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I went to the spa and this time I was prepared for "The Scrubber." Please refer to entry Do You Have a Vacancy for a Back scrubber [12-12-02]. "The Scrubber" is a man about my age, my height, a lot like me but with a buzz, a permanent swagger, and about 25 more pounds of lean muscle mass. He's not huge, not Schwarzenager. No, he's Asian-buff: definition, not mass. The "Scrubber" has undoubtedly gained his muscular definition by working at the spa as a body scrubber, frightening the dirt off of people. You'll understand as I explain my experience of what he does and why I felt, by previously watching him work, that personally experiencing a "scrub" was an absolute necessity sometime before I left K-town. In the spa, "The Scrubber" is easy to find; he's the only one in the joint with a stitch of clothing on [swimming trunks]. I walked up to the scrubber, handed him the 11,000 Won (about 9 bucks), and pointed to the sign that said "Body Scrubbing, 11,000 Won," in both Korean and English. He stood there, quiet, holding my money for a full five seconds before he pointed again to the sign and motioned, "eh?", wondering if I knew what I was getting myself into. I nodded affirmatively. To this he grinned wide and slapped the table indicating for me to jump up. The gauntlet was thrown. "The Scrubber" immediately went to work. As I was positioning myself, face-up, on his table, "The Scrubber" began quickly and tightly to wrap, slap, and fit his hand with a towel, followed by what felt like 100-grit sandpaper. And, without a word of caution, he began to work. The next fifteen minutes was sheer torture. He began, on my right leg, to scrub and exfoliate with quick, mono-directional strokes. He followed the right leg with the left, then the chest, arms and neck. I was positive that he was drawing drawn blood. "Good," I thought, "at least blood would sort of lubricate the scrub." His job is to hurt people. Well, not really, just those parts with nerve endings. He continued to scrub. After he'd scrubbed the front side, he gave an untranslatable grunt which meant, I'd learned from previously wathing other victims, "turn on your side, worm, and get what's coming to you!" While I was obsequiously obeying his every command, he was busy quickly tightening and adjusting his mit of pain, slapping it a few times with his other hand to get back into the spirit of the whole thing. He scrubbed my armpits and sides, scrubbed them raw. The minutes crawled along. I thought it would never end. But, oh! the CULTURE! Another grunt and I was on my stomach getting the skin sanded off my back. Until now it had felt like 10 minutes of continuous rug burns. Finally, he removed his sandpaper mit of pain. That's when, the slapping began. Somewhere in his 25 years of life, he must have spent time in Africa among indigenous tribes because he began furiously slapping my back with amazingly complex and syncopated rhythms, accenting certain blows with deafening pops. He kept great time. His slapping finale was a series of motions that he did, aligning my vertebrae with his knuckles then slapping them again, probably to give another reason to align them again. Align. Slap. Align. Slap. I can't, for the life of me, remember whether he ended on an alignment or a slapping. My back's felt great ever since so it must have been an aligning. After the slap fest, he grabbed a wet towel and circularly rubbed it over a bucket fit with a large round ball of lathering soap.It strongly resembled an enormeous stick of roll-on deoderant. The towel covered in lather, he preceded to lather me. I assure you that after 15 minutes of sanding and slapping, this lathering felt like silk's smoother sister on my skin. This was the runner's high after a marathon, the meditation the yoga, the dessert after the meatloaf. THIS was worth the 11,000 Won. THIS was the mystery that goaded me into getting a scrubed. Then with one last final slap, he shouted, "shower!," (a deviation from his usual scrip--normally Korean. After all, I was probably his only non-Korean customer, ever). I jumped up, pinker than the day I was born, partly from the scrub and partly from the embarrassment of being spanked within an inch of my life. I hit the shower but not before turning to give him a thank-you bow. There I was,covered only in a thick marshmelow froth, tears of pain glinting in the corner of my eyes, bowing with the only dressed man in the spa, Bruce Lee's ripped little brother. He smiled wide and bowed back. Later, as I was leaving the spa, I saw him again. He was very nice to me and saluted me with another bow. I was pleased by his gesture and did the same. Hey, we shared something special together: pain. My Scrub [2003-01-09]
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