A memorable episode that happened some years ago, when, as a young man freshly out of university, I had moved into my very first apartment after living in a student dorm for years.
It had started as any other Saturday. Since I had moved into this building, a couple of months earlier. I had quickly developed my Saturday routine. After sleeping late, having a hearty breakfast and read the papers, I would head for the nice indoor swimming pool — one of the features that had led me to select that building in the first place.
That morning, around 11 a.m., I had spent about half an hour enjoying a nice and invigorating swim. I then had a quick shower and decided to try the sauna. I left my bathing suit in the men's dressing room, next to my bathrobe and entered the sauna stark naked. I noticed that a chap was already there. He too was naked; somehow, I felt relieved that he was not a prude who could have been offended by my nakedness.
Not being accustomed to intense heat, I sat on the lower bench, where he was sitting. I had been there for a minute or two when he broke the silence. "Nothing like this heat to cleanse one's body, right?" I agreed: "Yeah, sure makes one sweat away the old gin consumed during the week!" My remark was greeted with laughter. "My name's Jim", he said, as he extended his hand. We shook our sweaty hands, and continued chatting. Although he was about a decade older than my 25 years, we had several points in common, as our chat revealed. Jim turned out to be single too. He had been living in the building for a couple of years.
After about ten minutes, I announced that I was cooked just right, and headed for the shower. Jim also declared that he had enough, and followed me out of the sauna. We each headed to one of the two shower stalls, and let the cool water refresh us.
As we emerged, we quickly dried up and put on our robes, carrying our wet bathing suits in our hands, along with our towels. He then said "Now that you've sweated out all your old gin, would you like to hop to my pad and have a bit of fresh one?" It was a bit early to hit the bottle, I replied. "Who's talking about hitting the bottle? Just a bit of gin, plenty of tonic water and lemon juice. Almost like your morning orange juice. It'll replenish the fluids we sweated" The argument was too convincing for me: I agreed to the idea. We walked out of the men's locker room and headed for the elevator.
Since his apartment was on a lower floor than mine, we came to his floor first. "Don't bother going home to change: come as you are." I felt somehow strange to visit someone while wearing only a bathrobe: but then again, the atmosphere was so relaxed that it seemed quite acceptable.
Upon entering his apartment, a nice open space pad, we dropped our wet bathing suits and towels on the kitchen counter. Jim then picked a couple of glasses in a cupboard, grabbed a bottle of Tanqueray into another and reached into the refrigerator for the tonic water and lemon. As he was fixing the drinks, I looked around his very nicely decorated living room, with two beautiful leather couches.
He soon walked around the kitchen counter with a glass in each hand. "Let's have a seat", he said, while walking towards the couches. I followed him. Just as I came to one of the couches, I asked "But won't our wet bathrobes damage the leather?"
