Free Renegades of Gor by John Norman Page A

particular bath, adequate enough, I suppose,
    for the area, the fires beneath the bricked platforms were stirred, tended and
    cleaned with long-handled fire rakes. To be sure, it was late, and I suspected
    that the fires had not been tended since perhaps the eighteenth Ahn. The water,
    however, happily, was still comfortably warm. They would probably be built up
    again around the fifth Ahn. I had hung my wet garments on racks about the brick
    platform, behind the tub. They would probably be dry by now. Each tub was some
    seven feet in width and some eighteen inches deep. On a hook, behind me, kept
    for towels, and such, I had slung my scabbard.
    More than one fellow, and even a Ubar or two, as history has it, had been
    attacked in the bath. The baths here, of course, were very simple and primitive.
    For example, they were heated in the same room, and not in virtue of
    subterranean furnaces, heat from which would normally be conveyed upward through
    vents and pipes. Here, too, there were no scented pools, no massaging rooms, no
    steaming rooms. Too, of course, here there were no exercising yards, where one
    might try a fall or two in wrestling or, say, have a game of (pg.58) catch,
    either with the large or small ball. Similarly, there were no recreational
    gardens, no art galleries, no strolling lanes, no arcades of merchants, no
    physicians’ courts, no music rooms, or such.
    The baths, in many Gorean cities and towns, are convenient and popular gathering
    places. One can pick up the latest news and gossip there, for example. Many of
    these establishments are opulently appointed. Many are capacious and even
    palatial. Sometimes public funds are lavished upon them, as they are objects of
    civic pride. Even poor men may feel rich seeking electric sometimes dispense
    admittance ostraka to the poor. Some of these edifices, as in Turia or Ar, are
    monumental in size, almost like vaulted, pillared stadiums, with dozens of rooms
    and pools. One can become lost in them.
    Gorean baths are almost always segregated, incidentally, if only be the time of
    day. This does not mean that bath girls may not be available to tend to a strong
    male’s various wants in the men’s baths, or that handsome silk slaves, if they
    are summoned, may not appear in attendance in the baths of free women. A
    latticework separated the bathing area from the outer area. It was open now. I
    heard a fellow stirring in his sleep a few feet away, on the floor, near the
    bricked platform. Some seven or eight fellows, the latticework open, were
    sleeping in the bath area. I supposed they preferred the warmth of the baths to
    their spaces in the unheated levels, or lofts, of the inn. This sort of thing is
    not unusual in Gorean towns, incidentally, in cold weather, that folks should
    sleep in the baths. They are often warmer than their houses. They leave in the
    morning, of course, some of them doubtless to call on their patrons, hoping for
    a breakfast or an invitation to dinner.
    I opened one eye, hearing the outer door, that beyond the latticework, open.
    There are many types of baths, and ways to take them, for example, depending on
    the temperatures of the tubs, or pools, and the order in which one uses them. A
    common fashion is to use the first tub for a time, soaking, and, if one wishes,
    sponging, and then, emerging, to apply the oil, or oils. These are rubbed well
    into the skin and then removed with the strigil. There are various forms of
    strigil, and some of them (pg.59)are ornately decorated. They are usually of
    metal and almost always of a narrow, spatulate form. With the strigil one
    scrapes away the residue of oil, and, with it, dirt and sweat, cleaning the
    pores. One then generally takes the “second tub”, which consists of clean water,
    sponges away any remaining grime, residues of oil and dirt, and such, and then,
    luxuriating, soaks again.
    If one has a bath girl, of course, she does most of these things for sure.
    Sometimes the services