Instead, he began to stoically dump water on the scalding hot rocks of the sauna, producing powerful bursts of steam that stung my ears and made me cover my face in pain. After the steam had cleared he dumped another ladle full on the rocks. Then he dumped another. Nobody said a word. I guess it was a man thing. Nobody wanted to be the first one out of the sauna.
We all hoped Jari would eventually stop and start whipping himself with some birch branches or something, but he didn’t. Instead, he kept doing it again and again, until all of us foreigners were finally forced to leave the inferno. Jevgeni, though, was the only one who seemed quite comfortable the whole time. Not only did Jevgeni not grow facial hair, he apparently didn’t sweat either.
“We’re Finns,” Jari yelled before we got out. “It is our mission to take over the world, one sauna at a time.”
Our cottage stood against the shores of a pristine lake. There was something different about the air up here. It felt as if it was kissing every part of your body; standing around naked felt like the most natural thing to do.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to swim to that island!” declared Jevgeni, who ran and lept, completely nude, into the murky lake water.
I had also noticed the small island before. From the deck outside the sauna, it looked tantalizingly close. I thought of grabbing my swim trunks before getting in the water, but I figured that Jevgeni knew what he was doing, so I, too, dove in head first, completely naked.
Perhaps it would take us only 10 minutes to get there, I thought. At first, the swimming came easy, but halfway across the lake I felt my body tire, and I began to tread water just to conserve some of my energy.
The Russian Jevgeni swam strongly ahead to the island, with confidence. He seemed completely at home in the Finnish environment. With some more effort I followed him, and finally pulled my naked torso onto the mossy beach where I laid gasping for breath, the moss and dirt sticking all over my body.
“You aren’t used to saunas and lake swimming, are you?” laughed Jevgeni. “It’s a Russian tradition, you know.”
“It’s a pretty exhausting tradition,” I gasped.
Suddenly noise broke our island idyll.
“Hey, it’s Jevgeni and Justin!” I heard female voices scream from across the lake. “Go get ’em!”
“Some of the girls have come to our little island,” Jevgeni raised a perverted eyebrow. “Perhaps I should go ask them for a dildo?”
“Who’s here?” I said, quickly covering my most private parts.
“I can hear Maria the hot Latvian and Natalie the hot British girl,” said Jevgeni. “And I can almost see Epp the hot Estonian from here. But, too bad, they’ve all got their bathing suits on.”
“Epp? We’ve got to get back to the cottage!”
“Why?” said Jevgeni. “Are you afraid she’ll see you?”
“Come on, let’s go.”
By now, I had come a long way in Finland. I had done things here that as an American I had never before even had the opportunity to do. I had learned to relax with a bunch of naked guys in a hot room while whipping each other with branches. I had swum across a lake in the nude, my manhood dangling like live bait. But the last thing I needed was for the cute 28-yearold Estonian girl with the secrets to catch me naked and freezing in the bushes covered with moss.
Instinctively, I dashed for the water, paddling back as hard as I could. About halfway across the lake, I began to feel that tired feeling again. My body began to cramp in pain. My arms strained to keep me afloat. My legs would not kick. And yet somewhere too close to my manhood, I saw the dark shape of a fish pass by, just waiting to chomp. I quickened my pace in fear.
I was rewarded with a cool beer by my friends when I finally reached the little sauna’s wooden dock.
“You are very lucky,” said Jari as he helped me out of the water. “Dozens of people drown in Finland every summer doing what you and Jevgeni just did.”
“What are you listening to?” Epp looked down on me as our bus drove back from Turku to Helsinki. My face chafed from the hot evening sun shining through the windows.
“It’s my music,” I said looking up at her nervously.
“What do you mean ‘your’ music?”
“I mean songs that I wrote myself.”
“Can I listen to it?”
“No,” I clung to my discman. “I mean, you can listen to it, but later.”
“You must be the first musician I have met, who doesn’t want anyone to listen to his music,” said Epp.
Epp. At first she had appeared to be so romantic, but now she seemed really intimidating.
It had all started at lunch in Turku. Mitch had gone to use the restroom and asked me to order him another glass of wine. When the waitress came and I asked loudly for “more wine for Mitch,” everyone in our program suddenly looked my way.
They dropped their utensils and glared, and I hung my head in shame, though I didn’t know exactly what I had done wrong. Mitch had wanted more wine. Was it so wrong to ask for another glass?
Later that night on a boat bar in the Turku canals, I asked Epp about what happened.
“You honestly want to know?” she responded.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Because you seem clumsy. You look like a teenager,” she shook her head.
“But Mitch asked me to get him more wine. It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not what you said,” she said, holding her full lips tight. “It’s the way how you asked.”
My inner balloon of self-esteem compressed. Not like it was much of a balloon to begin with.
“A teenager?”
“You seem pretty sad, Justin,” Epp said seriously. “Your eyes seem sad.”
Epp’s words killed me. I knew she was right, but I hated her anyway. At night I laid awake in my bunk, hungover and hot, scribbling my thoughts in my journal. “What comes next? Where do I come from?” I wrote. “I look in the mirror and see a face that I am told is mine. But. But what? Nothing. Nothing to do but slip into drunkenness or slip into sleep.”
“Please let me listen to your music,” said Epp again on the bus. “I really liked it when you sang ‘Ticket to Ride’ during karaoke hour on the ferry last night.”
The only good songs in the karaoke song book had been Beatles songs, so I chose one I could carry. But I didn’t know how much Epp loved the Beatles. She was one of the few who had applauded. The Finns on the ferry just stared at me when I was finished. They didn’t even look in my direction as I exited the stage. They treated every karaoke performer with the same cruel indifference, even the loveable fat drunk who sang “I Love Rock’n’Roll” before me. What was wrong with these people?
Epp narrowed her eyes and smiled at me. She said that she was from Estonia, but sometimes she seemed more like she was from Malaysia, another place that she had once lived and worked. She wore colorful clothing. She had already loaned me CDs of Cantonese electronic pop and Indian chanting music with elephants on the cover. I looked back into her eyes and kept feeling that, if I looked long enough, some supernatural force might materialize. Maybe I would begin to levitate.
“Hey, Justin,” Mitch the Canadian interrupted. “Got any more beer? It’s hot in here.”
“Sure, I snagged a few before we left,” I said, reaching into my backpack.
As I handed a beer to Mitch, Epp reached into my seat and snatched my discman, quickly making off with it to her own seat in front of the bus. My already