“Manners Maketh Man”
Or The Day My Husband Got Anal
Originally published as “Like the Old Saying Says: ‘Manners Maketh Man’” in The Greeley Tribune, August 5, 2023.
Stacy McCloud “holding up” a pillar in Turkey. Photo/Stacy McCloud.
Call me old fashioned, but I love chivalry. My boys have manners and are chivalrous.
They hold doors, they let women cut in front of them in the Starbucks and help the elderly load their groceries at the store. They start my vehicle and open and close my car door for me. They can change tires and oil; they know the difference between a flathead and a Phillips; they know how to split firewood, build a campfire, and put up a tent.
They can cook, unload a dishwasher, and wash their clothes. They have a firm handshake and make eye contact. They don’t use their cell phones at the dinner table, and they say please and thank. They know how to complement someone and engage in interesting conversation. They express gratitude and pray to God.
Today, boys are being raised in a world where the art of being a man is viewed as threatening and often discouraged. It seems that the modern feminist movement is less about women’s rights and uplifting women but more about tearing men down.
Boys are not inherently bad, neither is masculinity. If Modern day feminism is attempting to de-masculate men, we are harming half of us. Men are the yang to our womanly yin.
A building in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo/Stacy McCloud
We complement each other. They are our sons, brothers, fathers, and friends. If they are lucky, some become our husbands. While there are some bad eggs in all of us, most men are not hurtful, angry, power-hungry, crazed lunatics.
I find myself gazing at my husband, admiring his strong muscular biceps, his sculpted shoulders, his thick neck, impressive jawline, and the softness of his turquoise eyes. I could get lost in those eyes. His eyes tell me what I need to know. Those eyes are my kryptonite.
I remember his eyes pleading with me for help, broadcasting his vulnerability. I remember giggling as I walked away from him, denying him. He was vulnerable, and I turned my back on him.
We needed a short hiatus—
a vacation from our vacation.
Our tour guide suggested a hammam.
A Turkish bath.
October 15, 2016, Istanbul, Turkey—We had taken the city by storm and had been touring for days from sunup to sundown. Our feet were sore, our muscles ached, and our brains were tired from drowning in history.
We needed a short hiatus—a vacation from our vacation. Our tour guide suggested a hammam. A Turkish bath.
The historical Aga Hamami was built in the 1450s by the most prominent sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed the Conqueror. It was his personal bathhouse and Istanbul’s oldest.
Being in the aesthetic industry for just shy of two decades, I love good spa treatments. I’ve been to spas all over the world, I’ve dragged my husband along with me. Men deserve pampering without their masculinity being called into question.
Hands down from architecture to ambiance, and treatments, I’d found the pinnacle of spa destinations. Every spa experience from henceforth will be compared to it.
In traditional Turkish bathhouses, the two genders are separated and attended to by those of the same gender. Only hammams of ill repute would offer a woman to treat a man. Those women were the equivalent of prostitutes.
We walked him to the men’s entrance of this traditional bathhouse. My husband wasn’t amused that he would be spending the next 3 hours in a spa filled with men, getting a treatment from a man. Check in went smoothly enough, and he seemed eased.
Stacy McCloud and her husband, Colin. Photo/Stacy McCloud
He was greeted by his therapists; we noticed the name tag at the very same moment. His name was Anal—a common Muslim name. I saw panic and pleading in his eyes. Anal was half my husband’s height and mass. The entire situation was hysterical.
I pointed out the name tag to my mother and our guide. I smiled at my husband and turned on my heel, abandoning him. I walked away, giggling with my two companions. If feminism means power over men, I just walked away with the crown.
After we checked in, we changed into fluffy white robes. Still giggling thinking of my husband, we are guided into a 12 by 15 treatment room with ornate sinks and a sitting ledge on each wall. Water is overflowing from the bowls onto the marble floors.
We sat down on the ledge, wearing only the paper underwear we were given. The marble was warm and inviting. I couldn’t get my husband out of my mind. I looked at my mother as she erupted into laughter. She, too, had been imagining him sitting on a ledge wearing his paper underwear, completely horrified.
As we sat, the attendants used a body scrub on our outstretched legs and upper bodies. We stood as they scrubbed the areas we’d just been sitting upon. They worked around our G-string paper lingerie.
They asked us to bend over, then scrubbed our buttocks. Upside down, looking at one another we burst into convulsions of laughter, imagining my husband being instructed to do the same by Anal. I was sent into spasms of laughter.
The scrub was washed off with urns of water flowing freely from the faucets, over the sink onto the flooding floor. The warmth cascaded over our bodies; the scrub disappeared down the drain. The treatment was duplicated with a mud mask and more laughter.
Urns of warm water AND more laughter.
Next, we were led to a foyer and a heated marble slab shaped like an octagon. We were instructed to lay face down on the marble with towels beneath us. My body wanted to be horizontal, and all thoughts, even those of my tormented husband, fled as I yielded.
The warm marble was inviting, and my body gave into the relaxation. The therapist approached with a bucket and a sponge. She started dripping bubbles all over my posterior.
Magical dancing bubbles kissed me. The tiny spheres exploded against my skin, desiring immortality as each one caressed me with tickles and eruptions of pleasure. The orbs danced and exploded with intense detonations of bliss as if they were fighting to be nearest my skin in ticklish erotic kisses up and down my body. I was drunk with pleasure.
Instructed to roll over, I did so. She then released the globes onto my chest. They danced, kissed, and caressed my body, each racing to touch my skin before their clear little shapes burst into explosions of nothingness. Blop, blip, blop, kiss, kiss, kiss.
I was awakened by the bright sun outside and the intensity of those turquoise eyes looking down at me.
Reading them, I knew what they were telling me. This man needed a beer.
Finally, I was guided to a room where I was poured onto a massage bed and given a mediocre 60-minute massage that I managed to snore through entirely. I was exhausted and spent from the bubble experience. I don’t remember getting dressed afterwards.
I was awakened by the bright sun outside and the intensity of those turquoise eyes looking down at me. Reading them, I knew what they were telling me. This man needed a beer.
Like my boys, my husband knows, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. “Manners maketh man.” — William Horman
