Also this issue: Fantastic Voyage -Howard Altman There's Something About Amiri The Constitutional right to wax moronic. -Clark DeLeon Letters to the Editor

October 17-23, 2002

loose canon

Sparanoia

by Bruce Schimmel

Day spas used to make me queasy. What business does a sartorially challenged guy like me have in a place where exquisite people are primped and primed?

So I dunno why I got the gift certificate. Ask my wife who bought me the massage, facial and manicure at the Oggi Salon and Spa as a gift for my birthday. My birthday two years ago, that is.

That's right, I let that coupon sit in a drawer like a savings bond waiting to bear interest. Except it doesn't, and what's worse, I let the one-year expiration date slide by.

And why? Fear. Inside, it'd be fourth grade at lunch all over again. A passel of pretty girls, giggling and pointing, mocking me with their shining eyes.

But I have just turned 50 years old, and it was time to confront my darkest fears. It was time to paddle past the Sirens and face the Medusa that I am.

So imagine my surprise when it was OK that my certificate had expired. Imagine my horror that I could come in that very day.

By four o'clock I was lying stomach-down on a massage table, my face encircled and supported by a padded bracket. By 4:45 I had a vision of myself about to drool on the floor, but seen from above. This massage was the first out-of-body experience I've ever had, outside of psychedelics or NyQuil.

By then, embarrassment didn't seem possible. My solid flesh, reduced to quivering jelly, didn't have the wherewithal to feel much of anything at all. I was punch-drunk without so much as a bruise. Donna-Marie, my unassuming and unflappable masseuse, had worked me over, it seemed by remote control.

Staggering to my next station, I was greeted by Janet for a mini-facial. Mini seemed about right, since much of my face is covered with a beard. Scented warm towels, followed by unguents and salves, were applied to whatever face was available. I was lathered in cool steam. I came in white and pasty, and emerged pink and shiny.

My final treatment came from Mercedes, the manicurist. As anyone knows who's ever seen George Cukor's classic film The Women, you get the dirt when you get your nails cleaned, and Mercedes did not disappoint.

For regulars, a spa is like a cross between a soap opera and the court of Louis XIV. It's all about hierarchy, the pecking order determined by who forces whom to idle around, and for how long. The massage, facial, manicure are but byproducts of the real sport of spas, which is the waiting game.

My own sojourn through Oggi took two hours, and I never waited more than a minute or two at any point. So apparently it is possible to opt out of the waiting game. Though I admit, my fear conquered, I'm ready for another dose of pampering.