Aquae Populus
A profile of a rural community sauna
The picture is not complete without some quarrelsome fellow, a thief caught in the act, or the man who loves the sound of his own voice in the bath—not to mention those who jump in with a tremendous splash.
– Seneca, First Century AD
Things have been heading south with Warren for some time.
We don’t agree on sauna politics. And we don’t agree on politics, so things are getting awkward. That we are adults sitting in our togs, sweating profusely, just makes things worse.
Why sauna? Do you go? Over winter I visit my local sauna to escape the cold. For me, that means relaxed silence. When I can get it, it’s true luxury. But for Warren, sauna time is different. I suspect Warren goes to the sauna just to talk.
Also, side note, Warren likes to talk.
It’s met with a lot of eye-rolling from other people there, also in their togs. Warren’s stories are beratingly ‘big’, and often centre on ‘the way things really are’ or ‘what you should all know about this’.
I wish I didn’t find Warren’s company or conversation style tough going. But there are layers to this. I’ve been coming here for over two years and, even if I did want to talk, any exchange with Warren is barely a conversation. It’s a one-way, hard-line, right-leaning rant. I’m no fan. But, really, it’s the bravado that’s the most overbearing. The big-necked, chest-puffed-up-ness of the proclamations. The knee-jerk righteousness with a veil-of-unquestionability thrown over it. No one else gets a right of reply. For anyone listening it’s tough, tough going.
Warren likes to sit with his head in his hands, then look up suddenly and say something. Or, he’ll stand, turn and put one leg up on the wooden sauna seat, shake his head slightly and stare philosophically into the middle distance before making a pronouncement. An odd choice when the only visible middle distance is the lane instructions on the door to the swimming pool. Someone’s scratched out the L on the lettering, so for the past year it’s read ‘Please swim in a c ockwise fashion.’
But that’s Warren. A dramatic talker. I have learnt from Warren:
He is very into property. In a big way.
He was, in his youth, an agile and dangerous martial arts practitioner
and is not here to make friends.
He’s here to stay in shape.
He is more than comfortable sincerely using the phrase ‘fake news’.
I have indirectly learnt from Warren that:
Some deal went bad once.
He has grudges. ‘Some people? Urgh. Just. Some people. Ammiright?’
He has grievances. ‘Grumble grumble. Grumble, grumble grumble.’
Across cultures hot springs have been places of therapy for millennia. All public bathing shares this ancient heritage and tradition: a common space, usually secular, for physical relaxation, interaction and some sociability. New Zealand may not be ancient Rome, but with all the natural geothermal activity here (there are over a hundred accessible thermal springs) gathering socially to swim and warm ourselves is part of our cultural history. It would be hubristic to presume even the small local sauna I attend is somehow apart from that tradition.
Although the social rules are subtle, the sauna functions as a psychological pressure valve for the town. The swell of people, opportunity and custom over the summer months is followed here by cold, dark winters with few healthy and inexpensive leisure options. Amusement is a self-made thing over the colder months, and the sauna—as well as being a place of literal warmth—functions as a gentle antidote to the somewhat remorseless seasonality of rural life. The temporary casual integration it offers is apposite to the disconnection people can feel here.
Plus, you know. It’s warm.
The sauna is in a small gym complex on the western edge of town—between the row of McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC known as ‘fast-food alley’ and the road out, away from the coast. It’s the most industrial part of town, selling farm equipment, horse riding gear, work uniforms with steel-cap boots.
The gym buildings are run by Florian and his wife, whom no one’s met. Florian’s in his early forties and, decked out in his bright red puffer jacket and often holding a plastic bag of snack food, usually stands at the reception where the gym connects to the sauna and four-lane pool.
There are raffle tickets to win a meat pack that includes a size 14 chicken. Proceeds to get a defibrillator onsite. A whiteboard sign asks parents of kids taking swimming classes to make sure they’re paid for in advance. A big plastic tub by the door holds lost property: hoodies, jandals, towels, kids’ clothes and bright plastic water bottles. There’s a notice taped to the counter reminding people about the open-water swim this weekend off the harbour point, by the new subdivision.
