Fiction - The Phantom Solace

NOTE: this post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

What follows is a work of fiction, my second short story on albertnet. All the “work of fiction” disclaimers apply here. None of the places mentioned, words spoken, feelings felt, or themes explored in this post actually exist. Even the language used is my own contrivance. Okay, kidding aside, any resemblance of any character to any actual human, living or dead, is purely whimsical and/or jocular. The central plot elements of this story and actions taken by its characters are not to be construed as fact.

The Phantom Solace

Jose

I couldn’t believe this was happening, but here I was stuck in stop-and-go Father’s Day traffic, late for work. I’m not a father and I don’t watch Nascar but I should have known the two things would combine to make my life hell. All around me were crazy clean cars, like the idea of a perfect day for these dads would be washing the car, Armor-alling the tires, then heading out to watch Nascar. And because of this, I’d probably lose my job.

Losing my job would be bad enough, but I can’t take another lecture from Diekhoff. First it was about the shaved head, then about the tat, then about the chin stud, as if all these spa dudes really want to be taken care of by Doogie fucking Howser. He told me one more screw-up and I’m gone. This would be that screw-up—being late to work because I had to sit for twenty minutes behind a giant Ford Expedition with the whole rear window painted like an American flag.

So when I got to Wilkenson’s, twenty minutes late, I couldn’t bear to go in, and just sat in my car listening to the engine tick as it cooled off. After a minute or two this sweet Jaguar convertible rolled up and parked right next to me. The driver looked rich as hell, not just the car but nice shades, expensive shirt, and good looks. Why would he be slumming it here? And yet, here he was, and looking stressed. Maybe, just maybe, this was my twelve-o’-clock spa appointment, and was running as late as I was, and nobody would have to know I kept a customer waiting.

Pierce

I was in Calistoga promoting my winery. Not really my winery—I don’t know a thing about making wine—but the winery I have a financial stake in. When I first got into this, I thought I was just an investor, putting some money into a solid business, but of course it morphed into the typical celebrity scheme: using my movie fame to promote a totally unrelated product. Go to that well too many times and all you end up with is a trashed name. Paul Newman can get away with it—his films are so well respected he’d never run the risk of being remembered as the salad dressing guy—but I have the sneaking feeling my advisors are steering me away from acting, figuring it’s a better bet to gradually draw down my very finite stores of celebrity.

So, Calistoga. I was here to attend the grand opening of a tasting room right on Lincoln Ave. When I got roped into this I thought it would be a little ceremony among the stakeholders but if course it turned out to be this “grand opening.” The very phrase repulses me—it’s something you use for an auto mall or kids’ pizza place. And then, taking a walk when I arrived here yesterday evening, I saw they’d put a giant framed picture of me right in the window. It’s a terrible picture—I’m trying to look clever and cheeky and can’t even get that right, and might as well be wearing a goddamn bow tie like Roger Moore. The whole affair is just painful, like the idea that people should drink this wine because a big movie star is a financial backer.

On my way to the grand opening today, just a few blocks from the place, I completely lost my resolve and swung off the road into the first parking lot I saw. No sooner had I pulled up and stopped then this young guy with a shaved head jumped out of his ratty old car parked next to me. He asked me, “Hey, did you just get here for a spa appointment?”

He obviously didn’t recognize me. I was strangely impressed by this. But a spa appointment? I’d thought this was the parking lot of a motel, but checking out the sign now I realized it was actually a motel and spa. I looked the guy over. He was a wiry little man, but looked strong, wore a thin white t-shirt over a tight tank-top. I’m pretty sure he was Hispanic but so many Californians still get dark tans—just like in Hawaii—it’s not always easy to tell. He was really jumpy, seemed really upset about something. I told him no, I wasn’t there for a spa appointment.

He looked crushed. “Dammit, I’m really screwed now,” he said. “I’m super late. My boss is going to fire me. No, worse, I’m going to have to work through the end of my shift, and then he’s going to lecture me, and then he’s going to fire me. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I can’t take this.” He whacked the top of his car and said, “Fuck it, I can’t take another lecture. I’m gonna have to no-call/no-show.”

