Yesterday morning on public radio I heard again that Los Angeles has more ethnic diversity than any other place in the U.S., and is home to more Asian cultures than any other one place. This wasn’t news, but I took greater note because I was about to spend half the day in Koreatown.
A few weeks ago, a friend I hadn’t seen in eight years sent me a very nice message on Facebook. We’d fallen out of touch, but he was writing to thank me for some career direction I’d given him 10 years ago, from which he’d been able to build a career. (And, also, for giving him a copy of The Enchiridion of Epictetus when he was severely depressed. So I guess I’m not the only one who finds it inspirational.) He wanted to know if we could get together so he could thank me personally, and he suggested a “legitimate Korean Spa.” Now, I’ve heard about Korean Spas, but I hadn’t been to one. I was definitely interested in trying this, and desperately needed a massage, so we agreed to meet yesterday at 4:30 in Koreatown for dinner and then our spa visit.
If you’re a white American and have ever wondered what it might feel like to be a minority, I recommend trying out the experience. At various times in my life, I’ve been the only new wave guy in a punk bar (shades of The Who’s “Quadrophenia”); the only white guy in a blues club in downtown Atlanta; the only white guy eating at a barbecue place back in the woods in Arkansas; and yesterday my friend Raul and I were the only two non-Koreans at the restaurant Kam Dang. And Raul is from Ecuador, so I was the only white guy. The staff spoke a little Engrish or none at all, the menus were in Korean with the occasional bit of Engrish attempted translation, and the photos of the food were no help at all — I still couldn’t make out what any of it was. Eventually, I sussed out that one thing was pork bellies in what looked like a spicy paste and the thing near it was scallops, so we ordered one each of those. Those entrees came — cooked at our table, Korean-style — accompanied by the traditional multitude of little serving bowls of who-knows-what. Here, look for yourself and tell me what any of this is:
Appearances can be deceiving. The thing lower-left that looks like a large piece of pasta in a marinara sauce turned out to be some flat celery-like thing. The swampy looking thing at 2 o’clock of that is bean curd. Above that is something with potatoes and raisins; the things in the dish to the right of that that look like ears were kind of sweet and kind of spicy and I have zero idea what they were; and so forth. If you can identify the miso soup, you win the prize, because that’s all I was able to recognize at first too. See the orange shreds that look like carrots in the dish on the middle left? Those are, somehow, pieces of fish. Fish spines? No idea. But I ate them. In fact, I ate my share of all of it, never knowing what any of it was, and it was all delicious. While eating it, I flashed back on the episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” where Will Riker eats Klingon food with gusto — except Riker had the advantage of knowing what everything was. Without knowing what anything was, neither of us knew how to eat it. See the little bowl of clumpy liquid next to the bean curd? That’s a dipping sauce — but what’s it for? Knowing the proper use of a condiment is important — you don’t put ketchup in coffee — but without a frame of reference, we were stumped. Finally our server impart by sign language that the grilled scallops and the mushroom caps with them should be dipped in that stuff. And that was delicious too. We downed it all with the Korean beer Hite, which I hadn’t had before and which indeed tasted too much like Budweiser, and then we were presented with little cups of what I assumed would be hot tea. No. It was cold, with rice, ginger, and sugar in it, and that too was delicious. The last time I’d eaten Korean food was more than 10 years ago and I hadn’t liked it, but I thought all of this was fantastic. Even though I didn’t know what almost any of it was.
Then we crossed the street and went to Century Day Spa.
I’ve been to spas before. I hadn’t been to one this big or this elaborate. (If you’d like to see what it looks like inside, here’s their bizarre website.) There’s a coed area, and also separate areas for men and for women for the completely naked spa experience. There’s a cold jacuzzi pool, a hot jacuzzi pool, a hot hot jacuzzi pool, and a melting your flesh off hot jacuzzi pool. I tried all of them. The latter was so hot that at first I wasn’t sure I was feeling anything, anywhere, or ever would again. Some years ago, there was a comic book where Wolverine was thrust too close to the sun and melted into nothingness — except for his eyes, which, given his healing factor, allowed him to regenerate. Now I knew how he felt. There was a hot sauna, a steam sauna, a dry sauna, a clay sauna, and other varieties, as well as traditional showers, plunging ice-cold showers, outdoor naked rest areas, and on and on. I tried all of these things, but what I really wanted, what I really needed, was that massage. So I booked a masseuse for 7:30. Promptly at 7:30, re-showered and now robed, I ascended to the second floor for my massage.
I have had massages before, but just as I’ve had food before but not quite the kind of food I had yesterday, this massage was unlike anything I’d ever had. It was awesome, peculiar, and terrifying. Over the course of 70 minutes, this attractive but powerful woman walked all over my spinal column, punched my feet, rearranged my internal organs with her fingertips, stepped on my hands, massaged my nose, kneed me in the sides, popped my fingers out of their sockets, and kneaded my buttocks with her feet. There were moments when I was waiting for my entire skeletal structure to collapse at once like an old hotel getting implosion demolition. Through it all, she said only one thing, and that was early on: “Oh. You so tiiiiiiiiigh!” (Translation: “You’re so tight.”) The rest of the time, she went about her work completely unseen by me as I lay either face-down or with my eyes covered, wondering desperately what she was going to do next while she either sucked on her tongue or some strange Korean candy that can last 70 minutes, because otherwise the odd sounds from her were inexplicable. When it was over, after she’d stabbed my cranium again with her fingers and ground her elbows into my scapulae, my dazed confusion was obvious. I didn’t know who I was or where I was or if I’d ever again lead a normal life. I did tell her I wanted to tip her — any stress I may have had was surely gone now, because now I could feel nothing, so I figured: mission accomplished — and she gave me a tip envelope.
No, I couldn’t read that name either. I asked her her name. What she said sounded like “Jan” or “Koi,” which I know don’t sound like each other, but there it is.
I left her to go down to the locker room principally because I wanted to see what I looked like in the mirror, much like a burn victim getting the facial bandages removed. My face didn’t feel right, so I could only imagine what I looked like. Raul saw me coming down and said, “Your hair!” I got in front of a mirror and saw that I looked pretty much like this:
I went downstairs and did the entire sauna, etc. circuit again and then drove home with the top down, feeling 20 pounds of anxiety lighter. Now it’s a day later and I’m still feeling remarkably stress-free. And all of the sensation has returned to my body, which is also good. I’m eager to go back for more fine unidentified food and scary stress-reducing — and also to further explore whatever other cultures are right near me that I haven’t spent enough time with.
