my cultural exchange of the korean massage- an anatomy lesson of a different kind

Now I have done the New York massage in tent of a room full of strangers. Acupressure melded into an Asian dialect-I am not sure exactly which one. It’s singing and loud in a rhythmic beat. It is cheap and I can walk more straight once I leave out the side street up the stairs onto the well-beaten path.

Now I have done Calistoga. The massage of politeness and English and crisp whiteness still near the mud. In your own private room of politeness. The mud. And the naked ladies. And then the spa last time I went to that it seemed you had to obese to work there. Which made me and my friend feel like they must be saying I hate them, those skinny bitches.

I have done the yoga massage studio massage. Which is a zen haven with the correct emblems out, smell of openness and acceptance, as you hear the yoga class next store in the yoga room. The jumps of the poses. The let go and breath. Then the telling of me how I walk wrong and I should work on it. It. Thanks ohm lady for that. How do you re-teach yourself to walk when you are in your 30’s? Namaste I say.

It all started in college. In a basement of my college surrounded by the fellow sweaty college athletes where I tried to relax amongst the baseball and soccer players. My table next to theirs. I closed my eyes to not see their ogling. But I could still hear the snickers. The bright florescent lights blinding and beaming. As I turned the corner after, I heard nice ass and tons of laughter.

So that is to say I am somewhat of a veteran at this massage thing. Massage thing. So the Korean massage. The Korean massage was unlike anything I have yet experienced. I gave over my clothes and received a pink oversized top and long cotton shorts stopping at my knee with an elastic waistband for ladies over 60’s. It left red and white indents around my midsection. I felt like I was in gym class in jr. high. No at a spa. There is a women’s section and men’s section.
Women go around naked in their section. I am assuming the guy’s room bottomless on their side.

We meet in the middle-the common area. The common area has small tinyish tables and food menus in Korean and English not proofread, group saunas clothing not optional, an ice room, and a room full of burberry pillows on a refrigerated floor with a huge plasma tv where people lay. I don’t know where I am but there is no windows, no whiteys but me oh and my brother, but he will be on his side, me on mine. I hear the background noise of languages I don’t know and the looks of others sometimes the quick look away and then the staring. Staring. I’m exotic again. In a windowless spa, in a common room with food and pillows, in my gym clothes of years past. Time to relax.

I walk into the women’s locker room to go the bathroom. The women who work there look at me like I’m lost. No, where can I find the food I ask. Where’s waldo I must look like. They smirk. I eat too much kim chi and spicy things I have no idea what they are which I will pay for later of course.

I went into the warm pool, which was the hottest pool I have been in. It is time for the treatment. Everyone is naked here and what I learn is- okay-I learn a lot. First of all, I am thankful for my body. And being comfortable with it, in it. Second, vital information such as observing others pubic hair regions occurred. I see there is a range of hairiness of the danger triangle from somewhat normalish hair to 1960’s freedom funk to the mohawk. I learn that although most Asian women are not hairy throughout their whole bodies, like us whiteys that they do in fact make up for lost ground downstairs. Now this might just be middle aged or older women of Korean decent or Asian decent. Not many youngins were there for my sample size of my research study. I was shocked by the amount of hair so distracting that it was hard to not stare. But I forced myself to look away. Away.

Another thing I learned was that nipples really vary. I know my own well. I know my friends sort of. Guys will love that. Ladies change in front of each other. And sometimes on spring breaks in Mexico maybe shower together not for an sexual revolution in the making but to get ready more quickly, to save water, to take advantage of the group shower. But some of this nipples were shocking. Shockingly big and wide and long, one woman almost took me out with hers. Yes sir, I was taking out by a massive nipple to the eye. I was in a Korean spa. Oh good, to hear, this happens a lot. My ER visit plays on the reel of my mind. I look down-mine felt small and pinkish and childlike in comparison. But they are mine.

So the massage, the massage was kind of sort of out of this world. I told you I was a veteran but never, never did I ever experience anything like this. First of all you are in a group room, room with drains and water and tubs of water in huge plastic trashcans. There are towels and smells and constant movement. Bright lights. Tables-plastic-are grouped together in a sardine fashion and the ladies taking care of you wear black bras and underwear and don’t speak English. Now I’ll be honest but little was left to the imagination and this wasn’t a dream sequence out of a western man’s fantasy, no these ladies weren’t. They start with the scrub. The scrub I thought would be relaxing hurts like hell. It’s like someone took a brillo pad a brillo pad to your entire, I repeat ENTIRE, body. I close my eyes and smell the smell of my own dead flesh. Gross. Water rushes over me. I turn over and over and once I start to get used to the burning until the brillo is going for my crack my butt, I jump, and scream, and clench my cheeks and my lady laughs. We are laughing, the universal language translator, the laughter. Every time I would laugh, everyone-workers and clients all laughed. When she was scrubbing my bikini area or my feet. The laughter again and the rounds would begin.

So the actual massage did little to relax me. After the skin was scrubbed off my body and washed off my table and down the drain it went. Round and round. Yes now for the massage. But I had a
preview of what was to come and it wasn’t pretty-no it wasn’t. I’m fucked. The woman next to me is the largest and in chargest Asian woman I have ever laid my eyes upon. Her areolas are the size of my one breast- they are huge. And they are shaking next to me. Back and forth they go. She has been shaken by her masseuse next to me. The flesh back and forth. Her breasts shaking rapidly. I close my eyes tight.

Now it’s my turn, the oil is rubbed, rubbed all over my body actually splashed and thrown. Then the shaking and the intermittent pounding. I need a seatbelt, a sports bra for this ladies technique. It’s so slippery I am fearful I might slide right off the table. The shaking, the constant shaking is making me nervous and I might have a panic attack. This is the polar opposite of relaxing, this is cultural exchange gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Then there is the flipping back and forth. And a mask that is making my face itch. But I can’t tell her softer or what is the strange stuff you put in my face. What I would do for a waterproof pocket Korean dictionary or as the modern folk would say a waterproof I phone or droid, what I would do. She takes the mask off and all she keeps saying is irritation, irritation, irritation and pours milk on my face. She knows irritation. Does she understand stay away from my butt hole, or bikini area or please don’t tenderize me like meat. It’s over and I feel strangely relaxed or relieved I’m not sure which.

Off to put on my gym clothes and try and find my brother who was banished to the male section. He probably has lost his shit and returned to his mobsteresque car for relief of his womb. No he feel asleep the only white man in sight in a sea of yellow and brown- he was easy to spot, he looked like a giant with long curly hair. He had a burberry pillow under him, he actually was asleep. We went into the co-ed sauna- there in Korean letters and in English-no talk here-which means whisper. And grade your papers here. Yes, I saw a man, a professor, grade his papers, final exams for a college class in a co-ed sauna with a blue gym suit, spa issued on of course. I started laughing so hard I had to leave. It made me think about all the weird places my professors might have graded my papers. So I left soon after my green tea bubble tea. It had been four hours. Day almost over.

When I told people I went to get a Korean spa people laugh and ask about happy endings. The happy ending didn’t come in their over-sexualized hasty generalized racialized assumption of a question or a statement- I am sure it would cost more than 70 dollars if that was the case-no my happy ending was the end and I was happy.