As gyms go, the place is far from the world of mirror-watching workouts, Lycra and spin classes. It’s a community gym, tucked between the physical rehab centre and the city hospital.
Repairs to the building have been running behind for years. The occasional light flickers, the odd tile is cracked, but no one who uses the place seems too concerned. There’s a weights room, a few treadmills, and two taiaha next to the yoga mats in case you want to practise for kapa kaka.
The Mongrel Mob has headquarters nearby. A few younger patched-up members come in to work out, plus an older crew with gang tattoos but a more solid and easy-going bearing.
Training for the Iron Māori competition is 6am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and men and women pour into the small sauna after with a chorus of ‘Mōrena’ and ‘Pomare e.’ As each woman enters the men shuffle about to give her the best seat, making a tiny bit of a show about it. Tattoos are common here too. And either a ‘G’day everyone’ or a round of ‘Chur chur’ with an upward nod is expected any time of day you come in.
Busy before work and after, the sauna holds about twelve at the most. The closeness makes it a degree more intimate. If someone else is there when you are, it would feel slightly oppressive to sit in complete silence without acknowledging their presence. It’s necessary to interact a little. But, on the flipside, the garrulous are unavoidable. When it’s full the sauna’s more social than a swimming pool. Each day the sauna regulars take up their favourite spots on the wooden benches. The volume is more like a bar than a café.
There’s a bottle of water you spritz on the element to raise humidity, and a fifteen-minute timer on the wall you’re supposed to flip over when you do.
*
When the pool opens at 6am the first into the sauna are four women in their
sixties. They sauna before and after they’ve aqua-jogged. They’re very chatty and, when in the pool, are constantly trying to avoid getting their hair wet. They’re nice to everyone but they greatly, and vocally, prefer swimmers who don’t dive in or splash about.
One other lady, slightly younger, has Tourette’s and aqua-jogs a metre or two behind the group talking to herself. Her half-hearted, softly repeated words are an echo-like riff of what she catches from the conversation of the other four.
Towels under their arms, the first men into the sauna at that time of the day are Tony and Marty.
Tony is a former teacher in his seventies who catches whitebait and knows every local fishing spot and how to access it. Every season is different for whitebait, and favourite sites coveted and fought over. Conversation with Tony is serious and endlessly varied as long as you enjoy talking about whitebait.
He’s sharp and convivial and has nicknames for everyone. Not all nice. Tony’s known for being a bit on the sharp side of sharp. Too sharp for some people.
He collected postage stamps for years and now sells them at the Sunday market in Napier. He gives away sets to people if he thinks they’ll be appreciated. He’s a proponent of colloidal silver and considers diluted peroxide in your drinking water a panacea. He used to advocate hard for both theories but now he waves it off.
‘Just Google it. All the facts are there.’
Tony’s innately gifted with the serial-monologist’s knack of deriving complete satisfaction from his own conversation, without requiring any external participation. He alternates his fishing diatribes with a needling of other sauna users for his own sly entertainment.
Tony also likes to talk when getting changed. This is a subset of sauna user— the type who likes to continue the conversation seamlessly in the changing rooms, often standing naked, showering or towelling off while still holding forth. If the image that comes to the reader’s mind is graphic I apologise and can only offer that, in person, the experience is at least as worrying.
Tony is married, and his number is taped to my fridge in case I want to go fishing sometime. Tony and I on the ocean. On a small boat. I am. Still. Undecided.
Marty, who’s usually in there with Tony, is a former jockey in his sixties whose kids are all in Australia. There are a few jockeys who use the sauna to ‘lose those last few pounds’. He cycles to the sauna each day in his bright yellow Hi-Viz even after two bouts of knee surgery, which he doesn’t like to talk about. He waves if you see him on the road turning in.
