Published to FB Notes August 7 2018
Tonight I had plans for night karaoke with friends. Charlie wanted to pick up Audrey to play tennis. I decided I earned some “me” time and I would go to Happy Hour Karaoke at Brass Monkey.
I get there at 6 and they don’t have Happy Hour Karaoke on Mondays and karaoke starts at 8, so I decide to go to Natura Spa and practice some self care in the form of a scrub and massage.
I call to make and appointment and find out it’s FOREVER closed.
So I find me a place that I’ve never heard of because all the places that everyone goes to can’t take me now. (#thanksgroupon) I find a highly rated place on Yelp at some strip mall in K-Town and they can take me. It’s a bare bones operation that almost looks like an unfinished business still under massive construction and a place where your service should be followed by a tetanus shot. No one speaks English, beyond one or two instructive words delivered in a loud staccato. I WOULD HAVE TURNED AROUND AN LEFT IMMEDIATELY but everyone in the place, customers and workers alike, are luminescent Eommas, with radiant skin and bright tight faces. If it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for me. They look at me suspicious that my very presence means that tomorrow there will be Living Social and Groupon deals in every gentrifiers inbox tomorrow. I feel like shameful and hope that my expression reads “I won’t tell anyone about your secret.” (#iwanttobekoreansobad)
After paying, I’m ordered to shower and hot then cold tub. I still have my clothes on at this point, so I’m assuming that she wants me to get naked first. The hot tub is so hot and the cold tub is so cold that I get back in a shower to try to remember what normal feels like. There’s a fridge by the entrance to the spa area, which is right next to the showers and I see a woman in lace bra and panties (for those of you who have never Korean spa’d before, this means she is one of the women who works on the scrubbing service) go to the fridge and pull out a gigantic cucumber. I have to rub my eyes and look again because it seems so odd to have something so phallic in a room full of naked women. She takes the cucumber into the scrubbing area and I keep looking to see what she is doing with it. Her back is turned to me and I can’t see, but then suddenly she turns around, makes eye contact with me and motions me to come over and lie down. (This place is so small, everyone in the spa area is within eyesight of each other.) I shrug to myself and think…fuck it.
She has now scrubbed off so many layers of my epidermis, I am laying in a slithery mess of water and my own organic material that presents as balls of dark coloured tightly rolled dead skin. I close my eyes tight to forget about this because it’s gross and I’m grossed out at myself. Earlier, I took a Benadryl to keep my mosquito bites from itching so I am slipping in and out of consciousness and only woken because every once in a while she scrubs my mosquito bites and activates its itchiness. It is heaven and hell and I haven’t yet decided if I love it or hate it.
The massage starts, she dumps a cup of what can only be cooking oil all over me. I am legit worried that her massage is going to send me flying off this vinyl covered table I am laying on. She’s got latex gloves on during the massage and she’s massaging me so fast I can’t even use my moans to communicate to her “I like this, do this more.” A technique I use for my lover and masseuses alike. Her latex gloves and the oil makes it so there is no friction whatsoever and all it really feels like it someone is just shaking my entire body nonstop. I am using every muscle in my body to suction myself to the table so I can survive this ordeal. I am now more tense than when I started. I flipped over, miraculously not slipping off the table and taking everyone out like bowling pins in the process, and laid on my back. Without warning she dumps a wet mash of disintegrated cucumber on my face, (if you introduce a cucumber in act one.) Like all over my face, with only the smallest opening left uncovered for my nostrils. I AM HAVING A STRAIGHT PANIC ATTACK BECAUSE I HAVE CONVINCED MYSELF I CANNOT BREATHE. The only thing that is keeping me from causing a scene is all the other women here who have already identified me as an interloper and I’m mortified at the thought of embarrassing myself. The thought of just getting through this cucumber mask without embarrassing myself is the vision I use to calm me. When I regain my senses I realize she is massaging my boobs. I swear to God, I don’t know anyone who has had as many non-consenting boob massages as me. I really don’t care. I’ve had so many people handling my breasts between LCs and Mammogram radiologists and my child, it’s not even sexual to me anymore. It’s like me getting upset about her massaging my leg. Anyway, she’s not even trying to be slick about the breast massage, she’s full on in there like she’s identified my breasts as the main source of all my tension and is full on #tuneintokyo-ing me.
Then she violently washes my hair and gently removes the cucumber mask, I’d have preferred it the other way around. When she’s done she sits me up and tells me I’m done. Then points to the shower like “You can go now.”
Is this my review for Is this my review for Daengki Spa? Sure, let’s call it that. But let’s also call it a long winded way to say, I don’t usually believe in this Mercury Retrograde shit, but I might be coming around.
TLDR REVIEW:
Solid body scrub.
Valet is $2.
PASS on the massage with or without the breast job.
Towels were weak sauce.
Steam room was Steamy AF.
BYO flip-flops.
For the price, I’d probably go somewhere else. $70 (+$20 tip, Total $93 — with valet) for a 90min scrub and massage.
The search for a Natura replacement continues.
