Craig Willse

 

#SEX

On the first day of the new year, I ride with friends to Venice. My stubborn insistence that Angelenos don’t know what cold is cannot shield me from the petulant wind whipping across us. In jackets and hoodies, we huddle together on a sheet, its dips filling with rivulets of sand. In front of us, a couple takes turns shedding clothes and rushing in. We can do this, we decide. We ask a stranger to snap photos as we splash into the frigid shallows. A wave surges across us, a baptismal crash of dark waters.

We go to a Persian restaurant and order generously, our appetites eager and mouthy. Afterward, they drop me at a Korean spa. It is basically a bathhouse. At check-in, I’m not even issued the ill-fitting shorts and t-shirt required for going upstairs to the shared spaces; it’s assumed I’ll be staying downstairs in the men’s section. I strip in the locker room. Sand pours from the pockets of my jeans. I scan my surroundings and with one foot I try to sweep the sand under the locker’s edge. Grit sticks to my bare toes. I shower then sink into one of the hot pools, its bracing heat. A man rises and moves to another, smaller pool. I watch from the corner of my eye, four of them in the tight space, gathered close, hands disappearing beneath the pool’s surface.

I try the steam room but it’s closed for cleaning, its temporary occupants fanning across the other rooms. In the clay sauna, long benches run along two walls. The glass door is frosted, just the transparent edge offering a view to the maintenance worker pushing a cart down the hall. Sweat bubbles at my temples. The air is dry, chalky. Towels fall open. Hands move across laps. The young guy beside me leaves and someone slides to take his place. He checks the door; his face lowers. Others are watching, small sounds slipping from their lips. Being seen like this makes me nervous. But isn’t this what I wanted, a public life? I close my eyes and think of the four in the pool, submerged hands reaching through the jetstreams and eddies for contact, to take something and to give something in return.