Spatel

The old men at the Korean spa don't brush their teeth, they assault them. Armed with a disposable handout and a big squirt from the communal tubes of Crest they maul their mouths until they’re foam-faced and rabid. Sometimes they brush in the shower or pace back and forth in walking meditation, but mostly they sit at one of the low grooming stalls and have at it with abandon. This ritual can last five minutes or more, and when they're finally holding enough foam to frost a cake, they grab the hand shower and Niagara their kissers with a huge and steady gush, waterboarding themselves in the name of cleanliness.

They also like to get a good going over from the “scrub man,” a shirtless roughneck in shorts and showers shoes. He’s really puts it to them-- laying ‘em on the table, soaping ‘em up, scrubbing ‘em down and rinsing ‘em off with a hose. It has a slight livestock feel but in an appealing way. I always like it when the scrub man hunts down his next victim, poking his head in the steam room and calling out a locker number through the thick, hot fog.

This particular spa is interesting. It’s more Korean than the other K-town Spas, and very heterosexual, which not all of them are. I was in the steam room at Beverly Hot Springs last year when this gray-haired guy in his 50s started masturbating in front of me. Just sitting there yanking away, staring at me. To be honest with you, I wasn’t quite sure how to play it. I didn’t want to be like “how dare you” because I like to think of myself as pervert tolerant, but I wasn’t feeling it as either audience or participant, so I just got up and left. But not in a way as to shame him, I just stood, stretched a bit, made like I had steamed enough and moseyed out.

But nothing like that ever happens over here. This is straight-up cleanse and groom. They even have a barber shop with a real pole. The actual barber is a square headed hitman type with a mole on his cheek who has the worst combover I’ve ever seen. I’ve been thinking of asking him to trim my beard but every time I go past the door he scowls at me, so I chicken out. Today I peeked in there while he was cutting away. He’s got a big, multi-colored elementary school style map of the United Sates and two framed diplomas. Two! He didn’t just go to barber school. He went barber graduate school.

This particular spa is what they call a Spatel, meaning you can stay overnight in one of the upstairs cubbyholes, which are small partitioned wood platforms, each with a thin mattress and foam pad on top of that. It’s thirty-five bucks to spend the night but I think the shvitz and showers close at nine. Today I was up there for a little mid-day shluff (Yiddish for nap) and there were a few guys in deep hibernation, possibly still from last night. Each cubby has a wall socket so you can charge or porn or Instagram or whatever one gets up to on that little slab of evil the telephone has become. Everyone up here is dressed the same way—- one size fits all blue nylon shorts and oversize yellow t-shirts that they keeped stacked in a cupboard downstairs. There’s something very purgatorial about it. Like a foam pad Korean bardo. Even the tiny two-person elevator that brings you up has a Sartresque feeling, as if it were very slowly taking you somewhere you will never return from.

The second floor is also where the massages take place. I’ve only done it once, the old mother hen checking the key number on my wrist before assigning me one of four massage ladies she kept shielded behind her protectively. I won’t lie, the vibe was borderline bordello but as I said, this place is on the up and up, and has nothing to do one of those strip mall Thai massage joints of “happy ending” fame.

The masseuse she chose led me to one of the small back-rooms, which was a just a table, a waste basket, and a pole screwed into the ceiling for her to hold onto as she walked on me. She was an attractive Korean woman, probably in her 40s and wore blue surgical gloves, which gave the whole thing a slight biology class energy (clearly I was the frog). She started off with her surgical gloved hands, giving me a nice though antiseptic rub down, but then the she went full Wallenda, leaping up onto the table and grabbing the ceiling-anchored poll.

She had by far the strongest feet I have ever encountered, her lobster claw toes digging into my flesh with steam shovel force. Then she started to stomp on my back, mashing my chest into the table. Not wanting to be a soft white guy, I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her to go a little easier, but I did make a few key noises to give her a clue. A clue she showed no interest in following.

But I don’t go for the massage. I go for the steam and the cold plunge and because I love the theater of the Korean spa. The egalitarian truth of male nakedness, especially us older cats with our wayward flesh and roadmap scars. A man is never any more himself than when he's nude and bear-like, scrubbing away in a daze, pulling his ass apart and aiming the jets for paydirt, washing his balls with a soapy rag.

The old Korean men do the same with their bodies as they do with their mouths. Full on suds-nuts, they shammy away for ten minutes or more, merengueing themselves, frothing and frappeeing until they are five to six feet of whip cream and a dash of pubic hair. If they could walk through a drive-thru car wash they would, so vigorous a sanitizing do they desire.

I must confess I get a big kick out of looking at naked men. It's wonderful. I don't desire them, so it is pure amusement. I can watch for an hour and find it fascinating. Penises are funny, especially when they are not hard and not yours.