Quieter, more charitable, but also gruffer and a bit sweary, Marty’s a natural offsider to Tony and likes to keep things to the point. He proudly has ‘no patience for bloody fools’. I keep thinking he’d be great in a Harry Potter story except I know he’d keep going off-script. ‘Jeez, Harry, stop waving your wand about, you bloody ponce! Pull your damn finger out and get on with it. Or just shut your bloody mouth for five minutes.’
Around midday Dave arrives and is immediately superb, life-of-the-party- type company. He’s Māori, mid-forties and very restless. A constant mover.
A few times Dave’s introduced himself as ‘Dave the Māori’—which he finds funnier than anyone else. He works in forestry and is always stretching, walking and stalking, rolling his head around his neck and shoulders. He switches places with people perching by the door and stands and opens it to let the next person in.
Dave’s part of a crew that accesses parts of inland forest two hours from town, where they’ll be stationed for days, rising before daybreak on cold winter mornings to drive further inland as needed.
He usually has a big Bluetooth speaker set to highest volume in the changing room next door, so everyone has to listen. He plays a blend of Motown, 1980s hip hop and disco. I love it. However, it is apparently popular among only about half the sauna folk.
Whenever it comes up in conversation Dave grins.
‘Well, anyone who doesn’t like it can always go fuck themselves.’ Little-known Dave facts:
Dave’s daughter was a recent Miss New Zealand.
Dave has a 1959 Chevrolet Impala in storage.
Dave is cagey about me knowing about his beautiful muscle car. But he’s told me he takes it out in the Spring Parade and the Street Art Festival each March. Once he turned up once in a black and white gangster pinstripe, hat and spats included, and said he was taking the car out for a Sunday drive. Diplomatic and social, Dave’s far too smart and fast moving to be caught in any arguments.
Mid-afternoon is usually when Alan and Gus arrive. Father and son, they only talk sport, and Alan is particularly sagacious. He moves slowly, always careful not to cause offence with his comments. Gus is closer to my age and once told me about his previous P addiction, and how he’d moved on to smoking. And about his ex. ‘Total bitch.’ I think he has a kid. There’s something acrimonious ongoing but it’s hard to get a handle on the details.
They come in the same car, have the same tall and lean build and look like twins aged thirty years apart. They seem to agree with everyone about most things but since they only talk about league or basketball it’s a bit hard to tell.
Sandy is in about 5pm. She runs a hostel for long-term tenants and talks mostly about the guests’ behaviour and her latest boyfriend. If people don’t engage she’ll complain loudly: ‘The reason I like this gym is because it’s not full of stuck-up white people! People here talk!’
Everyone usually chuckles awkwardly. There are very few possible responses that don’t sound forced. If you guessed the 100 per cent correct response to be ‘Hey Sandy, how’s your boyfriend?’ then you are correct.
Sandy will happily furnish more detail than anyone requires.
‘I’ve only seen him on Monday and Wednesday this week. But wow, it’s so physical! He just won’t stop. Nothing like my last boyfriend. Really! Unstoppable!’
There’s usually some unsettled throat-clearing and everyone tries to look elsewhere. Difficult in a small room, when the air suddenly seems a little closer and a little hotter than before.
It’s easy to be negative about Sandy. She complains a lot about her tenants and their life choices, she’s pugnacious and leans forward into every topic, and just loves having the last word. There’s a rumour she’s from ‘old money’.
‘Seriously well off.’ But it’s worth mentioning that she’s also incredibly generous and sincere. She’s constantly lending people things, and a member of the Hastings DIY Coffin Club as well.
As the name suggests, this group gets together weekly to build their own coffins. There’s nothing religious about it, and it’s as sociable as a bridge or tennis club. Building your own coffin is practical and cheap. Some coffins are very plain but others are painted bright colours, bedazzled and upholstered with patterns from Spotlight. Coffins lean up against the front of the house where the club meets, looking like something between a garage sale and the village undertaker’s in a country and western film.
I have a hundred questions about this and want to join, but it’s pretty much a closed group.
Sandy also regularly replaces the plastic flowers at the Mary of the Crossroads just out of town. She helps tidy the graves in the chapel cemetery there. For years local families have decorated them with artificial flowers, coloured ribbons and bright plastic toy windmills positioned to catch the breeze.
