Then there's that other thing about lying down on your stomach with practically nothing on but a towel the therapist lifts off first one, then the other leg, so you can't help but feel like a carcass being examined up and close by a butcher looking for the best cuts. |
Something tells me that you should not carry your imagination into a treatment room, but how most people manage that is beyond me. So while they snooze under the kneading fingers of a masseuse, too comfortable to even respond to queries about whether the pressure is right, not only am I alert, I'm also making up the stuff that's probably going through the therapist's mind as he pretends to smile benignly "" "Tut-tut, ingrown toenails! And wouldn't you know it, shaggy eyebrows too. And just look at that paunch "" and eeyow! What terrible dry skin ..."
"Why are you showering now if you're going for a massage?" my wife asked, quite rightly, as I surrendered myself to soap and a scrub that would put a beauty queen to shame. "Can you imagine the therapist coming across dirt behind the ears, or seeing discoloured nails," I said, re-living the horror of childhood inspections, "I've got to be clean in the first place so I can be all cleaned up by the masseuse all over again."
It's this convoluted logic that doesn't let you chill in the first place. "I can feel the tension here," said my therapist this week, after he'd done the carcass-examining thing on the table, and was pressing down over my shoulder blades ("ouch!"). Trouble is, he came across tension knots everywhere "" down my back ("ouch, ouch!"), in my stomach (which was too stiff to even rumble in protest), my fingers, even the soles of my feet ("gosh, that hurts"). "You will soon be fine," said the therapist, not sounding in the least bit convincing, having never before seen such a case of shot nerves.
Through scrubs that exfoliated, and a lather of oils and unguents in the massage room, and a steady stream of soapsuds and water pressure in the hamam, the therapist toiled, probably absorbing some of the tension himself even as he failed to unlock those that I clung on to like a personal treasure. There's only so much a massage can do after all, so showered and robed and scented and filled with potions of ginger tea and cucumber water, I was dispatched to my room, probably just as a conference of therapists sat down to discuss the acute case that, fortunately for them, had left.
Back in the cocoon of my room, cleaner than I'd ever before been in my life, I snuggled up in bed...and promptly fell into the most refreshing power nap I've had in my life. So for whatever it's worth, here's my theory: the good part of going to a spa is the afterwards. Worry all you will about what the therapist thinks of your receding hairline, dandruff or love handles...but once you've survived the spa and are back in your own clothes, in your own room "" that's when going to one becomes really worthwhile.
