A Day at the Baths

Written on Jan. 26, 2013
Remember Empress Theodora of Constantinople? No? Ex-prostitute/alleged nymphomaniac, mistress of Emperor Justinian, used witchcraft to get him to marry her, ruled together over the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century? Ring a bell?

I’m thinking about Empress Theodora today because she loved extravagant baths: slaves oiled and washed her body, groups of small children massaged her with their tiny fingers, odalisques played the lute as she swam about in a dreamy haze, etc. In her time, a "porphyry shaft" (whatever that is, sounds dirty) bearing her statue stood in the public courtyard of the Arcadian Baths overlooking the blue, blue sea.

Illustration by Jon Lai at http://jlai.carbonmade.com/

Now, I understand that the Arcadian Baths were known for their external splendor and their internal luxury, and that sounds lovely and I would like to go there myself someday. But seeing as how I live in 21st-century Brooklyn and am here on a cold winter's day wanting a bath now, and aside from which the Arcadian Baths fell to ruin centuries ago, I’ll settle for a visit to Brooklyn Banya, located only a few blocks from my apartment.

External Splendor

Brooklyn Banya, “The Best Russian Turkish Bathhouse in Brooklyn,” is a great place to steam and sweat the winter out of your bones. I’m not a public baths virgin – I’ve experienced the Korean Paradise Sauna in Chicago, where naked ladies scrub each other's backs, as well as the Moroccan hammam of Agadir, where half-naked Berber attendants stretch you out on a stone slab and clean you with argan-oil soap – and Banya is right up there with the best of them. (I’ve also toured the ancient Roman baths in Bath, England, but only managed to dip a hand in one of the pools.)

To get to Banya, I walk to the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Church Avenue, turn right at Rocky's Pizzeria, head down CIA past a discount liquor store and the Halal Gyro Café to an oddly styled 1950s chalet constructed of brick and painted concrete blocks. Inside, I pay my $25 to the Russian hostess, who gives me a locker key for the women’s dressing room upstairs. Banya is open to men, women and children, and everybody showers and changes into swimsuits before going down to the baths.

The great thing is that you don’t have to bring anything but $25 and your swimsuit. Banya provides everything you need: soap, towels and slippers. But I brought my own flip-flops, which is allowed. It’s all very casual. You can just be yourself! In a very watery environment!

Internal Luxury

Banya is not a “bath” the way you’d normally think of a bath. 

For one thing, there are no tubs like you have at home, obviously, but big pools – a hot whirlpool and a cold pool where you can go for a mini swim. Then there’s the dry sauna, the wet sauna and the steam room, not to mention a freezing cold pull-chain shower for the toughest people or a temperature-controlled shower for scaredy-cats like me.

They’ve also got a full restaurant at Banya, right next to the pools, where they serve vodka along with home-made pickle plates, borscht, blintzes with caviar and a big piles of garlic potatoes and dumplings. Oh yes, this is public bathing in the grand Russian style. Or, you can be straight-edge clean and eat nothing and just drink water and/or Banya’s special black tea made with honey and cherries.

What I love about Banya is that it’s a real Brooklyn mix of people – so aside from white ladies like me, there are real Russians, local families with kids, hipsters, middle-aged men with big bellies and hot chicks in string bikinis.

Rest assured, it’s all very clean. The Banya website insists on this: “The facilities are very clean – the cleanest of all the Banyas, and the staff works really hard to keep it that way. We take great pride and care in what we do.” And I can tell you from personal experience that the pools are full of chlorine.

“At some point in the sauna, you will see people beating one another with leafy birch branches. This is normal, enjoyable, and also supposedly increases circulation,” the Banya site explains. “It definitely exfoliates. If you want, you can buy a birch branch for $20 and beat your friends with it. We sell them at the front desk. Or you can get a real treatment from our “PLATSKA MAN” for $30.”

Did I tell you this place is awesome!??!

Dreamy Haze

I do believe I saw the PLATSKA MAN in action – at any rate, there was a fit guy in a speedo and a flannel cap who had a woman laid out before him in the wet sauna, and he was swishing and slapping and pressing a big bunch of birch leaves all up and down her body.

As for me, I just did my own thing, unassisted. I started with the hot whirlpool, then moved to the cold pool for a refreshing dip, then entered the wet sauna where I saw the PLATSKA MAN, continued with a cold shower, then on to the dry sauna, where I stretched out on sweet-smelling wooden planks, then cold pool, hot pool, dry sauna…. 

…. somewhere along the line I slipped into a dreamy haze and time passed unnoticed as all stress and toxins left my body….

