(Not So) Sweet Memories

Went for 20-minute steam bath at the gym today. Trying to get some of the gunk out of my sinuses and nasal passages.

It's been 48 years since that first, very memorable, steam bath.....

There was a sign on a hut in Vung Tao* advertising STEAM BATH AND MASSAGE, and I was just adventurous enough to try it out.

*Vung Tao is a town near the mouth of the Mekong River. Occasionally, for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, some of us sailors were allowed to go to town and wander around, maybe get a few beers at some crappy little bar.

I went in alone. The women inside told me to take all my clothes off and put them in a box, which I did, reluctantly, because they could have stolen my money. They told me to climb into a steel chamber that was maybe big enough for three people to sit inside, and I did, reluctantly, because I could see very well that it locked from the outside. Alone, I climbed into the cold steel chamber and the hatch closed and locked. Steam started coming in through a little stub of a pipe that penetrated the chamber from the outside, and this felt good because it was cold in there initially. It got warm, then very warm, then hot, then very hot, and the steam just kept coming out of that pipe stub.

My situation, which was now starkly clear to me: I’m alone, locked in what was essentially a prison cell and somebody I’ve never seen before has control of the lock and the steam valve. This is a country that is known specifically for its segment of the population that is fitting in with the local culture during the day, and conducting effective guerilla warfare against the American aggressors at night.

I knew I was a dead man. I’d be cooked and suffocated (yeah, it was getting tough to breathe), then my body would be disposed of, and there wasn’t anything I or anybody else could do at that moment to prevent it. I would have shit my pants if I had any.

The noise stopped. Before my brain could register this fact, it registered the optic nerve impulses telling me that the white plume of steam disappeared. My eyes had been riveted to the pipe stub and the white death rushing out of it.

On the Welcome Sight scale, this was a real 10.

Today, in the pretty tiled room, the door was not locked from the outside. No rusty pipe stub. But the heat and the hiss brought the memories right on back.