I took a cab down an unpaved road to a brick house. We were lost. A woman with very dark and thick eyelashes met me outside. She brought me into the cool, dark house, and handed me a sheet that had dried blood on it.
She suggested I change into it so I did, leaving my phone, pesos and room key in my shorts on the tile floor. I went into another dark room where she lit a bowl of something — copal? some sort of incense –right by my barely covered loins waved it around me. She walked around and told me to stick out my arms like Jesus on the cross. Then she—I wouldn’t say beat me, but more took pickleball swings—at my bare chest and legs, and she hit me with a bouquet of flowers? herbs? I don’t know what they were.
When that was over, she opened a tiny door that I could barely see and crawled inside. “Adelante,” she said from the next world. I hunched, nearly crawling, to enter what I thought would be a room, but it was in fact more like a pizza oven. There was a dome roof. It was very hot, with two built-in benches. There was a little light, but she covered that gap in the Earth with a towel. Then she hit me a few more times with the bouquet.
She waved me over to the source of the heat: dozens of black rocks smoldered. There was a basin of water. She picked up a hard shell of fruit, jicara, about the size of an avocado. “Cuatro veces, Tierra,” she scooped and threw the water on the rocks. Steam funneled back to us. “Aire.” More water, more smoldering, more steam. “Agua.” Again, the rocks and the water hissed as the vapors rose. “Fuego.”
The backyard pizza oven was now full of steam. I stood to get some distance from the hot rocks and realized, fully standing, my head, or at least my hair, was touching the rough adobe roof. She walked to the tiny door. It was about the right height for a medium-sized dog, like a lab, to comfortably walk through. She crouched and knocked. She said she’d be back in 40 minutes. And in Spanish continued, “Knock if I—” then she mimed a panic attack. I nodded and said, “Si.”
She went to a small clay bowl and collected something the size of a chip. She rubbed it on my forehead, uncomfortably close to my eyes and through my beard. It was gooey. She handed me the bowl, which I could see now was full of some sort of plant. And she suggested I rub it all over my body. Then she left through that little Alice in Wonderland door.
I picked up the gourd and burned my fingers as I tried to scoop the water. I squinted and could see the steam rising from the bowl as I got closer. Then I went back again, more careful this time, and scooped. I tossed the water, and the stones hissed. “Land,” I said. I scooped again. “Air.” Another scoop and another. “Water, fire.”
I stood up as the steam rose. I grabbed the bouquet of flowers and decided to pummel myself. I mean, why the fuck not? I was already here on the outskirts of Oaxaca de Juarez, far from the bright colonial buildings, in the house of a bruja from the Mixtec mountains with her apprentice, in a fucking pizza oven, naked except for the slime of a succulent that coated my body like syrup.
I threw more water on the hot rocks, four times, of course, as she instructed. The temazcal creaked. I thought, if there’s an earthquake, I’ll fucking die in here. The Earth above me will return to the ground, pin me to the hot tierra, and people will wonder, What was that pinche guero doing in a Mixtec sweat lodge in a witch’s backyard in Oaxaca? And the answer will be, it was my wife’s idea.
You see, I’m a guy who’s due for reinvention, a rebirth, and this whole ceremony is about returning to the womb of Mother Earth — the pizza oven — and renacimiento when I eventually exit through the bank-vault doggie door. And it’s Easter. So why not?
More water, more steam. I’m light-headed now. I started slowly, but at some point, I made the classic mistake. I wasn’t feeling anything, or enough, so I kicked up the water and steam, the proverbial dosage. Well, the truth was, it just hadn’t hit me.
At a certain point, my eyes adjusted to the dark. I thought, this is it. There was me for almost four decades before temazcal. And now there’s me after temazcal for the rest of my life after. “Can you feel the change?” I’ve cooked for long enough that I don’t care whether the bruja’s apprentice heard me or not. I switched sides to mark the shift. I felt seismic. Although I still hoped the Earth wouldn’t shake. I was not afraid, although I was probably inducing heat stroke. I felt wobbly, but sitting didn’t feel right. Now was not the time to be passive.
There was a knock on the little door. I threw more water on the rocks. More time passed. I heard, “Como estas?” More time passed. The door opened. “Adelante.” I walked out, unsteady on my feet, into the first dark room.
It was nice to be in a space where I couldn’t spread my arms and touch both walls. I could stand without hitting my head on the top of the dome. She was saying something, but the words sounded like the wind passing through a tree. She tapped my shoulder. I looked down and realized she was four feet, maybe ten inches. She held up her phone. It was open to Google Translate. The English read: “It’s time to go home. Don’t shower until tomorrow.”
Exchanging Pleasantries 