Bikini Ready Yet?

The Naked Lady Spa

Previously Posted on Oct 6th 2011

If you’ve read Tuesday’s post you know I’ve been a little tense lately. I have what they call a Hollywood Hangover. After being honorarily discharged from work on a difficult show you question your very existence on this Earth, convinced everyone else is an alien or a carney. Sort of like after a week long bender of hard drugs in Vegas, it’s what Hunter S. Thompson must of felt like most of the time. This is bat country.

So when a friend of mine suggested I head down to the Asian Day Spa, I promptly made an appointment. It wasn’t until I was in the parking lot that I realized this place was so authentic it was actually in Koreatown and English wasn’t the first language of the establishment. I don’t even think it was the second language. In fact, the sign out front was in symbols so I just trusted my GPS had taken me to the right address.

I was so frazzled with my tinsel town migraine I didn’t question much. I approached the front desk behind a robust butch woman who inquired my attendance. Not really wanting to explain myself to another patron, I vaguely paraphrased: reality TV, producer, long hours, extremely tense, etc. She then launched into a self-pitch. She wanted me to get her on Sons Of Anarchy in all her bad dye job glory. If I knew someone on a hit scripted FX show, I wouldn’t be handing out supporting roles to women I meet in line at the naked lady spa. Please, I’d be whoring myself out for a position. I was so irritated, I quickly grabbed my key from the receptionist and averted eye contact before I could get a further explanation of all my appointment entailed. My mistake.

Like any Asian household, you take off your shoes, put them in a locker with the corresponding number of your key. Easy enough. Then you undress and put your clothes in another numbered locker. Then you enter the spa area where your robe and towel gets put into… you guessed it, a locker with your number. I was beginning to realize what I was reduced to. Just like in concentration camps, Broadway cattle call auditions, Big Ten Universities, or in line at the deli. #51.

For the next half hour while I waited for my number to be called, I “enjoyed” several dips of my choice, a sauna and steam room. In hindsight, opting for this adventure solo was a blessing. I could hide my modesty in autonomy. This is not a place of privacy. Lead by example, I let it all hang out with the rest of them. A shower is required before and after slipping even a toe into each tub. I didn’t notice any bathing police, but I turned a blind eye to my neighbor’s hygiene and tried not to look too closely at anyone’s crotch.

From the tea dip, to the hot dip, to the cold dip, to the sauna, back again with 8 showers in between, finally a wee little roly-poly Korean lady in a black bathing suit stood in the center of the tiled experience and shouted at the top of her lungs in her very best English, “fi-ty ooooooonnnnn.” She even had it written on a cue card, in case I couldn’t understand her, like a chauffeur at the airport. My ride had arrived.

She escorted me behind a short partition to a row of about six vinyl beds all of which had naked female figures limply eeking out the most pleasure  possible of a public massage.

First she washed me, scrubbed all my 2000 parts. I got the same feeling I get during a pedicure or a Brazilian waxing: what a world do we live in where I can pay a foreign stranger to do something so intimate for me? And why do they do a much better job than I can myself? I mean, I’ve had this body for 27 years, you’d think I’d be an expert at grooming it by now. Seriously, there was no messing around during this exfoliation, my body riding back and forth on loose skin. She really put some muscle behind it, it was like a football drill. After dousing me with buckets of water, she ordered me to take a shower and come back.

Standing up made me dizzy, and I had already took 36 showers while I was there, and she just cleaned me better than my own mother ever did, so I half-assed this rinse off. Whoops. She sent me back for another, like my dad would after a breath check when I only brushed with water, never trust a 4 year old. I took the second shower more seriously and was cleared to resume my posture on the table. Once more, a beached whale. Every once in a while I’d open an eye to stare across the rows of fleshy lumps and humps of my neighbors on the assembly line. My technician twisted and turned my limbs like a rag doll, barking at me to flip every few minutes. Not the best massage and facial I’ve ever had, but I’m not really one to be complaining about spa treatments when there are people out there without clean drinking water.

Wrapped in a clean warm robe, I spent the next 45 min lying on a heated jade floor. You need this type of meditation after the naked cold wet trauma of the bathing factory. Don’t get me wrong, my skin couldn’t have been smoother and I felt like a great heap of pudding. Perhaps the distress of the whole experience washed away my career bitterness for a bit, leaving me to solidly contemplate my own bathing rituals. Or maybe it’s just proof that you need to pay top dollar for someone to wash your ass crack in private. I guess I’m just not in that income bracket.

Go on… Hate me.

A genius or just blonde?

Posted Oct 4 2011

Every time I start a new job, or meet professionals, I sometimes feel my intellect is underestimated. People can be astounded when I give well-contrived multi-syllabic retort. Blown away by my outspoken basic logic. Simply floored when low and behold I have a more productive solution than the one they came up with.

I sport the blonde locks and have a pair of tits, but surely this isn’t an advertisement for a lower than average IQ. It’s got to be a misconception or I’m really a genius, turning the other cheek to the stupidity I’m surrounded by. I can’t tell if they’re just amazed I’m intelligent, or if they really just want to build my ego. It’s a weird paradox, and probably a gender thing.

