Random thoughts from the Olympia Day Spa

My friend Barb and I recently decided we were going to make semi-regular trips to a local women’s day spa in Koreatown part of our commitment to lifelong health and well-being. We’ve been twice. In the narrow alcove of lockers, we leave behind our clothes and our contact lenses and begin our pilgrimage from tub to sauna to salt room to steam amidst the blurred and naked shapes of a slow and steady churning of women. Old women. Teenagers. Black, brown, pasty and pink women. Flabby and taut women. All diffused in my blindness against a backdrop of steam.

I was soaking in a tub of brown Angelica herbs kept at a good 108 degrees. It’s supposed to rid me of toxins, increase my circulation, heal me of any number of urban ailments. It holds three women comfortably. There were already four of us in there when a curvy, dark-skinned black woman began to enter the tub. No worries, I thought. We’d make room. And then we heard it, a loud and angry voice from out of the steam.

“No! You! Get out of the tub! You have to rinse first!” Everyone in the Angelica tub turned toward the jacuzzi beside us to see a German woman. I couldn’t make out a single feature of her face but her accent was quite clear. As she shouted we could sense her turning pinker. The curvy black woman turned and said calmly, “I rinsed when I got here.”

“No! No! You have to rinse every time. Between every tub! Go! Go!”

Barb and I and the ladies in Tub Angelica froze a bit and wished the German woman would act a little more, well, spa like. The black woman descended another step into the nettle-colored water and said, not softly, “I guess because I’m black I must be dirty.”

The German woman didn’t speak after that. I offered the black woman the space where I was sitting. It had the best jet. “No thanks,” she said, settling in, “I just like the herbs.”

As I moved onto the shower I couldn’t help but thinking that this whole urban day spa scene is only a few details removed from an episode of Orange is the New Black. Seriously. Swap out the teal robes for orange jumpsuits and lock us in there for a few days and I guarantee we’d start forming alliances, jockeying for privileges, messing with people’s loofahs. We’d be buddying up with the Korean masseusses in their sport bra and panty sets, brokering for contraband. Or, more likely, extra salt scrub and honey rubs.

Because that’s just how we are, women. Men. People. Which got me thinking about this whole notion of purifying ourselves and how limited an act that really is. Of course it’s a lovely and life-giving thing to have heat and herbs coax the sugar and additives and alcohol and pharmaceuticals and cortisol out of our bodies, to be sure. But what about the darkness in the human heart. Where are the herbs for that? I begin to wish for a way to purify ourselves from our own worst natures, from our meanness and smallness and anger. From our selfishness and righteousness and fear. What if there was a way to loofah the ugliness right off of our bodies? An Angelica soak that would take out not only earthly toxins, but the mother of all toxins: sin? Take three steps down into the murky water and leave your demons right there in the tub. Walk away clean. Walk away kind. Walk away with love and forgiveness as loose and easy as a breath of eucalyptus-scented steam.

If you find such a spa let me know. Until then, I’ll return each day——blind and aching——to the only water that has ever been known to purify anything, and give thanks to the God who promises to “make all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)

All are welcome. And you never have to rinse first.