Sapphic sauna etiquette

My lover and I enjoyed a steamy sauna, the other day. Whilst sat in the buff (that always sounds so wrong post-Vampire slayer), with my other half, I pondered on nude sauna etiquette. Body language suddenly became so much more important when there was suddenly so much, well, body. My favourite poses suddenly felt vaguely inappropriate. Sitting forward leaning on my knees sans Levis became so very wrong. I can say with confidence that crossing one leg over the other- ankle over knee- was a big no no, as it's no longer just denim that meets the eye.

I became beset with uncertainty about each of my limbs and what would be a natural pose (this became four different questions for all four limbs, such was my lack of my mental or physical coordination). Suddenly legs akimbo implied puerperal position: ie. childbirth pose. Onlookers could subconsciously be gripped with the urge to yell Push. A faint gynaecological hue coloured the room and the minimalistic Scandinavian (ie. Ikea) environment acquired an obstetric sheen. Too much tension, and the wrong type. I sat forward on my haunches, another pose that looks wrong on me while naked- I had aimed for Rodin's thinker pose and instead looked like I was caught mid-action on my way out and didn't want people to hold the door open for me and usher me out, alternatively, I resembled a nude philosopher and one should perhaps achieve a state of emptiness in such settings: deep thought seems incongruent. I tried to banish such clinical thoughts and stopped inspecting my own navel and its surrounding area and gazed about me.

The old adage of not making intense eye contact is reversed in saunas. Eye contact is the only thing to do, and indeed probably the only contact that would not traverse decency laws. I tried surreptitiously mirroring my girlfriend's body language, this only served to make me look odder. I stress that I have no problem being naked, it is more how to be naked.

I sweated (literally) over these questions for some time. Never the sharpest tool in the box (or shiniest as I misquoted for years). Incidentally, how many tools are sharp in a tool box: not hammers, wrenches, spanners or...-erm that's all the tools I know). Both accordingly and incidentally, when my role is passive passer of tools, my girlfriend describes the items rather than names them, eg. "Pass me the red thing that looks like a hammer-head shark darling," is more likely to bring forth a hammer than a simple request by name, personification helps somehow. Occasionally I flirt with the butcher side of me (not meat carving but butch-er) and spend half a day sawing a piece of wood in half, and the next half wondering what to do with it (short shelf anyone?). In fact, once when I "made" a rat cage, I was so proud of that my ego took over on its own pink trip and I started wondering if I should put my design and little steps of construction online. Then, others too could convert a chest of drawers to rat cage in 27 easy steps (once steps 3 to 9 were repeated several times it really added up), maybe even a practical one that listed all tools needed, eg. plaster, antiseptic and half an onion (no I'm NOT crying, be logical, it's the onion).

I digress, sauna etiquette, one feels the need for some kind of adornment on a body so naked. I am one to never strip off fully without leaving on some kind of jewelry or other, I prefer that somehow. On one memorable occasion I entered a sauna wearing an antique silver bracelet my lover had given me. I mention it was antique, a) as I love things with a history so I was especially attached and rarely removed it, b) it had a Ye Olde Worldé Fiddlé Clasp which demanded near immortal dexterity to remove. This was OK, until fateful sauna day, as I rarely had cause to do so. Said bracelet was fastened onto my wrist with a tenacity that makes handcuffs seem easy to shed. As ever, in these situations in life, there was an audience (refer to clause B of Sod's Law), a naked one, but an audience nevertheless. In this setting, my lucky charm became a red hot poker on my wrist- it snuck up on me in my delirious semi-dehydrated, hypotensive state (that enlightened state that feels so good could indeed be consciousness ebbing away, like with alcohol). Cue much manic flapping at wrist and me flapping around like I was evading a swarm of hornets and yelping.

After the panic, I then remained there a little while longer, alternating my facial expressions between grimacing gamely and neutral nonchalance, just to prove that neither my person nor my feelings were hurt, the roomful of women had assumed the passive spectator expression en masse- and had settled down as if Will and Grace were on, if potato chips and popcorn weren't so very dehydrating they'd have been munching them. By way of explanation, "Silver's a very good conductor of heat," I said to one and all, grateful for the impromptu physics lesson, they murmured assent we were united, could have happened to any one of us. The logic of putting a fiddly bracelet on my right wrist when I am so very right handed, did occur to me at that time too. Somehow all of us bonded through my ridicule that day, in a metaphorical way. (On a literal note, never try handcuffs in a sauna either, unless they're the furry kind I'd guess, imagine the woe that could occur).