He wasn’t really talking to me, but I was intrigued. “Excuse me, but what did you just say?” I asked. He looked startled, like he’d forgotten I was there, and then said, “I said I’m gonna have to no-call/no-show.” I asked what that meant. “It means I’m not going to show up to work, and I’m not even going to call and tell them. That way I’m sure to get fired and I’ll never have to talk to anyone there again.”

My god, what a brilliant idea. Just to walk away, leave it all behind. Could I do that? Well, why the hell not? If this kid can seize his freedom that way, surely I could too, couldn’t I? I wouldn’t even suffer the same consequences. I’m sure everybody would run around and rearrange things to smooth it all over with me, and that would be annoying, but those first few hours of a no-call/no-show would be even better than a spa. And suddenly I had an inspiration.

I asked the kid, “How long does a spa treatment normally take?” He thought for a second and said, “Depends on what you get. The guy this afternoon is doing The Works with a half-hour massage, so about two hours.” I asked him if he went in through the lobby, or what. He smirked and said, “What, you think I’d scare the ladies or something? Huh. Well, I do go in the back so I don’t track mud on the carpet.” I said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Take these”—I handed him my sunglasses—“and we’ll trade keys. You take my car, and hell, I’ll give you a couple hundred bucks, and you go take a break. Have a nice lunch, go for a drive, whatever. And I’ll cover your shift. Anything goes wrong, I’ll deal with it. Leave the car across the street, maybe a few blocks down. Don’t steal the car or you’ll just make real trouble for yourself. Leave the keys behind the front left tire. Oh, and leave my sunglasses in the glove box.”

The kid laughed out loud. “You think you can do my job?” he asked. I shrugged and replied, “So what if I bugger it up completely? How’s that worse than a no-call/no-show?” He stared at me, a grin forming throughout his face, trying to decide if I was serious. He put on my sunglasses. The tortoiseshell looked good with his skin tone but the look was of course completely off; nobody that young wears Persols. The effect was just right: a totally unconvincing disguise. He looked at his reflection in the window of his car and chuckled. I pulled out my wallet, took out a couple hundreds, and held it out to him. He hesitated, eyeing the bills in my outstretched hand. “Come on,” I said, “when are you going to get a chance like this?”

Dana

The traffic on Highway 37 was totally heinous. There was a billboard about a big Father’s Day NASCAR race and I thought that was the problem: all these dads celebrating by watching NASCAR. Even in the Bay Area, that did make more sense than dads going to get mud baths and massages. I thought I’d miss my spa appointment completely, but after the exit for the fairgrounds—which got really bad—it eased up. Even so, I was fully half an hour late getting to Wilkenson’s. I had the family drop me off and ran on in. The woman behind the counter shook her head and did one of those backwards inhaling-type sighs and said she thought they could still fit me in. She gestured to the door leading to the men’s bath house and said, “Just go through there, and Jose will take care of you.” She was frowning, though, as she peered towards the door.

I went inside. There was a little dressing room with wooden lockers to my right, then a long hallway with curtained massage rooms off of that. At the end was the mud bath room, and a tall man was standing there. “Just, ah, put your clothes in the locker and grab a robe,” he called out. Two things struck me right away. First, nobody calls out in these spas. Everybody knows to just whisper, to preserve the rarefied, enchanted feel of the place. I’d have expected him to walk out to me and greet me. The other thing that surprised me was that he spoke with a thick Irish brogue. I mean, how many spa valets named Jose speak in a thick Irish brogue?

I undressed, donned my robe, and strolled down toward the mud room. Had I heard the valet’s name right? Sure enough, on a chair at the end of the hall was a handwritten sign—“Jose ‘The Mud Guy’”—and a few tip envelopes labeled “Jose.” In the mud room I saw a tall man with thick dark hair, just starting to go grey, meticulously styled. He was wearing a short-sleeve linen shirt, casual but very elegant, and khakis rolled up at the ankle. He was barefoot. He stood at one of the large, blocky concrete bathtubs of mud, dragging a shovel across the mud to rough it up. He turned to face me, and gave me a little nod, and I got a strong shock of recognition. He looked exactly like Pierce Brosnan.

