

I ventured back downstairs, avoiding eye contact (and eye-to-other-people's-boobs contact) as much as possible. I put my stuff in a cubby and handed my number to a lady dressed like she was just about to do an Aquacize class. Then I took my little tub of weird-looking green jelly into the shower room.

In the corner of the shower room, a mud wrestling match was in progress.

A woman in a pink bikini slathered grey slop all over the line-up of women waiting. She grabbed handfuls of the stuff out of a plastic bucket, smearing it on their heads, legs, arms and bellies, chattering joyfully all the while. I looked at my little tub and couldn't imagine it would turn into mud by just adding water, but I took it over anyway. "Non," said Pink Bikini.

I learned I had to smear my jelly on myself and opened the lid. It STANK. This stuff reeked of something from a fetid swamp mixed with something from someone's butt. I gamely slimed it all over my body, trying not to gag.

Then I went into the actual hammam, a.k.a. the steam room. Naked ladies were splayed all over the place, their shapes barely visible through the thick steam. I sat awkwardly. Then laid down awkwardly. One of the hot-ass drips from the ceiling dripped into my eye and the stank soap got in it. I booked it out of the steam room.

I hit the sauna next, where a 50-something woman was lying on a lower bench. I climbed to a higher bench and...sat awkwardly. I couldn't lean back because the wood walls were effing MOLTEN. The 50-something kept lifting her legs up and lowering them down. I couldn't tell if she was minimizing contact with the fiery wood, exercising or just showing me her ass.

The heat was making my face throb, so I thought I'd chill on the marble platform thing. I sat down to discover it, too, was heated. No wonder the ladies had been basking on it like so many sealions. Topless sealions.

Okay, let's deal with this.

You know how in the movies (both X-rated and otherwise) all women look pretty much exactly the same from the neck down? It's like you get to Hollywood and they issue you your pair of regulation breasts, regulation legs and a regulation ass.

REAL LIFE ISN'T LIKE THAT.

When you get a crowd of naked female bodies in the same place you suddenly and unavoidably realize everyone is completely different. Big boobs, little boobs. Saggy boobs, perky boobs. All nipple, no boob. Boobs that seem emptied out. Boobs so full they overflow into back fat. There are so many combinations of body parts that you actually start to forget WHY one thing is supposed to be more attractive than another.

They're just...BODIES.

And they all seemed to be headed towards the Aquacize lady. I followed them. I watched as everyone's number got called except for mine and then I realized I probably screwed up somewhere along the line.

I sheepishly asked Pink Bikini about my number. "Oh," she said, raising her eyebrow. "Vous." She led me past a curtain and toward a sketchy-looking bed. "Couchez-vous." It took me a second to translate that in my head, but it was too long for Pink Bikini.

"English?" she asked almost incredulous. "Yes," I said. "Sorry."

"LIE DOWN," she yelled, as though English also meant deaf.

I obeyed, lying down on my stomach as she proceeded to flay me with a blue scrub mitt. "TURN," she yelled. I did. Then she flayed me some more.

This part of the hammam is called gommage, which to my mind translates as "gumming." This sounds very pervy and is not at all an accurate description of what was happening to me. I now believe it is more akin to gomme as in eraser.

Because clumped all over my body were the gross grey eraser bits of my exfoliated flesh.

"STAND," demanded Pink Bikini. I stood. She sprayed me down and I watched the majority of my epidermis float away along the tile floor. Then she handed me back my skin-covered flaying mitt and said, "GO TO THE POOL."

I did. It was freezing. But it also felt amazing and I got out of there feeling like a million dollars. I headed for my massage.

The massage ladies gathered at the front of the waiting room and chatted like sisters, giggling and patting each others' legs. One of them scanned the sign-up sheet with all our numbers, while us patrons sat up expectantly, wondering which would be "ours."

I have to admit, it reminded me of a brothel. The one looking at the numbers was the Madam and the rest of the girls waited around to get their 'assignment.' It didn't help they were all Russian.

I got the Madam, who led me to a room shared with two other people. I got on the table and she rubbed my back and chatted to her friends. It was the most half-assed massage of my life. But even a half-assed massage is better than no massage and I eavesdropped as she gossiped about the other girls' massage techniques. I tried to imagine the brothel equivalent, but didn't have time. "C'est tout," the Madam said abruptly.

Oh. Okay. Was it good for vous?