*
In a sauna everyone’s prone to some degree of self-consciousness. It’s like the
sideline at a Saturday sports game except for the fact that we’re sitting here almost in our underwear. This lends an extra layer of intimacy to the social experience. Some people become confessional, or flirtatious, others performative and others shy and determinedly anonymous.
Generally, sauna conversation works around a few key themes. Land is one. Water another. Grape growers are happy when it’s dry in summer, farmers when there’s some rain. Local water being bottled and sold for supposedly vast profit offshore is a sore point. The proposed dam another.
When Marcus, a cattle farmer from the back country, comes in, he’s self- deprecating and even tempered. He’s cautious with his opinion on summer water shortages, especially since inland Bay farmers are expected to benefit from upcoming plans. He doesn’t even rise to Warren calling his home town all ‘sheep shit and electric fences’.
The pub there closed recently. There wasn’t the population there to support it. It was bought by a pair of local farming brothers who had been throwing big drinking parties there. But it’s no good for taking a date, so Marcus drives forty minutes to pick up his girlfriend from Napier and bring her to the sauna to relax. After, he says, they like to go to ‘that Turkish place for some goss, a cuddle, and a Chicken Iskender’.
Current sauna talk is mostly about a winery putting a new walking track up the face of the local peak.
‘It’s their land. They paid for it.’
‘Whose land first? There’s Māori bones everywhere up there. No-go spots.’ ‘The land’s private.’
‘But everyone has to see it and the owners don’t even live here!’
‘People are rubbish.’
‘Especially people spending taxpayer money.’
A popular and perennial hero is Inky, the squid who escaped last year from
the New Zealand National Aquarium. There was an article in The New York Times: ‘Inky the Escapee Octopus.’ In the sauna there’s civic pride about the ingenuity of our own cephalopod-made-good.
‘Undid his tank after seeing staff do it. Hauled himself eight feet over the lino to a 164-foot-long drainpipe. Then “plop”. Into the sea. Off to see a lady. Bloody legend.’
There’s a similar running joke about Manukura—the white kiwi at the Pukaha Wildlife Centre. He’s known for being unable to stop himself chasing the females around in his aviary. To the innocent delight of children and the more arch amusement of parents.
With sauna talk it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly when a subject is done. There’s a sense of everything being a bit unresolved. Subjects like Inky, or water shortages, get batted about as long as people care to keep chipping in. There’s a strong urge to keep any good joke or fruitful topic going. Tony or Warren will make a statement, there’ll be silence for ten minutes, then the same subject will be restarted, with new sauna entrants providing an audience to be canvassed afresh.
Enabling this is a steady run of backpackers, school kids, retirees, tourists, out-patients from the hospital and one-time visiting locals. A small busload of Japanese tourists one Friday morning seemed to arrive by mistake. They were as gregarious and social as anyone and, as far as people could understand, also on the lookout for John Kirwan.
French and Italian backpackers here to pick blueberries mix with meat workers from the freezing works and talk about unions and hourly rates. As nationalities attempt to find common ground there’s an unconscious tendency to imitate in gesture, then language. Tony, who points this out to me, says it’s called echopraxia and echolalia.
Sinta from Indonesia works on orchards, doesn’t speak much English, and is mostly on his phone texting or making calls. He wants to take his kids and wife back home to visit Jakarta for three weeks at Christmas. But it’s not cheap and Sinta is working weekends to make it happen.
He manages a crew of 150 seasonal workers from the Pacific—mostly Vanuatu, Marlborough and the East Cape this year. His company provides work for up to nine months of the year for some sorting recruitment, bank accounts, accommodation, health and safety, and daily work. They usually fill the local exercise classes on Tuesday and Thursday at 5.30pm. After a day of picking, pruning or packing they arrive in the three full white minivans to box, jog, cycle and stretch. People want to talk about the cyclones that hit Vanuatu and here
on the East Cape this year. But almost all conversation is limited to grins, nods and thumbs up. On the first day of winter they withdraw months of pay in cash before flying home en masse.