All of this built up to the final finish: the steam bath. Which, to tell you the truth, scares me a little bit. I went to a party at Banya once, and a man I didn’t know followed me into the steam bath and propositioned me even though we couldn’t see each other through all the steam, so that was a bit strange, and I left before getting the full benefit.

But this time I was with my husband and only unsure about whether I could cope with the intense steam cloud of heavy wet eucalyptus-scented heat that comes blasting out of a vent at timed intervals. I did cope, and it was lovely. And then we agreed that we were hungry, and not for borscht or dumplings, so we went home, limp and relaxed as two blissed-out ragdolls.

It was just as brooklynbanya.com promised:
After all the sweating and relaxing walking out of the Banya, feeling ten years younger with skin soft and smooth like babies, you will promise yourself to come back.

Why I Started Chasing Bad Girls, #8 (Empress Theodora of Constantinople)

A beautiful girl steps onto center stage. She strips off her clothes and stands nude in front of her audience, wearing nothing but a look of bold defiance on her face. The audience has come from miles around to witness this 16-year-old’s sensational act at the Hippodrome of Constantinople. They watch, bewitched, as she artfully arranges herself in a spread-eagle position on the floor.

A drum sounds. Servants appear from both sides of the stage and sprinkle barley grains over her naughty bits. The servants retire to the wings, leaving the girl exposed and alone. She claps her hands. Cages of hungry geese are rolled out onto the stage and released. The audience roars as the birds flock round her body and devour the grains one by one from her young flesh. She laughs, twisting with pleasure, until every grain is gone. Then she stands proudly, her eyes impassive, her laughter subsiding to just the trace of a smile. The crowd cheers her wantonness and she takes a bow.

Summer is over, the “art colony” is on hiatus, and I’m back in London. This city is a dark and nervously contained place. Why do London men shave their heads? They’re so oppressively Anglo-Saxon, avoiding eye contact. They can’t see my shimmering French sparkle, my long hair, my tan, my sandals, my chiffon harem pants. I feel too sunny for this town, so I dim the lights and don something dark, choosing the Empress Theodora of Constantinople as my new bad girl guide. Her strangely distant past is vague, with the only history written about her a “secret history” by the Byzantine court historian Procopius, who suggests that she was nothing more than an insatiable nymphomaniac.

According to Procopius, Theodora often went to parties with ten or more sex-obsessed men, all at the peak of their physical powers, and she would spend the night screwing them in every conceivable position. When she had thoroughly exhausted her lovers, she would turn her attention to the thirty or so servants in the room and have sex with them, too. “But not even so could she satisfy her lust,” Procopius writes. “Though she brought three bodily apertures into service, she often found fault with Nature, grumbling that Nature had not made the openings in her nipples wider than is normal, so that she could devise another variety of intercourse in that region. Naturally she was frequently pregnant, but by using all the tricks of the trade she was able to induce immediate abortion.”

Procopius’ moralizing is pretty hilarious. Clearly, he hated Theodora for enjoying herself and getting Emperor Justinian to marry her even though she was a big Byzantine whore. He claimed that she was much given to black magic, and that it was through love philtres and the diabolic arts that she kept Justinian enslaved. Theodora’s boudoir was covered in dozens of bearskins, upon which she luxuriated sensuously as she entertained her customers. Her jokes were lewd, she wiggled her hips a lot, and the money poured in. “Never was anyone so completely given up to unlimited self-indulgence.”

Too right. I start to visit Denise, the office manager at Kent’s music studio. Denise is a living bad girl with purple dreadlocks and a huge love of techno music, and I start to live my own secret history in a time of dancing, rebellion and London night life.

I hang out with Denise and her friends in a scene that’s all new to me: techno music, free parties in abandoned warehouses, late nights that carry into the next afternoon and cat-and-mouse games with the police officers who are attempting to enforce the latest, free-party-killing version of the UK Criminal Justice Act. Every weekend and sometimes during the week, Denise plays big mama to the squatters, anarchists, crusties and ex-junkies who come round to her flat in Finsbury Park.

Some day, Denise tells me, she will buy a fine rig so she can become a deejay diva and get busy blasting underground sounds to the free-party nation. Denise drives us one night to an ugly funk show in a club near Elephant and Castle, where I meet a sweet and smiling boy named Dave. One look at his beaming face from across the dance floor tells me that he’s nothing like the scowling, shaven-headed men of London. “That boy’s not from around here,” I say to myself just before we meet and spend the next five hours dancing.