Here in this lounge there is the gentle trickle, trickle of water falling over stones and the ping, ding of ersatz Zen-inspired music, and there are musky aromas said to be derived from the region's native birch and mountain laurel. There is apricot tea. There are soft robes wrapped around us, and nubby sandals making subtle reflexology promises to our arches and heels.
Hello, spa. Hello, beauty. Now, heal us.
I'm here with Wendy and Nancy for a girls' getaway, birthday edition. Wendy is celebrating one of those big ones divisible by 10, and she is so thrilled with this girl-gift that she brought fancy champagne for later. We'll get "treatments," then stay overnight in the little healing huts they have. Well, condos. Whatever. I'm cynical. I don't go to spas. I think they're for filthy rich people who have time for . . . pampering. I'm looking around at the strangers in this lounge who have the time, and I am listening to myself and I am feeling like a toxin. I am neither harmony nor balance.
I am bad karma. If there is a first rule of etiquette at a spa, it is that you do not infect others with your cranky energy. So I'm keeping it in, holding myself stiff as a corpse.
I probably look like I've been to the taxidermist.
"I just thought of something," Wendy blurts out with a howl of laughter. "I'm a facial virgin!" This is in reference to the fact that she is about to get her first-ever facial. She is talking too loud. Enthusiasm does not belong in this ping-ding lounge with everyone supposedly getting in the mood for their thermal mineral kur or their synchronized shiatsu restoration. The strangers in the room sit in silence, turn away from her.
Nancy is exhausted and tense. It took her an hour longer to get here than it should have, thanks to a truck with a very stinky exhaust problem, and one stupid lane of traffic through those mountains, where she couldn't get cell phone service, so now her office is calling and calling and she looks like she is about to cry. The presence of a cell phone puts extreme tension on the faces of our sister apricot tea drinkers. "Look, I'm at a spa," Nancy finally says into the phone. "I'm in a bathrobe and I'm going in for a Swedish massage. I am not taking any more calls." She hangs up.
Such anxiety is clearly a violation against the code of trickle-trickle and ping-ding. Combining this with Wendy's wide-eyed enthusiasm and my cranky cynicism, what we have here is the invasion of the leper sisters.
Mercifully, the elevator door opens, and out pops a whole crew of massage therapists and assorted specialists. One by one, they call our names and take us back to our private little treatment cells. "I'm a facial virgin!" Wendy is saying as she disappears. "I've had a terrible day," Nancy is saying. "I want bright red," I say to my pedicurist.
Ninety minutes later, we meet back in the lounge. Nancy looks stoned out of her mind. Her head is flopping as if connected by string. "It wasn't a massage," she manages to say through breaths. "It . . . was . . . a . . . resurrection." With that, she drapes her body on one of the couches, and begins purring.
"Oh. My. God," Wendy is saying, not just to Nancy and me, but to all the women gathered here in post-treatment stupor. "Have you ever had a facial? You have to get a facial! Ask for Michelle!" She gives us play-by-play action of every last moisturizer applied to her now-glowing skin. She goes on about this until no one has the option of ignoring her. In fact, people are . . . smiling. It occurs to me that these are the first smiles I've seen among these strangers. Is smiling allowed?
"A cocoon!" Wendy goes on. "She wrapped me in a cocoon. And my feet and hands in toasty mitts." She is practically dancing in front of these women. "And then, just when you think it can't possibly get any better, here comes . . . the mist!" She makes a "ssssss" sound, and flaps her hands in front of her face. "Better than sex, ladies," she says. "Better than sex!"
I crack up, feel myself go from taxidermy body to . . . person. It is a beautiful experience. It is a breath of air in my fifth vertebra. Or something. The key to the whole thing is the laughter, as all the amused women in this lounge would surely agree. One says she thinks laughter therapy would be a good spa treatment. "A mirth mud wrap?" Another says they should hire Wendy to do it. We are having a great time.
I sign up for a facial with Chris because one of the other women gets to Michelle first. Wendy heads off to the whirlpool. As for Nancy, we leave her draped on the couch to finish all phases of her reincarnation.
Jeanne Marie Laskas's e-mail address is post@jmlaskas.com.
