Until last weekend, I thought the only thing more uncomfortable than sitting shoulder to shoulder with a new grandmother on an airplane was sitting in a movie theater surrounded by the loud chewing of 400 people chewing in unison, hungry for popcorn.
That’s because I didn’t know the concept of the shared hot spring. For the uninitiated, a hot spring is formed when river water seeps deep into the earth and comes into contact with magma, or hot underground rock, and then bubbles back up to the surface, mixing the cold water with hot water. At some point in history, someone discovered that you could contain the hot water by arranging rocks in a ring around where it bubbled to the surface, effectively creating a small, hot pool in the middle of a cold, flowing river.
I can’t imagine their joy at this discovery, especially if they were naturally cold or desperately in need of a bath. But I can imagine their dismay when other freezing or dirty strangers happened to wander into their hot, private paradise and forced their way in, giving birth to the concept of the communal hot spring. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sartre wrote after an afternoon at such a spring, “Hell is other people.”
Frankly, the contradictory fact that hot water exists in a river bothers me. Nothing can prepare you for the experience of stepping foot-first into a clear, babbling stream, expecting a rush of cold water to instantly sober up the intoxicated cells left in your body from the previous evening’s indulgence, only to find yourself howling in a boiling cauldron like the unsuspecting human ingredient in an unexpected witch’s potion.
But what bothers me most is the fact that there are no gatekeepers at hot springs. Just because you got there first, and the spring is really only big enough to accommodate you and your husband, with your overly fearful of privacy, doesn’t mean other people can’t barge in. At the hot spring in Ketchum, Idaho, that my husband took me to last weekend, one stranger led another until we were surrounded by an entire family of strangers in various states of undress, all of whom slipped into our tiny hot pool without being asked, lay on their bellies like pale salamanders, and rolled their eyes in a disturbing display of ecstasy.
I tried to look elsewhere; I really did. There were pretty pebbles in the water, tall green aspens all around, and a bright blue sky above me, untarnished by the smoke haze we’d seen over downtown Ketchum. I tried to put some sort of smile on my face that would say I, too, was relaxed to the point of ecstasy, but my face showed none of it.
Luckily, after 15 minutes my husband asked me if I was ready to go. Was he serious? Whereas when we arrived I had carefully climbed down the steep bank to the river bank, now I scaled it like a lemur and was in the car before he could put his shoes on.
I must clarify here that I do not find other people generally repulsive. In fact, I have warm feelings toward most people, which stems from decades of therapy, the details of which I will not go into here. People are generally fine; I detest people in friendly proximity.
This aversion to closeness is what makes me sit at the back of the cinema when I go. It’s why you won’t see me swaying dreamily or cheering loudly at concerts. It’s why I’ve struggled through the crowded halls of the Sistine Chapel and Buckingham Palace. It’s why I’ll never visit a hot spring again without acquiring the private rights to it.
And so, at the end of my last flight, during which I spent four hours avoiding eye contact with the person sitting next to me, I was tempted to smile sweetly as I stood up to leave and say in all truth, “It was great not meeting you.”
Dana Shavin is an award-winning humor columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the author of the memoir The Body Tourist and Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs, a collection of her most popular columns from 20 years. For more information, visit Danashavin.com.