Among the one-off visitors this summer was the Kiwi mixed martial arts fighter living on the Gold Coast, who kept shaving and moisturising himself. Also a young guy drinking Woodstock & Cola who popped out then came back in naked, explaining he was trying to fit in a quick drink and a workout before he met his probation officer. The logic of his plan eluded us all.
Most conversational gambits are met with a fair amount of generosity and tolerance. From a purely practical point of view, choosing when to disagree with someone in a confined space, and how much, must be done strategically.
There’s a guy whose name I’ve never known. Looks like a grumpy Van Morrison. Shaved head. Speaks in short sentences. He has a white spotted pitbull he brings to the pool that runs alongside his lane as he swims. He stops at each end, pausing to rub the dog’s ears and tell it not to jump in.
Afterwards, in the sauna, he’s terse and tense, and his stories, as soon as he knows you’re listening, are extreme. He speaks only one-on-one. If there’s a crowd, he’s silent. One, two, three car accident tales in quick succession. Then the time he pulled a man out of a burning truck when he heard a bang outside the pub.
‘Went back after and finished my pint!’
I was suspicious of that one.
But he did say he could barely drink it since his whole body was shaking
with adrenaline. He seemed so full of adrenaline telling the story the sauna seemed too small a room to question it. Though dissenting in close quarters might cross your mind, this is usually outweighed by a more egalitarian need to simply interact and allow someone to be, even momentarily, heard.
The sauna’s social ecosystem tends to self-correct to its own even keel.
*
While the people who use this place, and the ways they use it, are distinct, contemporary and varied, the patterns of interaction are the same as millennia ago. It’s not a manicured or homogenised experience. It’s endlessly irregular. The carousel of local archetypes, plus the retinue of visitors, echo age-old tropes. The sport, practicalities and jostling for position in conversation seem as timeless and ageless as the irrepressible human urge to communicate.
Last week, however, there was a notice in the paper. Florian and his wife are moving on. So for now the gym and sauna are, at least temporarily, closed.
A few instructors are out of work, and kids’ swimming classes have been cancelled. The notice says the owners have advised anyone making automatic payments to stop. Posted on the gym’s Facebook page is the message ‘Thank you all—it has been a blast and a privilege!’
The last time I went to the sauna, an Italian visitor spent thirty minutes explaining that the most similar place to Italy he’d been in New Zealand was the carpark outside PAK’nSAVE in Hastings.
I realise I haven’t seen Warren in more than a month.
Of all the sauna patrons, Warren was the only one 100 per cent committed to using his line of conversation like a hammer. I’d never contributed or encouraged. But I’d been present for the speeches and watched unsuspecting visitors slowly realise what they’ve walked into and why everyone else is in the sauna is silent.
‘What New Zealand needs is a Donald Trump!’ Warren had declared. ‘A real businessman who knows how to take charge!’
This was the only occasion I dared respond, saying mildly that I wasn’t so sure. Personally. Since then Warren and I haven’t spoken.
The only time he addressed me directly was after he’d marshalled court so successfully that I was the only one left in the room. And I wasn’t responding. He leaned in conspiratorially as he was leaving.
‘I talk too much. I know. You don’t. I get it. You’re quiet. But it’s okay. Everyone’s different here. People like me just like to talk.’
Which is a fair summation.
And what would I know?
I should also report that Warren has bad knees and must clamber about
carefully. And that after the sauna he likes to jump feet first into the deep end of the swimming pool with a tremendous splash. And that he combs his hair for
a very long time. And that, for all that noise, he is himself quite quiet and shy outside of the sauna.
References
The picture is not complete ... Quote displayed on a pillar at the Roman baths at Aqua Sulis in Somerset. Anna Lydia Motto, Seneca’s Epistles (Mundelein, Illinois: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2001).
New Zealand may not be ancient Rome ... Sally Jackson, Hot Springs of New Zealand Guide Book (4th Edition) (Hot Water Publishing, 2017).
