Nine People You'll See at a NUDE NATURAL Hot Spring

Can you think of a tenth?

This is a free post from The Real Sarah Miller. Last week I wrote about people I punched semi-related to current events but also just for fun. A few weeks ago I wrote about people who order food slowly. Please subscribe if you have the means to do so, it is appreciated.

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I went to a NUDE natural hot spring last weekend in Northern California. If you ever visit an establishment like this here are nine types of people you will definitely see. Can anyone think of a tenth?

1. Greetings, I am the groaner. I involuntarily make a long, low braying sound as I sink into water.  Yes, I know that most people are capable of immersing their bodies in water without groaning, I also know that most people don’t have my enhanced capacity to receive and metabolize sensual pleasure.

2. Hey, we are the hot young straight couple that every time you look up is making a lap of the pool area. You might be wondering, are we actually out here walking around more than everyone else, like, are we purposefully showing off, or does it merely appear that way because you notice us, whereas the rest of you, in your averageness, simply do not even see each other? These are interesting questions we will not be thinking about. Unhot people think about hotness, hot people are just hot. How did we meet? Ok, this is a question we can answer because it’s actually just so funny and random: We met at a posture clinic which the instructor asked both of us to leave because she said she had nothing to teach us. 

3. MMMMMhhhmm, oh, yeah. We are the couple who is definitely not having sex. We’re just meditating together. With our legs wrapped around each other’s waists. 

4. Salutations, I am the 70-ish man with white hair and extremely low body fat with an especially sinewy pelvic area who sits on a stone bench by the cold pool for hours and appears not to move. I do not smile. I do not frown. Tomorrow I will walk up a five mile hill and at some point I will see a crow, I might nod at it, I might do nothing, right now I am deciding.

5. Aloha, I am the thirtyish woman with the tattoo of a plumeria on one shoulder and MAHALO on the other bumping into everyone at midnight in the quiet pool and whispering sorry and everyone says its fine until they realize that I am actually hammered and just hoping I will finally bump into someone who wants to have sex with me, wish me luck, though if you do say anything to me I will take it as an agreement that you want to have sex with me, just FYI.

6. Yeah, hi, I am the person who is always aggressively switching pools.  I move between the hot pool and the cold pool and the really hot pool and back again with the determined energy of a medical intern doing an anesthesiology rotation under a supervising physician about to be formally reprimanded for abuse of subordinates. Most people see a set of stairs leading out of the pool, I see a runway where I jet off to my next opportunity for becoming a better, smarter, more interesting person through pool rotation. My goal is to hit at least four pools every ten minutes. I try not to judge the people around me lounging in the comfortably warm pool, acting like a hot spring visit is all fun and games. I too used to have no comprehension that true relaxation involves hard work.

7. Great to see you, I’m the middle-age woman with the longest hair in the world. I love to get my long hair wet and then sluice the water out of it with my fingers. I am wearing 39 rings and I smile at all whose eyes meet mine. What a gift it is to be here in this sacred place, with my miles of hair, and my ring collection.

8. Shhh. I am the shusher. I don’t care if all that happened is your friend mouthed “where is Vicky, she has my wallet” and when you tried to mouth back “coffee stand” and when they didn’t get it and you whispered “coffee stand.” SHHHHHHHH. This is the silent pool. This is where I come to go deep. You might think I am a woman because of libraries/misogyny but I am a man. I have been sitting here for 14 hours trying to figure out how to tell my girlfriend of ten years that I can’t marry her because I don’t want to lose any of the 46 million dollars I made on Netflix stock to pay for her social work degree. I thought long and hard about it and I just have to walk my path, and my path is finding someone younger who has no debt. I had it all scripted out and everything, in my head, everything I was going to say, using the principles of nonviolent communication, and I’m driving back to the city in an hour and now all I can think of is “coffee stand,” thanks a lot.

9. What’s up, I’m the reader. I’m trying to read Where the Crawdads Sing in the Silent pool. It’s not going well. My book is wet. I can't get comfortable. I really want to know where the crawdads sing and I really want to be here. I guess I will have to choose. But I keep thinking I can make this work, with absolutely no evidence that this is possible. It seems unfair that it’s easy to fuck in a pool but impossible to read.