This time of year nothing beats a good ol' steam sauna after the evening workout. Especially when you don't have the option of a soak in the tub, and I don't know too many folks in this city with a tub you can actually soak in (if you've got one, we should talk—you might be my soulmate).    

But fellas, please: don't talk about sex in the sauna.  You can have sex in the sauna (of course, if you do you may collapse from heat stroke), but, for the love of Pete, don't talk about it. 

You talk about sports in the sauna. 

And just to be perfectly clear: I'm not talking about talking about man-on-man sex, which it goes without saying you don't hang out in the sauna at the gym talking about, since if you're straight you wouldn't be anyway, and if you're gay you'll be busy trying to act all straight.  I'm talking about talking about straight sex, which is exactly what a gay guy would do.  So if you really want to convince your sauna buddies you're straight—which people who talk about sex in the sauna generally seem to want to do—straight sex is really the last topic you want to broach.  They'll know you're gay immediately.

I mention this because the other day I happened to be sharing the steam room with a couple of students in their early twenties who seemed to be trying a wee bit hard to convince each other, or me, or themselves, that they weren't all excited about sitting naked in the steam sauna with a bunch of other naked guys. Nothing wrong with getting excited, mind you. Nudity should be fun. But it can be good, clean fun. It doesn't have to be sordid.

By the way, one of these kids, I'd noticed in the gym, was wearing a T-shirt with a baseballer—I think it was a catcher, no less—and words to the effect of "I like to play with balls" on it.  But I got the impression it was to be taken as irony.

To be fair, they had the good sense not to launch right into an exhaustive inventory of their imaginary heterosexual conquests in the sauna—that would simply not have been credible at all.  Instead the one who likes to play with balls started out boasting about having gotten so stoned the night before he could hardly speak.  That was more believable anyway, if no less uninteresting.

It was the skinnier of the two with the froggier voice who brought up blowjobs. A housemate called Smitty had been spreading rumors about someone named Cass (disclosure: I once had a dog named Cass).

"He's telling everyone she's giving him head," the skinny one said indignantly. "But she told me she's not into him."

The other guy's like, "dude, I was so stoned—did you see me?  I was standing out on the front stoop.  I couldn't even talk!"

"They were up in Smitty's room watching porn," the skinny one went on in a sullen tone. 

"Yeah," the other one said.  "I was so freakin' stoned."

"It was so...awkward," said the skinny one, gloomily.  "I keep telling him he's not going to get laid if he takes girls up there on the first date to watch porn."

"Dude," the other one said. "Smell my finger."

This went on for a bit.  It seemed to me the skinny one was a little too concerned about Smitty's porn habit, and Smitty's chances of getting laid.  It also seemed to me that they were both trying a little hard to impress whoever happened to be sharing the sauna with them with their wild, salacious tales of off-campus ribaldry.  

I think I can be forgiven for thinking that this was at least partly for my benefit—as can we all when trapped in a public place (a bus, a train, an elevator, a sauna) where people start proudly broadcasting the details of their private lives, such as they are.  Unfortunately, we're seldom consulted and can't request a channel-change. 

I had to cut my sauna short, it was too painful to hear much more from the stoner who couldn't stop talking about how he was so stoned he couldn't talk, and his buddy, who was trying to find ways for their housemate to get laid.