Facials! I don't mean the dirty kind!

I think I've had a facial maybe 1 other time and it was one of those deals where you go "Oh, whatever" and abandon yourself and 60 bucks to the hands of fate. Salons and day spas are such a crapshoot. You know that some strangers are going to touch you for a while and some shit's going to happen to you - but what? It is very like going to a whorehouse but for middle aged suburban ladies (as I'm sure many of you have noticed.)

So what happened to me in this huge fancy (yet cheap) new salon place in downtown Deadwood was that two women removed my socks and shoes and put me into a giant vibrating chair (see?) that also did percussion and kneading. They soaked my feet and hands. I thought the hand soaking bowls were nifty because they put smooth glass pebbles in them so your fingers don't get bored. There was painting, and dabbing, and massaging with about 6 different kinds of scrubby stuff and lotions. They did all the dabbing and pincering of cuticles and filing early on. They pointed at the autoclaving disinfecting thing to reassure me about how modern they are & that flesh eating bacteria will not rot my fingers off my bones because of their cuticular invasions. There was hot stone massage. I noted they took the hot stones out of a crockpot. The hot stones might have been the best part, but I also liked the HOT LOTION. Dang! Then, a rather elaborate french manicure which is pale pink or clear nails with white tips. I don't know how long thatall took. A long time.

I find that perhaps because language is a barrier, but perhaps also cultural difference of some kind, the Nail Salon ladies are alert to the slightest twitch and they overinterpret a bit. So, if you fidget, or scratch your nose, they assume no matter WHAT you say that you don't like what they were doing and they should switch. Alas. An exaggeration of the Curse of the Just Right, where someone is massaging you, and you say "OMG, just right, don't stop, keep doing exactly that" and they can't HELP doing it different. Also true for sex. You might have noticed this in your own life.

For the facial part I was led back into the bowels of the building where there were candles and more mysterious Stations for things to Happen and then into a small room with more candles and all sorts of big dentists' office looking machines. I was given a white cotton muumuu for purposes of neck and shoulder massage which made me feel nearly certain this would not be like my FIRST time I braved the "facial". When THAT happened oh, it was awful. If you look at my skin, which I recommend you don't, you will see I am acne-ridden, greasy, and dry-skinned all once. There are blackheads and whiteheads and sort of looming way underneath lurking incipient zits that cannot be stopped but are lined up on a zit conveyer belt waiting for their turn. So in the historic facial of days of yore, some lady whose language I did not speak *squeezed my zits* and sort of eviscerated them with a tiny post-hole digger. It was wildly painful. Afterwards my face was all raw. So anyway, THIS time was awesome. The dental machine turned out to be a high tech Vaporizer which gently puffed warm, perfect steamy air onto my face. A hot towel was wrapped around my head and then infinite strange hot faceclothings and more dabbing and scrubbing and face massage happened. IN between every stage I got hot towelled again. I lost count. First there was coarse grained scrubbing and then a towel. Then fine grained scrubbiness. Towel. Lotiony stuff. Towel. Tingly stuff. A sort of Mask thing which dried as I fell half asleep deliciously to some horrible new age flute music and a botched rendition on guitars of that one Satie piece that they always play in arty movies. Some shoulder and neck rubbing happened while I was lying there on my back with a warm fuzzy blanket over me. There was a point where there was tiny karate-chop percussive massaging all over my face, my sinuses, jaws, much better than you'd think.

So that was pretty awesome. My face does not feel or appear magically different -- the point is more the hour of face massage. I don't really care about the nail polish either (though it is rather splendid) since I will ruin it by tonight, but the good news on that front is whatever they use for polish does not asphyxiate me or them.

The bad part was they were flipping out the whole time about my crippledness (which they didn't the first time I went there! dammit!) and just could not grasp that I could walk okay. Like, I walked in. With my backpack and crutches. And they saw me walk a little without the crutches. But, they would grab onto my arms while I was walking, or try to lift me up sort of from a chair -- unbelieveable -- and I had to explain 5 times that no one had dropped me off, Yes I could drive, no I did not have a special car for handicapped people -- Yes I could work the pedals -- no, no one was coming to get me -- this from people who were looking at my feet and watching them move for an hour and a half and I repeat, who saw me walk in and walk around their salon. (My guess is that much like it was in China, Vietnam must not quite be there with popular awareness of ideas of independent living, despite some evidence to the contrary. I dealt with this as if quaaludes were my compass and anchor with a mild half-smile and eventually all the questions stopped as I dozed and sank into the awesome vibrating throne chair and let myself be buffed and squashed and oiled like a motherfucking empress of rome.

Rook drove to M4rin to pick up his mum from her spirituality Retreat & thence to the Assploratorium. They are on their way back. My plan is to feed them soup and hope to god my mom in law goes to bed early after her exhausting day. Armed with my 3 hours of hand, face, and foot massage and new age music I have another plan, which is, ANY time she brings up any crappy health thing or says anything that pisses me off I will Change the subject and ask her what her plan is for when she begins to lose mobility in her 4 story house that has stairs to get in the door, and also what she will do when she can't drive safely any more, and what her blood pressure is, and I will also regale her with stories about my mom's parents in their assisted living with expensive round the clock aides. That ought to fix her wagon. If that fails then I will remember some errands and leave for an hour or so.

I have worked on poety translator things, submitted 2 batches of poems to places, cooked, done laundry, on top of all that!

Comments

[crockpot lady]

yay, another use for the crockpot! I've never had a facial. I have a gift certificate to get one, but I'm scared that it will turn me too girly and then I'll want them all the time.

thank you for linking to me. I'm still totally buying you a pony.
xox
steph

[badgermama]

I made that awesome bread pudding and ATE IT ALL myself over the next few days for breakfast and dessert. I think yours is the first recipe blog that I have actually read and used. In fact I recall scoffing mightly with a hard heart during the 80s when home computers were new and sexist magazine articles were all full of "And women might use these newfangled Home Computers for ... RECIPES!" *ahem* 20 years later, a person does need to cook sometimes and the Internet is handy.

[Pretty Lady]

Wow, that sounds like the best possible physical therapy! You should get a prescription for it--two spa trips a week for the foreseeable future. I'm serious.

[vito excalibur]

So are you aware that right next to your headline "Facials! I don't mean the dirty kind!" is an ad for Nads Hair Removal?

I will be laughing for days. :)

[Rook]

Excellent! You braved the possibility of a facial again after the horrible last time, and it turned out good (modulo the bad parts).

I spoke to my mum rather severely about not bringing up health things during our trip.