Having no source of income except an ATM card to a joint account and the promise of community property and child support in the event of divorce, I try to make prudent purchases when I can (hush up, Darren). I’ve forgone the fancy salon and now get my hair done in a trailer park. I buy the kids clothes at Target. I buy generic (except for the dogs for which I happily pay full price for their fancy schmancy gourmet dog food rather than suffer the tremendous gas that comes from anything but. Or butt). So on a recent trip to Vegas for my husband’s work he generously offered me a massage at the Wynn spa. At $250 for 50 minutes I just knew though that I wouldn’t be able to relax. I’d spend the whole time doing mental math on what else I could have done with the money and trying not to steal free amenities to compensate. $250 could be 25 pairs of shoes at Payless, I could buy new accessories for a whole room of my house, or bribe the kids to do something really, really extreme (10 minutes of silence maybe?).
I’d heard from a friend of a friend about Korean day spas here in Los Angeles. Bare bones but thorough, you get all sorts of spa services for a fraction of the price and a cultural experience to boot. Sure enough, there was such a day spa in Vegas as well. For less than half of the Wynn massage price I’d get a reflexology foot massage, full body scrub, hour massage, face mask, scalp massage with shampoo and conditioner and use of all their cool facilities that include things like salt and clay ball saunas.
Thanks to Yelp, I felt pretty prepared for my experience. No, the spa was not going to coddle me. Little English would be spoken (I would be entering Korean turf, they were not on mine). And for reasons I have yet to figure out, my masseuse would be wearing black lingerie. Anyone? Anyone?
I was, however, not prepared. Suffice to say, nothing fully prepares you for knowing the nipple size of the woman massaging you. As it turns out, she would know mine too. I had to be naked at all times to use the facilities. Fine. As long as I didn’t have to look at myself naked I was OK. I sauna’d, I soaked, I scrubbed. I started to feel smug for saving so much money. Here’s a tip: never let your guard down at a Korean day spa.
The time came for my Korean scrub ritual (turns out they should have added “istic” on to the end of “ritual,” as in “ritualistic humiliation”). Out comes my matron in a lacy black bra and bikini underpants. For any guys who may be reading this and thinking this is where the girl on girl action starts, uh, no. MATRON, not madame. This is not a woman you’d want to see in lacy lingerie, any more than you’d want to see me naked. Trust me. She leads me into a semi-private room, more a concrete cell than anything else. There is a table covered in thick vinyl in the middle. It is then I spy the industrial trash can filled with water and a bucket. Surely to clean up the room afterwards, right? You see where this is going.
Not being a fetish type of gal, I have never experienced bare skin on vinyl. Lets just say it’s not comfortable or flattering. Really, people, I don’t get it. I then hear the sound of water and expect to be gently doused by a spray of warm water in prep for the scrub. What I get is a bucket of room temperature water thrown over my body by the matron. Thrown. Not poured, not slowly dripped, but thrown. The kind of throw I reserve for when I have to wash away a pool of dog pee off the patio before company comes over.
Then the thorough scrub began. I’d been worried about this part but it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable or, um, thorough as I’d read about by some Yelpers. However, I was then doused again. I began to understand why waterboarding is so effective. Said matron then asks me to turn over on my back. I am soaking wet, I am naked, the back half of me is newly sloughed and smooth and I’m starting to have flashbacks of my summer Slip N’Slide in the 1970s. Which is exactly what I did. I slid. I went sliding. I attempted to dig in but there was nothing dry to hold on to. The matron had to catch me before I hit the floor. I had to dig my toes in and brace myself with my elbows. It was totally like that sexy scene in Flashdance, if Flashdance had been filmed in a Korean prison. Money saved: $130. Blogging about yourself being scrubbed naked by a Korean matron?: Priceless. (Definitely Not June!)
Leave a Reply