The first spa visit of my life was today, and now I feel the best I've ever felt in ages. But the day didn't start out quite so well.
The morning was restless, from making a mistake booking my 7:30a yoga class (they told me I wasn't on the roster) to handing in a paper that I had originally intended to complete last night, to finally finishing my sample page and resume that I had put off for so long. I was working in a great fury because I had figured out that someone I had such a heated debate with a couple weeks ago at an alumni event, who preferred to call himself a "designer" rather than an "Architect," who agreed that architecture is not about "buildings," actually works for one of the largest corporate firms in the world: Foster & Partners. Upon seeing that the clock was moving faster than anticipated towards my appointment time, I rushed to gather all of my belongings (which for some reason always manage to spill out in a radius of no less than 5 feet around me), and headed out the computer lab with my backpack, gym bag hooked on left arm, and my waterbottle, hat, scarf, and a bagged lunch in my left hand. Trying to force the door open clumsily didn't turn out so well, and in response my yogurt exploded inside the paper bag and drenched my lunch in a lovely white goo. I tsked and rode the elevator up trying not to think about how much I needed to use the bathroom because I had forgotten to use it all morning from concentrating so hard on work.
As soon as the glass doors of Faraday slid open, I rushed out in my characteristic stomp and nearly knocked down everyone that was in my way. (Tough luck.) I've noticed that my pedestrian road rage is particularly bad in London for some reason. Maybe because of all the fucking tourists (of course, my entirety of four weeks here had long expelled me from that category).
Upon arriving at the bus stop in Holborn and realizing I had just missed the 243, I pulled out my salad that had been drenched in yogurt and started eating it in the street (not before spilling some residual white gunk on the sleeves of my brand new coat), getting stares from the proper British people wearing their proper British shoes and behaving in their proper British manner. I habitually sweeped up my phone from my coat pocket to check the time. Only ten minutes until my appointment. The next bus when I boarded, much to my delight and others' inconvenience, skipped some stops due to renovation and arrived a bit earlier at my stop than expected. Finally, I hopped off the dangerously large step onto the street ("kneeling buses" aren't so common in London), and resumed my race-walking stomp to my spa, conveniently located in a large building complex occupying the center island of a roundabout with no visible pedestrian crosswalks. Superb. I sprinted across the street hoping not to get flattened by the same double-decker I had just alighted.
Proceeding into my spa appointment (located on floor -4, deep in the dungeons of the complex) was incredibly stressful. I remember being scolded for being "late" one minute after the designated time, and of course the receptionist didn't forget to mention that we were off to a "late" start after I arrived, panting, four minutes after 1pm. Then she handed me a questionnaire to fill out, which asked for a detailed description of my physical condition. I was in the middle of constructing thoughtful answers when the masseuse came to greet me in all of her four-and-a-half feet of grace and dismissed the paper form entirely. How many times have I so earnestly filled out a form that meant nothing to the recipient?
Upon entering the massage room (dimly lit, and minimally ornamented, as expected), I saw a bed that was covered in many layers of towels. I was instructed to take a minute (indeed, it was no longer than precisely a minute) to strip down to my underwear, and "pop" my bra off. "My bra doesn't pop," I wanted to say. "It's a bra for lazy people." I wondered if everybody else who came to the spa were hardworking people whose brassiers "popped" off. The whole Valentine's Day fiasco still echoed strongly in my imagination and I imagined silly people popping their bras off left and right.
The masseuse walked in on my awkward moment of trying to climb onto the massage bed, and without the slightest expression of surprise she quickly pulled the topmost layer of towel over my back, almost surgically. I noticed the vanity over in the corner opposite the door, took a deep breath as I placed my head face down onto a pillow she handed me. Then I proceeded to suffocate while simultaneously being overtaken by the irrational fear that my eyebrow piercing was going to explode. The room didn't smell like anything, just warmth.
Upon lying down I realized I didn't know if I should be responsive or let her do all the work, lifting my leg and fiddling with the positioning of my appendages until they were aligned in the correct position. I suddenly realized that this must be what corpses go through when they're subjected to autopsy. In the spirit of the exercise, I let myself lay there like a chunk of meat being inspected as the masseuse lifted the towel in portions to reveal whatever body part she was working on. I wondered if seeing the whole body all at once would be too sexual, whereas body parts are okay even if my buttcheeks were hanging out of my underwear. She used her practiced hands and applied continuous pressure to each limb so that it felt like small waves of the ocean welcoming me back to, a weird mismatch with the foresty soundtrack that was playing from tiny speakers. My eyes were closed, but I could sense when her hands were about to touch my skin before they even made contact, and shivered as they slid down my back, up my calf, down my forearm, up my shoulders. Then, out of nowhere, when I anticipated the same rhythm of sweeping motions that she had primed me to expect, came a hotness that danced on my skin and made traces of the history of its path through the lingering warmth I felt only after the stone had left my skin. One stone in each hand, used the stone to mediate her hands and the subject of her technique. Sometimes the stones clicked together gently and it was curiously soothing. When the hot stones first made contact with the bottom of my foot, I wondered if I would get burned. But then I remembered that she was using her bare hands to touch the stone that I felt only momentarily, and in that moment I decided to place my trust in her, simply reclined further into my pillow and relinquished control over my body.
When the final song on her playlist came on I felt an emotional heaviness that I noticed before I even realized what I was hearing. Backtracking the source of the feeling, I remembered that I had once played a horrible rendition of this orchestral work in my high school band. Nobody in my class had the patience to play what we thought was such a long and boring piece, but as I hear it this time I am able to mark the subtle changes in the color of the chords, long weeping breaths of sound that flow organically and powerfully. At what point, which exact moment did I gain this emotional depth appreciate this piece? From nothing to something, but when?
As I walk out into the sunlight, the brisk winter wind tickles my exposed skin, and I find it delightful that I feel so unencumbered. I decide to relish the direct contact I have with nature (instead of cursing at how cold it is as I would have before this spa appointment), and walked towards the light reflecting off Big Ben in the distance. The afternoon sun was strong and low and the city maintained its presence.
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