"He burned my head!"

More Serbia stories -- I could only hope to write them all down -- will come later. For now, let's focus on the present.

The Bob, my mom and Garland have been with me in Istanbul since Wednesday. But all The Bob has wanted to do since arriving was make a visit to the hamam.

"The Buddha" -- Haven't I seen this statue before in the Chinese food restaurant by my house?

I've been to two different Turkish baths in Budapest. Those are basically really nice, really old school swimming pools, with a steam room attached. There's nothing Turkish about them. From now on, I'm referring to those as "Austro-Hungarian baths."

A hamam -- the real Turkish bath -- is a pretty much a cross between a spa and an all guys BDSM conference. You lounge in a room with a bunch of other sweaty dudes, all wearing only a Turkish loin cloth, and wait your turn to get manhandled by a sweaty Turkish man, also wearing nothing but a Turkish loin cloth. When your number is finally called -- trust me, there is no rhyme, nor reason, to how they select who is next in line -- he simply grunts at you to follow him to the nearest available spot on the heated, circular slab of rock situated smack dab in the middle of the room.

The hamamer (I made that word up) who grunted at me was just about to strap a rubber ball in my mouth when some other hamamer came up, and basically tried to cut in on his colleague's game. The new guy just swooped in out of nowhere, and he started to take control of the situation. This was much to the chagrin of my original man. Shockingly, an argument ensued.

I'm not sure how many of you have ever heard the Turkish language spoken, but it is without a doubt the closest thing to organized gibberish known to man.

"Jamukah payukah, JAMUKAH PAYUKAH!"

"Shabbaday boo, kodoyay pah!"

"Kadikoy shoo lay nah! Rah tahh boo boo rah!"

This is going on right in front of me, and I don't know what to do. Sitting in only a towel, a first-timer to the Turkish bath(house) scene, desperately looking across the room at The Bob, whose eyes are shooting back a "What the hell did you do," my eyes answer in turn: "Nothing!" It was, without a doubt, the first time in my life that I'd ever had two sweaty, hairy, old Turkish men -- in towels -- fight over the right to rub their powerful hands all over my body, for money.

The intruder won the argument, and proceeded to go to work, but my original man wasn't happy about it, and kept making snide remarks in gibberish throughout the session. For about 15 minutes, though, my new guy treated me like his own personal rag doll -- soaping me up, cracking my back, wantonly attacking various pressure points, contorting my neck every which way, and indiscriminately pouring buckets of piping hot water on top of my head, without warning.

Most people don't complain about the rough treatment -- either because they're so rough-and-tumble that it doesn't bother them, or, like me, because they're too intimidated by the chaotic environment to speak up, especially in a language no one in authority is likely to understand.

But there was one guy...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I saw him after I had had my post-steam room massage, which was also pretty damn rough, but slightly less public. I was coming out of the shower, and was being draped in towels by the Turkish towel man: One for my waist, one for my head, one for my shoulders. This dude, who was coming out of the room in which I had witnessed the argument over the rights to my body, was absolutely jacked. Absolutely zero body fat. He was like an extra on MTV's "The Grind." Designer hair cut, ear rings in both lobes, tattoos that screamed out, "Badass," it was the kind of guy you would never want to mess with. He had nipple rings, for Christ's sake. And though it is almost January, his body was perfectly tanned.

And then he opened his mouth, and it was, well, not what I was expecting.

"Excuse me, do you speak English?" he asked the man putting towels on me.

His voice made Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" character sound like Andre the Giant. That means that he sounded gayer than San Francisco -- not that there's anything wrong with that!

"No, Turkish," the man answered. "Problem?"

Bruno was hot and bothered. Just as he began to vent, the door opened behind him, and out came a fat, hairy Turkish hamamer, who looked very similar to Borat's sidekick Azamat.

"That guy," Bruno complained to the man who had just told him that he didn't understand English, "BURNED my head!"

I immediately started to laugh. Immediately.

"The water, it's too hot! He burned me!"

Towel guy started questioning Azamat in Turkish. Azamat motioned towards Bruno, and started going on about something, in rapid fire. The two of them volleyed back and forth, in Turkish gibberish. I stood there in my multiple towels, cracking up. Bruno tried his best to look injured, but succeeded only in resembling some kind of pampered, Paris Hilton-style chihuahua, whose bowl had just been filled with dry dog food, instead of gourmet canned stuff.

Then, the manager came in.

"Kashashabady tayla di??" he asked towel guy and Azamat.

"Sta! Kalaby! Shadasheedekoy!" Azamat screamed. He glared at Bruno.

"Fa dee lay loo pie?" towel guy shrugged.

"He burned my head!" Bruno interjected, pointing at the accused. "Don't you know how hot the temperature of the water is??" As if they heated it up especially high, just for him.

The manager said something to Bruno to try and calm him down, which I couldn't make out because I was laughing so hard, virtually unable to move, I was clothed in so many towels. But Bruno wasn't having any of it.

"No! I don't want ANY massages from you people!" He was pouting at this point. "He burned my head!" Azamat looked like he was ready to rumble with this nipple-ringed American.

That was when I was ushered out of the room, sadly. But I was still laughing when I made it to the little compartment The Bob and I had left our stuff in.






And I will always associated my hamam experience with my memory of Bruno, and his rather surprising voice.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!