The answer was that I didn't want to.

Putting it unkindly into words it would come out something like: "You're not that good looking, and I don't find your technique all that great. And you tend to whine." I also knew that I could have gotten past all that.

I just didn't want to.

I said, "That's quite a line..."

"Isn't it though?" he said.

"Do you use it often?"

"Every time."

"You know our talking is disturbing people," I said.

"It's amazing how uptight people are about talking here."

"And how full of cliches when they talk."

"Well, this is trite heaven you know."

"Like we're talking now," I said.

"Yes."

"Do you suppose that there is any way around it?"

"No...Why don't you come to my room?"

"No, Lenny. Thank you."

"I'm very persistent you know."

"I know. I'm equally stubborn."

"I'll see you later then."

"I don't doubt that you will."

Then he left.

At odd times during the rest of the evening I did run into Lenny, insinuating, pestering, touching. As he persisted, so I was stubborn. It was comic but not funny, although I laughed to myself more than once to think of us in the third person, and despite his continued appearances in my evening, he will not intrude again in this letter.

After Lenny's departure I found myself talking to the older man who remained in the sauna with me. With the lack of originality that characterizes most meetings between strangers, we started by appraising the temperature of our shared environment and agreeing that it was not hot enough. This led to a discussion of the relative merits of wet (steambath) heat versus dry (sauna) heat. He invoked the Romans and the Turks, and I countered with Scandinavia. He asked me if I had noticed a guy who had been there earlier who had stretched his leg until it was in full vertical extension, thigh to abdomen, head against calf. There was a combination of awe and regret riding in the overtones of his comment, both muted. I think the awe was inspired directly by the suppleness of doing that stretch. The regret reflected his mature self-knowledge that he was no longer young and had small hope of ever achieving that perfection of form.

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