"Oh, I could just lie down after that delicious dhansak
and be fed with Turkish Delight....." she said.
"I'd love to be sloshed with tepid water," I responded.

I think of Alanya in the hot South
and that star-pricked concrete dome above me
mimicking a simple Planetarium, where

toiling males in the shadows doused themselves
exhaustedly, and sagged again onto a great hob.

My reckless masseur was bare to his baggy pants

and his masterful belly glistened.
His soapfilled net sausage, squeezed out,
shed towering foam infernos

onto dislocating, tendon-racked me
and my eight-inch square of (Turkish) towel
that he delicately replaced, time after time.

I kept sliding away like a oiled squid,
to be hauled back from the slab's brink
for another bout of ruthlessness.

That man converted me to universal double -
jointedness in half an hour - flat.
Then made the (half-expected) suggestion.

Or was it his bad English?
Was there really an ante-room, annexe,
boudoir, den, beyond this steamy gloom?

He vaguely waved an enormous arm.
Young women (or men) were hankering,
for me, he seemed to indicate......

For me of all people! This moribund octopus
with its sensualities spread thin over
its entire surface, then rubbed well in.

I was in no shape at all.

"Next week I'll take a Turkish bath," she said.
"I need to know about it for my novel."

"Let me tell you about mine,
and of how I got my hernia," I said.