This brings me seamlessly onto sauna facial expression- itself another key indicator in body language. A verbose individual (as evidenced by length of blogs, why use one word when ten will do is my motto) when stripped of both words and clothes at the simultaneously, I find myself becoming somewhat of a mime artist, like Marcel Marceau only with breasts. The only other alternative to scaling an invisible wall in the sauna or wiping off sweat with exaggerated hand sweeps in a Chaplinesque fashion, as a Libran, is the exact opposite. I assume a expression so neutral and a pose so fixed that if I were painted silver (which I wouldn't be owing to painful sauna associations there), then it is likely people would be putting money in my hat. Obviously not coins, as these would be too hot, it would have to be notes, but then would that make me more lap dancer than street artist, more lady of the street than urban statue?

To appear comfortable I groped about (cerebrally that is), and settled upon a Caravaggio pose. Classic has to be classical, and those models must have felt exposed to a gaze for long periods of time and so made themselves at home, resplendent in their nudity. I promptly lounged (if anyone can lounge promptly, sauna nerves changed the pace) myself across the top bunk. My lover, who has the ability to always appear comfortable in any pose whatsoever and is blessed with an abundance of natural ease, regarded me critically and asked, "Are you comfortable? You don't look it". Of course, I was, for all intent and purposes, a seventeenth century painting. Unable to explain this as to do so would further shatter the illusion (when was the last time you heard a painting talk?) I decided two things, firstly now I dwell on it, I bet they didn't choose how to sit and the artist simply go along with it-this is why you never see anyone else sit like that, secondly, I rearranged myself.

Ergo, reclining gracefully in a public sauna does not come naturally to me. Stripped of non-verbal communication along with my clothes, I try verbal mode. I have no idea how to make small talk in a sauna. One cannot say whatever crosses one's mind, as that would be the equivalent of me trying to have a civil conversation with Angelina Jolie while my innermost thoughts were screamed out via megaphone. Like a form of social Torrets, "Take me, for example.." would become just "Take me!" Despite having lounged/sat primly/sprawled in saunas before, I cannot recall any dialogue. A woman once engaged me in conversation for a long while but I cannot recall the gist of what passed between us as she had very distracting breasts. And maybe that's the point (or those are the points), sotospeak, and other women are themselves busy rearranging their own legs or trying hard not to stare at the fidgety woman's thighs- a thought I find makes me oddly comfortable.

Lesbian Mecca- its all about the balls

My other-half and I spent much of yesterday trawling around Ikea. It was time to return to the lesbian Mecca.
My lover has now recovered from the mirth that ensued when, early on in our relationship, on one of my first visits to Norway, after spying the store: I exclaimed "Hey, you've got Ikea in Scandinavia too!". Several years better acquainted, a momentary aberration has now been chalked up to my ability for large parts of life to pass me by; I have officially become an oxymoron (I tenaciously keep the oxy prefix) and been dubbed "the most stoopid clever person" she knows.

Anyhow, I digress, Ikea. (I've been fishing for a clever acronym but these things can't be forced.) Ikea trips are fascinating in a relationship dynamic sense- in terms of the shared goals being literally made concrete: if you find you are getting in each other's way in the mock-up 35 km square flat, then the sea-scape is becoming Turner-esque. If you're all Billy and she's all Gertha, it won't work. If you cannot walk past any partly-shielded beds without suggestive raised eyebrows and check out your partners arse when they are checking out the lower shelves, then all is healthy (clean bill of health here, sayeth I). Ikea in Norway has playfully docked its minimalistic cap to the potency of Ikea and its bed ads are quite raunchy here. I believe ending up with the couple in a store in fact (maybe their ad prewired my instore voyeuristic flirting).

A conceptual mutation accelerated ideological evolution and someware (deliberate misspelling, believe its called onomatopeia- which is ironically very hard to spell) house-became home, home became lifestyle- which is broad enough to include alternative lifestyles. In fact, the staff are so used to lesbian couples, that as you skip into view- joined at the hand- their expressions assume that seen-it-all-sheen. Norwegians are expert at this. Nonchalance (ie. non-plussedness) is practised nowhere better then here in Norway, and ironically phenomenally lacking in La France (where at Sarkozy's right hand stands hyperbole, actually is it possible there could be anything to the right in the spatial spectrum of Monsieur Sarkozy?)

