by Melissa Myers

I’ve pounded down a fistful of live termites in Costa Rica, pierced my septum at a Maori tribal ritual in New Zealand, and attempted to ride a cow in Wales. (I don’t recommend the latter.) Ticking off a list of “must sees” isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. This was especially true during my recent trip to Istanbul, Turkey. In the first two days of my trip, I ripped through all of the tourist traps to save plenty of time for eating sheep intestines, going pearl diving or, what the heck, driving in Istanbul. The Blue Mosque, Grand Bizaar, Galata Tower. These were all good, but I longed for an adrenaline rush, so I followed a Turkish friend to the European (i.e. “tourist”) side of town to a promised, “Very exciting location…one of the ‘1000 Things to Do Before You Die.’” I pictured hang gliding over the Bosphorus or bungee jumping from the Aya Sophia. I soon realized that the Thing to Do, apparently, was to get a Turkish Bath. My heart sank. This had better be one extreme bath , I thought.

As I approached the outside of the bathhouse, the welcome mat and a giant arrow sign pointing to the building suggested that if I were indeed going to die, it would be okay to do so after taking my bath. A Thing to Do or not, at this point, I had to use the toilet after drinking Turkey’s requisite five glasses of Ali Baba’s Apple Tea at the hotel before leaving for the day. As I entered the bathhouse, I was handed a menu of “pampering options” ranging from the 25 Lira, “Massaging Relax Package” to the 80 Lira, “Turkish Delight.” I went all the way because I’m like that.

After paying, I was briskly ushered into a massive women-only atrium, shown a small dressing room, and handed what looked like a handkerchief, to presumably, cover myself with. After undressing, I picked up the loincloth and reminded myself that I was in Europe, and here, women were always topless on beaches, playing paddleball, slathering themselves with cooking oil, surfing, jogging. No one looked twice at breasts in Europe. You’re an adventurer, I pumped myself up. This is a Thing to Do! Like walking across hot coals in Thailand!

I walked out of the little dressing room, bare-chested and wearing the three-sizes-too-big wooden flip-flops they had given me. Clip-clopping along, steadily-gathering apprehension now turning into raw abash, I noticed that all of the European women in the atrium had apparently been given some kind of tutorial on how to tie the loincloth just so, to cover all private regions, including their breasts. And here I was, exposed, the only topless woman–an American no less–in the room. Before I could examine their European loincloth tying techniques any further, my masseuse, a rather enormous Turkish woman, pushed me, wordlessly, into another atrium. Here, I beheld a Renaissance painting: women of all ages, shapes, and sizes reclining luxuriously on the marble floor, completely nude. I wondered, of the 1000 Things to Do, how sprawling buck-naked on a wet floor had made this list. Once in the Naked Atrium, I was taken to the center of the room and pushed onto a tall marble platform so that the other women could stare at me and point out my physical flaws in their various foreign tongues.

As I sat on the platform wondering what was going to happen to me, my masseuse took off her bathing suit and washed herself under the nearby shower. Please, oh please, God, put the suit back on! I screamed inside my head. As I prayed, she came over to mecompletely nude, but now squeaky cleanand thrust me down on the marble, face-first. She wasn’t much for conversation. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine that I was doing one of the other 999 Thingsmaybe on a safari or riding a camel, or getting thrown into a Turkish prison. Suddenly, I could feel her hands all over me, soaping my back, butt, legs, in between my toes, my arms, fingers, neck. It was almost as if she had…four hands…gently washing in circles. As I lay there, finally starting to enjoy this sensation, it suddenly dawned on me that two of those were not handsthey were her abundant, sagging breasts swinging back and forth against my back like cloth strips at a drive-thru car wash. Interrupting me before I could wonder about what her other parts were doing, she grabbed me and turned me over. I had just enough time to note that she was sitting cross-legged as she washed me. I have since added this image to my own list of 1000 Things I Wish I Had Never Seen.

After my thorough washing, I was escorted to a small area at the side of the atrium. Finally out of the limelight of what I had convinced my paranoid self was the United Nations panel of Breast Inspectors, I actually relaxed at bit. My washer-woman wasn’t so bad, especially now that she finally put her bathing suit back on. She wasn’t so brisk now; maybe she didn’t like the UN panel either. She seemed to sense my turning the corner because she, kindly now, began lathering up my hair. As she worked her lavender-scented soap and fingers through my long mane, rinsing it with a copper bowl filled with warm water, I transformed, naked and innocent as a child. I no longer worried about my imperfect body, regrettable tattoos, and rampant leg hair. As she began to ease her comb through my tangles, memories of the evenings when my mother would spray Johnston & Johnston “No More Tears” on my hair, reciting nursery rhymes or singing bedtime songs softly under her breath, flooded over me, down my back and legs, and pooled gently in my mind, bringing me closer to happy tears than I have been in years.

I would never have guessed that the Turkish bathhouse would actually end up on my list of 1000 Experiences in My Life That Were Worth the Risk of Embarrassment; a true road less traveled. Displaying my saddlebags, stomach rolls, and ill-groomed body hair to a group of women who, honestly, had seen it all before, was worth it for those few moments when I was transported back to a time when none of these superficial things mattered; what was important was being warm, clean, and safe while my mother hummed, “You Are My Sunshine” in my ear.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Funny Story, Great Stories, Third Annual Solas Awards Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.