40 lashes with a wet oak leaf... please.

I am back in New Hampshire after a delightful trip to New York. Getting home was a bit of an adventure, involving a dead car battery, AAA, and four and a half hours with non-functioning heat or radio.

Surprisingly, not even the sight of my hands frozen into gnarled blue claws on the steering wheel could get me down, because I started 2007 with The Platza (insert dreamy sigh here).

Tuesday afternoon found me at the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village with Claire and Erin. It was Erin's maiden voyage into the public bath (I'm a big fan), and we two veterans were eager to show her a good time and perhaps sweat out some of those New Year's Eve poisons in the process. We have discovered, in recent months, that the platza is the difference between a good time in the Baths and a superlative bathing experience.

The best thing about the Russian and Turkish Baths is its unfussiness. The changing rooms are separated by a partial wall (such that a dude once called out "God Bless you" when I sneezed), the towels are a dull beige and the staff a somewhat surly bunch of Russians. You can decide whether you want a massage or scrub or whatever when you get into the Baths.

The relaxing unfussiness translates into the treatments as well. The platza is a treatment whereby you allow yourself to be gently beaten with a bunch of soapy oak branches in an extremely hot stone room. Sounds fun, right?

The first time we did it, Claire and I both found it somewhat unpleasant (in a very pleasant way, if you catch my meaning) while it was happening, but fantastic once it was over. You're in the hottest room in the baths, facedown with a towel on your head. The towel is cold, which helps you breathe, but you aren't able to see what's going on and whether the Orthodox Jewish men in there are watching you get scrubbed up and bent around like a pretzel. And the heat. It's so incredibly hot in the Russian sauna, if you take too deep a breath, you wonder if you're going to cook your lungs, and just as you're about to leap up and run screaming away from the bossy Russian man of Mongolian extraction, the hot room, and the voyeurs, the aforementioned bossy man pours cold water over you and you are restored. He cracks your back, scrubs you with leaves, and drags you around the place by the hand like a petulant child, and you let him. It's an overheated, sweaty kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

We knew it'd be different last week when the young man who approached us to offer the treatment smiled. He was barrel-chested, tattooed, and sporting a big gold cross around his neck. We wondered if perhaps he intended to [gently] beat the fear of God into us. We prepared Erin for the torturous element of the Platza. The bossing, the bending, the possibility of burns. Then we sent her in first. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged, mouth agape.

I went next. Instead of bossing, this fellow barely spoke. The same frantic feeling came over me after a few minutes in the heat, followed by the same relief upon a cold dousing. He was gentle at the right times and rough at others. It was all quite.... intimate. Except for an audience of old men.

Reduced to a limp heap of contentment, I found myself wishing I could say "So, can I call you sometime?" in Russian.

When Claire emerged from her turn, my suspicion was confirmed. This guy is the Platza King. No, there is no "happy ending" on offer at the baths. He's all business... but with a smile. And a giant gold cross around his neck.

Praise be.