ONE STOP STEAMY ELEVATORS

Tinder in a Hot Tin Box-How to Go On Vacation Every Friday

Sauna-ing in pretend Finland

I figured out how to go on vacation every Friday. The trick is to change what vacation means. You don’t have to get on an airplane. You don’t have to make a hotel reservation. You only have to pretend you’re in another country.

There’s a portable sauna that shows up at my frozen beach every Friday. It’s my Finland. We, faux-Finnish vacationers, run into the sauna after we’ve completed submerging in the freezing lake.

Our portable sauna is 7' by 12' feet. It could fit twelve, but we’re not perverts or Tetris.

Though I’ve heard they stroll in the snow in Finland, we sprint. The blustery air outside the lake water is between 20 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit — (-6.6 degrees Celsius). That’s too cold to stroll.

My fellow veteran ice swimmers tell me once the lake ices over, we bring axes. Where does one buy an ax? And if I buy an ax, do I have to cut down everyone’s Christmas trees next year?

I had a pickup truck in college. Do you have any idea how many people I moved from one shitty apartment to another?

The sauna is 170 degrees Fahrenheit which is 76.67 degrees Celsius — warm enough to kill COVID — COVID dies at 140 degrees F or 60 degrees C. That’s hot in Fahrenheit and Celsius, but I hear it’s meh if you live on the sun.

Okay, no more science. Now for the humans.

You never know who’s gonna be in the sauna with you, but you know it will be five other people besides you. Stranger danger comes to mind. Does stranger danger happen to adults? Can you still have stranger danger if you have an AARP card in your wallet?

Stranger danger or not, 170 degrees indoors is balmy. It’s like an elevator but it’s stuck and the air conditioner is broken. Everyone is mostly naked and it’s parked between cars because the owner pulls it behind his pickup truck.

I can’t believe I can check off my bucket list, Ride in a sauna pulled by an extended cab Tacoma. Getting a foot rub from Brad Pitt seems like it could happen now.

The sauna is not exactly like an elevator because there’s only one floor. It could be an elevator on a Broadway stage, but it’s not an elevator made for a highrise. Can you imagine living in a highrise with an elevator that didn’t go up? Yes, me too.

Maybe our sauna is more like Tinder, only you didn’t swipe left or right to pick your dates. You don’t know who your dates are only that there are five of them — six total including you and you’re not looking for action in Finland.

It’s as if Tinder were a grab bag filled with sexually unavailable naked people.

It’s unlike Tinder though because there is zero chance or desire for sex. It’s the opposite of that clothing-optional sexual-trysty resort called Hedonism.

Have you heard of Hedonism? It’s like if a resort were a Petri dish with naked people swimming around the solution. Google it. It might be your thing.

Our sauna is more like a bunch of well-read, awkward, co-eds and their professors between the ages of 18 and 80, who have read every book on swimming in cold water.

It’s not Tinder though. It would get weird if any of us started making out and saying stuff like, “This isn’t working for me. You look a lot older in person. Good luck with your love life.”

Being in our sauna is like getting stuffed in a heated jack-in-the-box with naked people cooking themselves pretending they’re in Finland. We all hope when the Enya music stops and it’s our turn to pop out, we’ve fixed our future dementia, immune systems, and our mental health. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a sauna but I’ve heard it has a good therapist.

My favorite professor used to say to me, “Everyone is supposed to meet in a sauna.”

I thought that was a weird thing to say since we were at a literary conference about ancient folklore and misogyny in County Cork Ireland, but I get it now.

There is the occasional sauna day when I am sitting on top of someone I don’t want to Tinder in a hot tin box with — but that’s okay. I can always keep pouring water onto the lava rocks until one of us passes out and wakes up back in America.

“Hyvää päivää!”

Thank you T. Kent Jones for your edits. Your edits opened up many mental sauna doors.