This one’s going to be a little bit different. Instead of simply listing a list of things I’ve overheard over the course of some months or weeks at the saunas of Asheville, I’m going to give you two small vignettes, essays if you will, about sauna-related observations in the greater Asheville area (both of which I created as part of the mini-essay series I did on my professional Instagram, if you’d like to check that out).
You Can’t Teach Self-Awareness
One of my 2026 resolutions was to be less judgmental, but if you’ve been following along with these January mini-essays, you see that I’ve obviously thrown that right away. Like, I try. I really do. I try to care less. I try to be KIND. But people don’t make it easy.
This past weekend, I was sitting at the sauna at my gym, and two gentlemen were having a loud conversation across me (perfectly fine, just mentioning it, because this gives me carte blanche to listen in and report on it). They discussed all my favorite things: Pushing themselves! Making and achieving goals (this will get an essay soon)! Self-absorption in the guise of self-care!
Then, I stopped judging just a bit and thought maybe I’d insert myself into the conversation because the one gentleman shared how he was approaching 40, didn’t feel like he was where he wanted to be, and was considering a career change. Like, sir, I’m feeling all those same things. Then, he shared the career he was thinking of leaving was teaching, largely because of “the politics,” and like, again, sir, I couldn’t agree more, and in fact, had that same experience back when I was approaching 30. But then he said something that made me decide to keep mum, because if I can’t stop judging, I could not say anything at all, if I can’t say anything nice.
He said—and I’m quoting him to the best of my ability—”yeah, it’s also frustrating because most teachers aren’t smart or motivated people, and I need to work with people who want to push themselves and grow.” He went on to explain that the old adage of “those who can’t do teach” is 100% true,” and most people who get into teaching do so because they have no discernible skill sets, it’s an easy (and worthless) major (sir, can I present you my LIT DEGREE?), and that they want to coast and not be challenged.
As someone who got out of teaching because I didn’t want to be challenged anymore by overreaching parents and unfair politics, who felt the education part of my degree (and teaching in general) really prepared me not only for the classroom, but the corporate world, and is close with many teachers who are very smart, very motivated, very selfless people, I wanted to tell him he sounded like a fucking clown, but then—as people are so apt to do—he both contradicted himself, and told the entire sauna exactly who he was.
“But, I like teaching,” he said, “because it’s easy and pays the bills and gives me time to run.” Yes, you read that right. It gives him time to run as much as he’d like to, because people who work “real jobs” don’t have the time to do that, and he really wants to train for a triathlon (I almost interjected here to share the story of my friend who’s an engineer and father and has run several Iron Men, but like, would that even have been worth it?), and all things considered, it’s not a bad job for someone who just happened into it when his real goal of getting into grad school to become an engineer himself was derailed by “fucking around” in his 20s.
A Boner at the Sauna House
Every Monday, I go to the Sauna House in Asheville to spend two hours in sauna and cold-plunge cycles. I promise this sounds a lot more annoying than it is, though often the other people partaking in the same *ritual* are just as annoying as you expect. There’s a lot of self-seriousness, a lot of wellness yogababble spoken at performatively loud levels, and though phones are ostensibly not allowed in the Sauna House, the way some folks dress and lounge tells you they live more for the grid than anything. However, last night, I witnessed something that really takes the cake.
A very tall gentleman with a very elaborate—very *Whovillian*—manbun entered the sauna, and instead of taking a seat like everyone else, stopped directly inside the door, clasped his hands together like in prayer, and bowed, as if he were attending a karate match (which tracks, because without knowing for sure, I *know* for sure that this man has one or two *transformative* trips to Asia under his woven belt), and starting into an elaborate stretching routine, which was obnoxious because people kept having to walk around him to get to the door.
It was also obnoxious because he was wearing very tight boxer briefs and had, what I think is politely called, an erection.
Now—and I say this with *zero* judgement—this gentleman wasn’t so well endowed that it was super obvious and obscene. He probably had *some* plausible deniability if someone called him out on it, and if you weren’t sitting at the right level or right angle, he could pass as just a garden-variety hipster asshole who’d never dare deign to don boardshorts, but I was at the right level and angle—and got verification from several other Sauna House goers after he left—to assure you that this man was performatively stretching in very tight boxer briefs in a public, co-ed setting with full-mast boner, which, as I said to my friend at dinner afterwards, is truly not that far away from being a trench-coat flasher.
I ended up putting my shoes on next to this gentleman when it was time to leave later that night. He was carrying an old corduroy messenger bag covered in pins. There was one that said “Black Women Run the World,” and one portraying Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a deity. I didn’t see a “male feminist” pin, but just as I know in my bones that he had a *transformative* experience in Asia once, I know that he owned that pin at one point, and that he wore a tee shirt with the same phrase to more than one first date where he bitched to much younger women about the evils of the patriarchy and alpha bros over ceremonial-grade matcha lattes.
AshevilleExplorer 