#13 I went to the spa

t'was nice

Some startlingly beautiful street art, outside the spa. Because phones aren’t allowed.

The girls look beautiful. Everyone does. Painted by a luminescent softness. Like when you’re underwater and everything is paler, washed by the perfection of a transparent body. Taut stomachs and long legs. In that unabashed north side way there is pubic hair, untrimmed, dripping in wet tendrils from their black one pieces. Spaghetti straps and low backs. Like a uniform.

In each glance, a framed painting. A woman emerging from the mineral pool, her hair in a short ponytail. Two women cradle each other bodily on a marble step, their intimacy startling. A thumb grazing the soft curve of shoulder, over and over.

Once my skin begins to resemble scrunched tissue and my friend and I are burnt pink from the sauna, we move to what looks like an interior designer’s waiting room.
I smile at the littleness of everything (small cups of tea, miso almonds and dried apricots doled out with little tongs), the clean, quiet luxury of marble and gigantic indoor plants. Glossy and heavy headed. A honey skinned man perches on a slab of polished rock, a gold chain draped over his clavicle like a snake. His robed friend holds up a book, something by Rupi Kaur.

I lounge on a cream linen couch and read the first 5 pages of ‘Epicurious and the Art of Happiness’ by John Sellars (a little edition).  My hair is wrapped in a white towel, I am wearing a white robe.

At all times I am struck by the beauty of bodies, and I am only mildly aware of my own. My softness or paleness. The way my hair looks wet, or the way my figure looks on the side (like a piece of fettuccini).

I watch as a feline woman, impossibly beautiful, pours herself a thimble of tea. She has brought her own towel, which she has wrapped around her waist. It seems she has been here many times before.

I wonder where people are going to after this. To meet a friend for dinner, to bed, to study, to work. Snippets of conversation, “she said what?” and trickles of laughter, remind me we are all outraged by the same things. All find the same things funny. The near nakedness, the quiet intense conversation, a gentle smile offered in passing, “oh you go” as a small queue forms at the tea urn.
I’ve never loved people more.