The gym I use on a Thursday night has a sauna at the back, past the lockers, behind a door with a little square of fogged glass. Most lads give it ten minutes, check their phone and leave. I give it longer. I like the heat. I like what it does to a room full of men who think they are just there to sweat.
This is about the night one of them did not leave. You will know the type, because if you are reading this, you are probably him.
Thursday night, the last session and an empty changing room
I had finished late. Own business, own hours, and that week the hours had been brutal: two kitchens ripped out, a bathroom that fought me on every pipe, and a client who wanted everything done yesterday. By the time I got to the gym it was gone nine and the place was nearly empty. I trained legs, which is the session I like least and need most, and by the end my shirt was stuck to my back and my thighs were shaking on the stairs.
The changing room smelled of chlorine and somebody's expensive shower gel. Two lockers open, one bag on a bench, nobody in sight. I stripped off, hung my kit on the hook to dry and walked through to the sauna without bothering with anything else. I have never seen the point of a towel in there. It is hot, it is wood, it is a box built for sweating. I sit on the top bench and I let it work.
Someone was already in there.
The gym sauna rules nobody says out loud
There are rules in a gym sauna, and nobody writes them on the wall. You nod when you come in. You do not stare. You keep your eyes on the coals or the ceiling or the little timer that nobody ever turns. You leave when it gets too much and you pretend it never did.
He was on the lower bench, near the door, with a towel folded neatly across his lap like a man at a job interview. Early thirties, I would say. Dark hair going wet at the temples, the forearms of someone who works with his hands. He nodded when I came in. I nodded back. Then I climbed past him to the top bench, slowly, because the wood is slippery and because I wanted to see if he would look.
He looked. He looked away so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash, and then, about four seconds later, he looked again.
Heat, sweat and a man trying very hard not to look
I sat back against the hot boards with my knees apart and my arms along the top rail, and I closed my eyes. Not because I was relaxing. Because I wanted him to think he was safe.
You can hear a man watching you. The breathing changes. The bench creaks when he shifts his weight to get a better angle and then he freezes when he realises it creaked. Sweat was running down my chest by then, down the line of my stomach, and every time a drop ran I heard him swallow.
I opened one eye. He was staring at the coals like they owed him money. His towel had slipped. He had not noticed. I noticed.
So I did the thing I always do when a man is pretending. I got up, ladled water on the stones and stood there in the cloud of steam that came back off them, right in front of him, taking my time. The heat hit like a wall. I let it. When I turned round he was looking up at me from the lower bench, and this time he did not look away.
Why I never take a towel into the sauna
People ask me that, and the answer is that I like being looked at. I am not shy about it and I am not going to pretend for your benefit. I train hard, I graft hard, and my body is the evidence of both. If a man wants to look, he can look. What interests me is what he does next.
Most do nothing. They look, they go red, they leave, and they think about it in the car on the way home. That is fine. That is a compliment and I take it.
But some men stay. Some men sit there with sweat in their eyes and their heart going and they make a decision. Those are the ones I remember. You can tell the second it happens, because the shoulders drop, the jaw sets and they stop pretending to be interested in the timer.
He stayed.
The man on the lower bench who did not leave
Ten minutes is the usual. Fifteen is pushing it. At twenty most people are dizzy. We passed twenty and neither of us moved. I sat back down, closer to him this time, one step up, so that when he looked up he was looking up at me, which is exactly where I wanted him.
I asked him if he was alright. He said yeah. I asked him if he was sure, because he looked like he was struggling with the heat. He laughed, a short nervous sound, and said it was not the heat.
That is all I needed to hear. I told him to put the towel down. Not as a question. He did it without arguing, folded it on the bench beside him like it was something precious, and sat there with his hands on his knees waiting for the next instruction like a good lad. I let him wait. The waiting is the best part. You know that already, you have felt it, sitting there with your pulse in your ears not knowing if I am going to say something or just keep looking at you.
I kept looking. Then I leaned down, close enough that he could feel my breath on the side of his neck over the heat of the room, and told him what was going to happen when the door opened.
What happens when the sauna door opens
I will not write that part here. Partly because this is the public side of me and some of it is nobody's business. Partly because I think you would rather imagine it. You have probably already started.
What I will say is this. The door opened eventually. The cold air of the changing room hit us both like a slap. Somebody had left a shower running. The two lockers were still open and the bag was still on the bench, and the man who had sat on the lower bench with a towel on his lap like a schoolboy walked out behind me without one, and he did not look at the floor once.
I saw him again the next Thursday. Same time, same bench. No towel. He was there before me, waiting.
That is the version I can tell in public. If you want more of me than that, the heat, the sweat, the bits I keep off the socials, there is more of me, unfiltered, on OnlyFans and Fansly. Come and find out what I am like when the door is shut.