Steam Heat

Warning: Very honest, all names changed to protect privacy.

As a child, I was afraid of heat. Hot showers, steam rooms, saunas -- any confined space with steam and near-scalding water made me nauseous. The instant I started to sweat, boiling bile rose from my belly.

It’s different now. Now, I believe in heat. I love running in the summer, I love laying the sun. I enjoy the suffocating humidity of August in New York, I adore the burning of too-hot miso soup. I delight in sweat. I love dancing so furiously that I am coated with sweat; I love embracing a dance partner and sharing that heat. I love feeling my heart race, and the drip of water sliding down my forehead. I love the taste of salt.

What changed, I wondered. I poked at that childhood fear, teased it, tickled it. Why did I feel vertigo on tile floors?

And then, I saw her face. She was a beautiful woman, with oil-black hair, her features handsome, voice proud. She is an artist, and I see her licking her lips, clutching at water, grasping at cold, desperate hope.

Beautiful Norma, the main character in The Midnight Sun, a classic episode of the Twilight Zone.

I had watched Norma die.



I was little, five or six, watching Norma sweat. She was one of the last survivors of global warming – the planet had fallen out of its orbit and was falling into the sun. The cities were burning hells of desperate men and too-quiet children. And there was beautiful Norma, her voice soft, but firm, so sweet and clear. And the sun was just one huge white glare: even at midnight, it was high noon. The television never spoke so cruelly.

I see Norma sweating through her clothes, her misery seeping through the screen, and her landlady collapsing in a dead faint. They are alone with the sun, dying slowly, each degree, each day. I watched her face, and melted with terrified desire. She licked her lips so many times.

For the next few years, I had recurring nightmares of that episode. "We're all going to hell," I would think when I woke up. I would rip off my nightshirt and lay on top of my covers in the dark. I pushed my pillow onto my face, soaking up my sweat. I could still see doomed, beautiful Norma, no matter how hard I shoved the pillow onto my eyes.

But I forgot the dreams eventually. I left them in my childhood bed, I let the sweat seep into the skin of my stuffed animals. I let them evaporate.


At Twin Oaks, there is a sauna beside the pond -- a little wooden house with an enormous furnace. There are no electric lights, just little candles. I remember when I met Julia there, and we sang together. We sang prayer songs, variations of Buddhist chants: words I didn't know, harmonies I didn't recognize. We sat next to each other, naked, defenseless strangers. But it felt so comfortable. As we stayed in longer, she tossed more wood on the fire, and the room became a bit warmer. I expected to feel the fears from my old nightmares: doom, hell, and suffocation. But yet, it was comfortable. My body relaxed, my muscles loosened. The music eased out of me.

"So, have you ever done a sweat lodge?" Devi asked later.

I shook my head. Devi is a shaman, an older woman with long, flowing white hair and a gentle demeanor.

"Really?" she said excitedly. "Are you here on Sunday?"

A sweat lodge starts early in the morning with a huge bonfire. Built on volcanic stones, the fire heats the rocks for several hours. My particular task was to sweep all the leaves away from the fire, to avoid an unplanned blaze. In the afternoon, we started. Devi blessed out faces with smoke, and explained the process to us. The lodge had four rounds of prayer: a welcoming, friends and family, self, and thanks. At each round, more rocks would be taken in, and after each person in the circle spoke, water would be thrown on the stones.

We nodded. When we stripped down, we didn’t make any eye contact. Women crawled into the lodge first, filling a third of the space. On entering, we said, “All my relations,” honoring the space, and the people within it. Inside the lodge, we didn’t recognize the nuances of the relationships between us, but saw each other as trusted family.

When Devi closed the tent, there was complete darkness.

The first round of stones was gentle, the heat of a sauna. The heat does not distribute evenly: it flows more severe towards the far end of the tent. The hot seat. Devi welcomed us, and we started the second round.

After Devi spoke, thanking her family and friends, she tossed water onto the stones. Steam flowed through the lodge, incredibly warm. The air was heavy to breathe, the steam thick and rich, spiced with ceremonial herbs. I started to cry. No one knew.

“You don’t have to pray out loud, if that isn’t your inclination,” Devi said. “All the things you think will be honored by the Great Spirit.”

Pierre prayed in French, others prayed quietly. Peter sang to all of the closest folks in his life, listing their names. I felt unable to think clearly, unable to phrase what I wanted. I couldn’t separate the sweat from the tears. I realized I would be unable to list all the people I loved. I cried harder.

I don’t remember what I said. I prayed for your health, for my family’s wellness, and for the peace of my friends, and all the people I sought to be my friends. The words were garbled and messy, as if I’d dumped a compost bucket out onto the stones.