I’m an independent contractor, two leanly toned guns for hire. I must adapt quickly to an array of personalities and lots of large egos. Most of these egos, male, and most of them wouldn’t know how to treat me even if there were pictorial directions on the back of my box. Seriously, I’ve had a director spend four weeks avoiding eye contact and I know he had successfully built an Ikea desk.

Don’t get me wrong, I play by their rules. I could write a textbook on acting like “one of the boys.” Sexual harassment? Please. The amount of philandering in the entertainment industry is more of a hazing ritual than a serious violation of employment code. Dick jokes, profanity, and the celebration of bodily functions is widely accepted and participated in by superiors. Manners have no place here. I call it “production mouth,” and you shouldn’t kiss your mother with it.

The first day is always a pissing contest. I usually stay quiet and let the bigger personalities measure their dicks over and over. When it comes to actually tackling an objective, that’s when I chime in. Work smarter not harder, right? Most women understand that, but men sometimes calculate worth in the quantity rather than quality. Did I say “sometimes?”  They rather a quick answer, a fix-it-later mentality. And I’m the genius for actually wanting to do it right the first time? They say, “wow, that’s smart.” It’s almost backhanded recognition. These are the same kids who would always forgot to put their name on the top of their paper in the 4^th grade.

There lies my struggle: do they really think I’m smart, or are they just surprised I’m smart? Or do they veil their defeat in surprise because they can’t admit that I, all woman of me, could be just plain better?

Sure, on a long enough time line my true value comes through and we are able to work as adults, but before that it’s an uncomfortable song and dance. You can’t dress too girly, or they get intimidated, you can’t dress too casual or they don’t take you seriously. You have to be quick witted, take a joke and give it right back in the same breath. Your sarcasm must be sharp and you have to be light hearted yet firm when a joke goes too far. You may reveal a sliver of your personal life to make a trusted connection, but once you do you should quickly change the subject to sports and never speak of it again.

It’s exhausting and insulting. Then they gasp when you prove your worth as though it comes as a shock to them that you have a brain, let alone it could be better then theirs. Boys. That age-old excuse, boys will be boys. If I could, I’d shove some of my own intelligence up their asses just so it would be a better work environment.

However, another colloquialism: Rome wasn’t built in a day, ladies.

Babies. WARNING: it’s cute… okay?

My Boobs Hurt

Previously posted: Oct 24, 2011

Ladies, back me up. Those few days when the PMS is at its peak: bloating, break-outs, mood-swings, cramps etc, it’s distracting. Like at any moment… red tide. It’s a scary time. Some gals get more of one symptom than another, we’re all different but the hormones are the same.

My body’s symptom of choice is the great swell and sore of the sweater puppies. Seriously, I look like a cartoon character days before my monthly visitor. Va-va-va-voom. If I weren’t so cranky it would be a great time to take my car into the shop. Crash test dummy right into these airbags. It’s the week I double up on sports bras at the gym and go for low impact exercises. I got to strap ‘em down or they will take over. Despite arousal from others elicited by these firm melons, I feel bloated and gross so the only touch I desire is a mammary massage. But if he can get off on that, be my guest.

But why do the hooters hurt so much? I know most things that swell up are also sore, side effect of inflammation. The question is: what are these hormones doing in there to cause the swelling like clockwork every time I have a bloody mary? So I did some research and I got some answers.

My best definition was found on Medline Plus, an internet service provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. I’m a fan. Here’s what I found:

“Breast tissue often feels dense [duh] causing a persistent sense of breast fullness [more than you know] with dull pain and tenderness [exactly, yes!]. During the menstrual cycle, estrogen production increases and peaks just prior to mid-cycle. This causes enlargement of the breast ducts [whoa there, the ducts are enlarging?]. Premenstrually, progesterone peaks near the 21st day (in a 28-day cycle) and causes growth of the breast lobules or milk glands [excuse me?]. Premenstrual breast tenderness and swelling probably occur to some degree in nearly all women. Symptoms severe enough to cause concern or limit function may occur in many women during their childbearing years [oh shit, that’s me, they even raised my insurance premium because of it]. The rate may be lower in women taking birth control pills [diaphragm all the way, bitches]. Risk factors may include family history, a high-fat diet, and too much caffeine [whoops].”

So there you have it, your jugs are just getting a work out in case a baby wants to happen. Do you think boobs get disappointed when they realize nothing was conceived? Like they look at each other and shrug, “All that work, Alice, month after month. She’s tricked us again. I know she’s doing the deed, I got the word from Mary down there.”

The other one keeps faith, “One of these days she’s gonna slip up and do something stupid. Just watch, Gayle. Then we’ll really be in business.”

Yeah, I just named my boobs Alice and Gayle. It’s fine. They are pretty awesome just as they are: working hard, or hardly working.

Beantown Folly

Because after all that… those runners, that city, probably needs a laugh, and a reason to run again.