Danny ChaiOn Sunday, for the first time in my life, I went to a Korean bathhouse.
Some background. For some reason, after the New York trip, my skin was really dry. I was putting on lotion and Jieun looked and remarked that there’s too much dead skin for the lotion to do any good; it was so bad it was scaly. What I needed was a good ddehmiri, a scrubbing, at a Korean spa. And I thought about it, and agreed. So I decided to go to Lawrence Sauna in Santa Clara, the local Korean spa.
Jieun has written about her experience at this place before, and you should read her traumatic account. I highly disrecommend anyone going if you’re at all uncomfortable with nudity. The spa consists of a locker room, two sauna rooms (wet and dry), a spa room with a large warm bath, a hot bath, and a cold bath, and, oddly, a TV room. Throughout, buck naked people (separate facilities by gender). They give you towels, but they’re tiny ones, not big enough to wrap around your waist, and no one bothers covering up.
I more highly disrecommend getting the scrub if you’re at all shy about your body. It’s not like a Western-style massage where they use towels to discreetly cover critical areas. The only towel they used was a small cold towel they placed over my eyes, which was kind of odd; my eyes were not my concern. So yeah, you lie there buck naked, alternately on your front and back, while they use a rough scrubber to scrub pretty much every inch of your body. And it gets intimate too. Like, moving the kibbles to get at the bits intimate. At some point (that point probably being near the butthole, I kid you not), I just had to laugh at the absurdity.
I also disrecommend the scrub if you’re uncomfortable with pain. The scrubbing hurts. If you have even a single pain receptor anywhere on your epidermis, they will find it, and it will hurt. The scrubber is really rough, and they scrub hard.
As for me, I enjoyed it. I don’t know when I got over the being embarrassed naked thing, but yeah, I’m OK with it, as long as I don’t know anyone there. A lot of people seemed to come in groups though. And there were like families, dads bringing their sons. I’m not sure I could ever have done or do that with my dad or potential son. But yeah, when you don’t know anyone, it’s just like a locker room.
The scrubbing was kind of over the top but I’ll be darned if I didn’t feel great afterwards. Like I had a great massage and had been given fresh skin all at once. Afterwards, I put on a robe and sat on a recliner in the TV room and watched the end of the Giants-Cowboys game. It was all extremely relaxing.
So yeah, I don’t think I could make it a regular thing, but I think I would go again.
SN. I had been asking people at church if they would go. In retrospect, it probably would have been really awkward so I’m glad everyone (emphatically) declined. But my thing is, my Korean sucks, and I wanted a liaison, like Jieun is for me most of the time. In the end, Jieun suggested I say I’m Chinese, and I’m ashamed to say that I did. Problem – the scrubber was a Korean-Chinese. Whoops. As soon as I said that, he busted out fluent Chinese, I think he tried both Mandarin and Cantonese. I just lamely added to my lie by saying I’m an American Chinese who doesn’t speak Chinese at all. The shame.
SSN. He asked if I’m married to a Korean. I said yes. (This is all while I’m lying face-up, buck-naked on his table.) He said, Korean women no good. I said, you prefer Chinese? He said, no, they’re terrible also. You need a Japanese woman. A Korean-Chinese who prefers Japanese women. Grass is always greener, I guess.