“I need to get out,” Peter said, his voice sharp. We all moved aside, crowd-surfing him to the flap of the tent. “All my relations,” he muttered as he left.

The smell of herbs in the clean steam was intoxicating- a few drops of cold water splashed me as Devi poured the remainder of the water over the stones. The following heat was heavy and thick, I struggled to swallow it down. Beside me, Thea sank her face to the ground, by the edge of the tent, seeking fresher air. I remembered that people could die in a sweat lodge.

And then, the second round was over.

We crawled out. Silent. I poured fresh water onto my skin, scratching away the dead skin.

Peter was sliding on his jacket by the fire. He grinned at me, “Y’all look like dumplings.”

My skin was soft and puffy, still slick with sweat. I smelled of the ceremonial herbs, rosemary, thyme, and some unidentified zest. “More like a roasted potato,” I replied.

I puffed out my cheeks and drew my arms into my chest. “Oooooh, potato monster!”

Peter smiled. “Like a potato dumpling.” He slid on his sneakers. “I wish I could have stayed in longer – it felt incredible. When I got out, I thought I could just peel off my skin and there’d be something different underneath.”

“Come back maybe?” I asked, wrapping my arms around my breasts in a sad attempt at modesty.

“Maybe,” he said, lacing up his shoes.

We started the third round in a few minutes. The heat was immediate, and though I’d cooled down so much, sweat ran from every part of my body.

We were to pray for ourselves in this round, sitting around an even larger, and even warmer pile of stones. Devi spoke honestly, not like a shaman leading a ritual, but a woman seeking guidance. I listened to her with my eyes clenched, reaching my hearing as far as it could, taking in each word. And the words were hard, hurt, and desperate. They sank into my gut, burrowing into the warmest places. I started to weep again.

When Devi finished speaking, she tossed a few cupfuls of water onto the sparking rocks. I almost begged her to stop, to let the air settle and cool. I saw Norma, refusing to leave the apartment, Norma’s painting the sun, Norma drenched in sweat. Norma held at gunpoint, Norma caring for her landlady. The world was falling into the sun.

As the circle went around, and the heat intensified, I sobbed audibly, leaning into Thea. We spoke of what we wanted to give up, what we hated of ourselves, what begged our patience. What made us angry. My nose ran, and I let the snot fall down my face. I cried and sweat.

What did I say?

“I hate my body. But I hate that I’m ashamed of my body.

I fear the vulnerability in my relationships, my emotional unguardedness. My big old soft spot, my foolish trust. I could be crushed so easily. I am afraid of rejection.

And I hate that I don’t fit in at Twin Oaks. I feel too loud, too much, too crazy, too excessive. I hoped to find another home and I failed. And it’s not Twin Oaks, but me. I love the trappings of the stupid, ugly modern world.

I’m ashamed of my personality. I am a weak person who desperately needs others, who feeds off of the passion of others. I hate my lack of vision, my lack of focus. I hate my inability to commit to a single path, my lack of calling, the absence of long-term ambitions.

I am afraid to ask for help. I am terrified to ask for help.”

I cried. And I soaked the rocks in cold water.

The heat rose. I crawled into a ball like an unborn puppy, surrounded by my brothers in a mess of slime and warmth. I pressed my face against the earth, feeling a hint of breeze. I sucked in the air hungrily.

When we left the lodge, the air was crisper than before. I dunked my snot-covered face in a bucket of ice water. I stayed submerged, letting the blood rush to my face. I sneezed a few times, a childish chortle. I wiped the dirt off my legs.

We sank into the lodge again, to give thanks. I lay in a ball for the whole round, the steam rolling into me, overwhelming every boundary and each need. Everything was heat. Hotter than running in Dallas, hotter than a scalding shower, hotter than bile, hotter than shame. I wanted to peal all my skin off, to be completely naked.

I became small, and the space became huge. The darkness in the ceiling expanded up and out, into a dark sky above. And space became more fluid, more melting, and the smell of rosemary mixed with the smell of earth, and then I was baking down as the world flew upwards. A potato, a puppy, a baby, a clod of flesh and water.

I was in space. We were all there, all the people I had to thank, and all the people I had wronged. All of the family, all of my relations.

There was so much sky.

We left the lodge together, giggling over little things. We threw water on ourselves, splashing each other. I ran to get towels for everyone. And separately, we left the clearing. I sang a bit of a hymn, louder than I’d sung in years.

Inside of the blankets, next to the stones, there’s a smudge of scared little girl. She’s still there, melted into the dirt, smeared with salt and snot. I left her behind.

I am warmer than before.