Naturist Sauna is Steamy but Sex-Free

The stragglers know mere minutes remain before the transformation. They toss wet towels into plastic shopping bags, pull at wet hair with fingers to recreate some semblance of style. They hurriedly hike up hose, dab on lipstick, maybe eyeliner, and shuffle out the door, heads bowed, so as not to stare at the swell of people waiting in the hall.


The hairdressers are less subtle. They stand with their hands on the heads of their clients, clippers and combs poised, craning their necks toward the hallway where two 40-something men wearing nothing but flip-flops are smoking cigarettes, talking. The overall grayish pallor of the men's skin contrasts with the pink of their protruding stomachs like poorly refrigerated meat.


It is nearly 7 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at the Varshavskiye Banyi, and the women's section of the Russian-style sauna, or banya, in southern Moscow is being taken over for the next four hours by practitioners of a lifestyle known as naturism.


"If I had my choice, I would go without clothes all the time -- in the street, too," Oleg Yakubov is saying, his pursed lips and intense, close-set eyes lending a seriousness not easily reconciled to the relaxed atmosphere.


"I like when everything is clean and natural," adds Yakubov, 36, the small and wiry general director of a wholesale toiletry supply company.


"These clothes we wear are our own false inventions," he says, sweeping a hand through the air at a pair of journalists who are trying -- and failing -- to keep their eyes trained on notepads while women reach behind their backs to release bras, lift their thighs to unroll stockings, swing their heads to shake loose soft hair from tight buns.


"Some of us are fat, some of us are skinny, and we hide it all behind clothes," chimes in Larisa Zapunova, a theater critic. "The person who opens up his body loves himself. Many people can't love themselves as they are, fat or skinny."


Zapunova, 39, has tucked her dark shoulder-length hair inside a felt cap and holds a loofah in one hand, a cup of hot tea in the other. She most definitely loves herself.


"I like the people here because they announce who they are, you already know something about them. It's open and free," she says. "Being here is like saying, 'Here I am!'"


Naturism may be defined as a lifestyle "in harmony with nature, expressed through social nudity and characterized by self-respect of people with different opinions and of the environment."


Or so says the International Naturist Federation, based in Belgium.


In Russia, where naturism was outlawed for 60 years under Article 26 of the criminal code, it has evolved into its own definitions.


"It was frowned upon and, like many things, didn't exist. ... It was also one of the first manifestations of freedom -- body freedom," says Vladimir, a 42-year-old book publisher who does not feel quite open enough to allow his last name to be published.


"It's a very free atmosphere. You come when you want. It's gender neutral. It's a lovely thing. ... It carries you through the winter," adds the five-year veteran of the naturist banya. "I wouldn't be able to take this life if it weren't for the banya. It's what you need in Moscow -- less toughness."


Unemployed Sasha Davidov, 27, began coming two years ago. "Everyone usually sees beauty, but not on the inside," he says, depleted from the heat and slumping on a padded bench. "Here we eradicate the barriers and get to the inside of a person. ... It's like I am one with myself -- body and soul -- one with nature."


In a large room with square marble columns and floor tiles, close to 60 people -- about half men and half women -- settle into old high-backed booths that resemble train compartments, in which they dress and undress, relax, eat and drink. Two sets of aged wooden doors open into a room where people soap up, shower, give each other massages and cool down in a tile wading pool.


In the sauna, people perch along rows of bleachers, the wooden slats stained dark with sweat and splashes of eucalyptus and mint oils. Some lie prone as friends beat and massage them with veniki -- small, tight bundles of birch or oak leaves.


In Moscow, men and women are usually restricted to separate saunas and dressing rooms. However, the Varshavskiye sauna is reserved every Monday and Wednesday by the naturist organization, Telord, which was formed in 1990 and has about 150 members. The group also reserves another sauna for Friday nights.


Open sex, drunkenness and most photography are prohibited. Single men, too, are discouraged. "In principle, we ask that people come in pairs," says Sergei Mityushin, president of Telord. Mityushin eschews perceptions that naturists are sexually aberrant, a view reinforced by divorced computer system programmer Mikhail Levinson.


"It is not a good place to meet women," says 32-year-old Levinson. "If I went up to a woman and tried to get to know her, you know, there would be a scandal. There is a taboo against any kind of sexuality here. You can just feel it."


Still, such evenings rank high in mutual curiosity between the sexes, and are good fodder for self-employed journalists who need to make a buck. And they just might mark the beginning of a trend.


"I came here a year ago as a journalist," says Valentina Nedzbetskaya, who characterizes herself as "ageless" while holding a pink towel over her torso. "Of course, I could write an article," she says. "But I'm too far into it at this point -- I'm a member now."