Anyhow, being awash in cool classic design aroused my Libran aesthetic sensitivity, while the homeliness had my beautiful Cancer-crab-partner salivating with desire, cooing "just imagine..." and then leaving me to fill in the blanks, each time we entered a pseudo-kitchen/living room. Such was the seductive nature of the store that we followed the arrows as commanded and even enjoyed a romantic meal in their canteen/restaurant. Scandinavian meatballs, to be precise, and to be authentic, next time order "Kjøtboller være så snill"/meatballs be so kind/ kyutboller var sho snill, only don't say all three they'll think you're crazy. It was there that I caved, and the lifestyle became too irresistible: around the same time that whatever they put in the meatballs worked its magic on me. If there is a lesbian equivalent of catnip- its in the Ikea meatballs. Food-for-thought, literally.

Post-balls, I found myself fantasizing about us having little baby lesbians, and wondering where the trolley-loads of babies were from and which cryptic aisle code I needed to write down and then lose en route to the warehouse (my usual procedure) to buy me some Ikea sperm. Even our shopping list/wish list became faintly like a life-goals visualisation exercise embodied in furniture and soft-furnishings. "Become tantric sex master/mistress" leads one to the candle section (making babies should be fun after all, can't allow procreation to replace hedonism). Becoming a self-dubbed chef rather than a cook would be a natural progression in a well spaced kitchen. While the home offices impart a work ethic with Protestant zeal (in the sociological sense). Achieving my ideal balanced (Libran) life was simply a matter of interior design. My partner's unfulfilled Cancerian yearnings for domestic bliss were no longer out of reach due to a clashing nomadic tendencies, she had an epiphany, and it was suddenly all a question of interior design and hitherto due to a lack of that Ikea magic. (We both had balls.)

Regarding the balls with lesbian catnip (note the feline affinity for us Sapphists), I feel I should qualify this statement. I am not given to tossing around such wild accusations, I shall endeavour to domesticate them somewhat or at least atone for my rashness.
Proof 1. Post-meatball acquisitions went through the store roof, we couldn't keep ourselves from picking up and fondling whatever we passed (although the cute female Unicef rep was exempt, just).
Proof 2. A strange sense of euphoria accompanied the smallest design features, bandying around words like genius (for peg-design and the trivialities of life: now morphed into beautiful, often overlooked details.
Proof 3. I am now sat in a bamboo forest (it can't be right-wing monetarist consumerism if its Feng-shui, can it?) where all the furnishings have their own names. What with that and my just-the-right-side-of-delusional dependency on "age-defying" cocoa butter, and an impulse-buy of a cuddly panda bear, and this little pad of ours smells and looks like a sort of Amazonian wilderness, a minimalist one of course.

For those enslaved to the Ikea philosophy, preachers in the guise of after-sales support service are always just a phonecall/ e-mail away. A year ago, I couldn't assemble our new flat-pack love nest, I rang up and said, I've just bought the bla-bla bed (I think that was the name) and "the voice of heard-it-all before" interjected with "the slats are laid out convex-wise", then sensing an extra-silent pause that could only be due to intellect deficiency on my part, as I raced to remember physics lessons of yore, gave me the stupid person suffix in words free from multiple syllables or abstract concepts: "like a bridge", then sensing she should clarify further, "not like a boat, like a bridge". By the time my partner entered the room I was putting the finishing touches to my FIY job (F***-It-up Yourself), and murmuring in knowledgeable tones, "Oh-yes, it was convex", even daring to offer up a "thought so". Hoping the murky grey-lie would somehow obscure my earlier lack of problem solving ability beyond my repeated exclamations of, "Pictograms, why pictogram instructions?", topped off with the ego-balming and faintly arrogant sign of things to come: "I speak five bl**dy languages and not one of them is hieroglyphics".

What concerns me is the bed episode is a scene faintly reminiscent of one with an ex (could we be shaped by our exes?) Said ex once buffeted me away from a flat-pack bookshelf I was happily tinkering with and inexplicably shrieked at me, "My father's a carpenter!" whilst pouncing on the screwdriver and dominating the project. No further explanation or apology to atone for such odd behaviour was ever offered up. Indeed, my current partner (and soulmate, just to negate the temporary nature of "current") had an ex who did exactly the same thing (we checked rapidly, not the same one): they had a Jesus complex maybe.

I've wandered off the arrows again, although the theme of delusions of grandeur and born-again experiences remains the same (walk the "non-straight" line through my hot-waffle and you too shall reach enlightenment in a few steps). If I sound a little dazed, I blame it on the balls, I'm just not used to them. Thankfully, the evangelical power of the Ikea rhetoric and food-drugging is waning now, and a towel peg looks like, well, a towel peg. As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", sometimes balls are just balls.