Posted: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 04:06 PM - 138 Readers
By: Joel Stein
My mom is not a master of subtlety. So when she said, five different
times, that the only thing she really wanted for her 65th birthday was
to go away to a spa for her first time, I was able to riddle out that
she wanted to go away to a spa. So I got us a reservation at the Lake
Austin Spa Resort, one of the top U.S. spas, according to Condé Nast
Traveler. But when I called to tell her about her present, she paused
and said, "Just the two of us?" I did not know it was possible to creep
your own mother out. Panicked since I had already made the arrangements,
I offered to bring my sister Lisa. Then Lisa, who is an out-of-work
lawyer, started making a spreadsheet of all the activities we would do.
At the spa. If you've never seen a spreadsheet filled over and over with
the words spa appointment and yoga, then you don't know how desperately
we need to turn this economy around.
I had figured that, being a
guy who likes musicals and a nice tea service, I'd fit in fine at a
spa. I was wrong. From the moment I arrived, I felt more masculine than I
ever had. All around the beautiful grounds, women my mom's age floated
about in robes, smiling blankly and sipping from glasses of herbal iced
tea. During our three days there, I would walk up to four of these
women, thinking they were my mom. It's not that all 60-ish women look
the same in a robe and flip-flops; it's just that they do to everyone
else. Weirder still, despite all the open grass and the huge clear lake,
no one was using any of it to compete against one another. (See 10 odd spa treatments.)
I
learned that when women relax, they get way too open to new ideas. When
our tour of the hotel ended with an explanation that we needed to sign
up for certain events, like that night's watercolor class, Lisa said,
"Yeah, let's sign up for that." She had forgotten that a spa is a giant
sarcasm vacuum. We took the class. It turns out you can actually convey
anger through watercolor. Though kicking your sister under the table
works better.
At dinner, I learned that, as I'd always suspected,
women hate themselves. Because in the perfect world they have set up,
the menu comes with calories listed next to every item. And those counts
were dangerously low. I, however, found that it was actually plenty of
food if I simply kept ordering things until I was full. I interpreted
the phrase "85 calories" to mean "order three."
As I headed
toward my huge, soft bed, I discovered on the pillow not a mint or a
chocolate but a weird little coaster with a painting of a woman with
short hair, long earrings, two suitcases and the words, "I am safe; it's
only change." This helps women sleep? It freaked me out. I couldn't
figure out what it meant. That women all secretly want to run away from
their husbands? Worse yet, do women want to cut off their hair?
The
next day, my mom and my sister woke me at 8 so we could get started on
our spreadsheet. This was when I began to realize how unfair the place
was. My mom and sister went off to do stuff like essential rose body
wraps and Japanese adzuki-bean treatments. I didn't want any spa
treatments since I can't understand the point of having someone touch me
and then not having sex with them. If there were an equivalent place
where men could wear robes and do all the stuff they wanted, it would be
shut down by the police and sprinkled with holy water. (See pictures of facial yoga.)
Later,
my mom took us to an aromatherapy class. I learned quite a bit during
the hour-long session. Did you know that you could make your own body
lotions with olive oil and essential oils? Or that inhaling lavender
essential oil directly, against the advice of your instructor, will not
cause you to pass out and escape the rest of the class?
That
night, my pillow offered a painting of a guy on a horse and the mantra,
"Life is simple and easy." Which freaked me out even more. Because what
it was really saying is that life is hard and complicated and then you
die, possibly on a horse.
The next day, while my mom and sister
got their eyebrows shaped and their makeup advised, I gingerly
approached the spa. I walked into the men's side and spent two hours
rotating between the sauna, hot tub and steam room. At some point during
all that, I saw the first two men that I had seen in three days. And I
saw a lot of them. The three of us said "Hi!" in fake, deep tones, each
wondering, to varying degrees of accuracy, if the other ones were gay. And I didn't care. My mind blanked; my body relaxed; I momentarily
understood why women come to places like this. Then I realized I was
just dehydrated.
Still, I slept well that night. Partly because
my pillow placard said, "I listen with love to my body's messages."
Which was to drive four miles to get a rack of baby back ribs.