He finished stirring the mud and leaned the shovel against the wall. It started to tip over and slide down the wall, and he caught it. He frowned and took it over to a corner and set it there. Then he came back and looked at me uncertainly. “Okay, then. Ah … first, you take a shower,” he said. I tried not to stare. Finally I had to ask: “Are you … are you Pierce Brosnan?”

A pause. “The name’s Bond,” he said. “James Bond.” Then he winked, and with that wink I knew this wasn’t just a lookalike, but the real actor, in the flesh. It was that rare eyelid-only wink, as opposed to the kind most people do where the whole side of the face crinkles up. No mere mortal has that facial fluidity, that practiced charm. I didn’t know what else to do, so I hung up my robe and stepped into the shower. Soon enough he had the water going, and after a brief rinse I stepped out to where he was waiting by the mud tub. “Step on in there,” he said. “Lower yourself in, wiggle yourself down then.”

I squished myself down into the hot, vaguely sulfur-scented mud. It was coarser and lumpier mud than I’d bathed in last time, and the tub was shorter, but as always I enjoyed the delicious sensation of having absolutely neutral buoyancy. Soon my limbs and hands were completely buried, and Brosnan—Pierce Brosnan!— scooped more mud up to completely cover my chest. He thumped it down and said, “There we go now. Enjoy.” I lay there and pondered my situation. What possible explanation could there be? But soon the heat and ooze of the mud made me sleepy and, like Alice on her downward plunge, blithely accepting the shelves of knickknacks lining the rabbit-hole, I decided just to roll with it. What’s not to like about having a famous actor be my personal valet for awhile?

I closed my eyes and let my mind drift, taking in the soothing rumble of the machinery, the low, anodyne spa music (halfway between elevator music and what New Age musicians play at street fairs), the stillness of the room. After a few minutes, I felt something against my cheek. “This is a mask,” Brosnan said quietly. At first I pictured a Greek theatre tragedy mask—nothing would have seemed odd at this point—but quickly realized he meant a facial mask for cleansing my pores and whatnot. But he didn’t spread it all over my face; he dabbed it on my nose and then spread it on my cheeks in thick lines, starting near the nose and going outward. He did three of these on each cheek, then disappeared for a moment and returned.

“Here,” he said. I opened my eyes. He was holding out a hand mirror, like the barber does when he invites you to check out your new haircut from the back. I pulled my right arm slowly from the mud—it make a loud sucking sound like when you pull your shoe out of a thick mud puddle—and took the mirror. I examined my reflection. My face was painted to look like a cat’s.

“How does it look?” Brosnan asked. I said it looked just fine. I handed him back the mirror, then closed my eyes again. I sensed him leave again, and when he returned he placed something cool on each of my eyelids. “These are cucumbers,” he said, a light note of wonder in his voice, as though he were remarking on this fact to himself. I wiggled down further into the mud, and then heard something being dragged across the floor.

“You know, I could really use a spa treatment myself,” Brosnan said. I gathered that he’d pulled up a stool and sat down right next to me. “I’ve been under a lot of stress. Not pressing stuff, but … more a gradual accumulation of things. Kind of a, ah, minor crisis of identity you could say. Nothing I can quite put my finger on, but a general sense of dissatisfaction.” He paused. “Since nobody would believe you anyway about me being your spa attendant, I might just get a few things off my chest, if you don’t mind.”

I slowly gave a very small nod, not wanting to disrupt my cucumber slices. Brosnan sighed deeply, then said, “That ‘Mama Mia’ movie took a real toll. My god, what an embarrassment. I really hope you didn’t see it. I hope nobody saw it. My agent really felt it was the best way to get some distance from the Bond character. Which I gather it did, but my God, what a disgrace. I don’t know how or why I let myself get sucked into that. It was a humiliating experience. You know what they called me on the set? ‘Colonel Chunky.’ I couldn’t even get their respect! I’ll probably never get a good role again after that travesty. What an ass I was in that! So now I’m working on a goddamn sequel, to the ‘Crown Affair’ movie.

“Not that ‘Crown’ was a bad movie. I have some great memories of that, those were some good times. Now, Rene Russo”—he sucked in his breath—“that is one gorgeous woman. It made me nervous, like a bloody teenager, just being with her on the set. But a sequel? Is this all I have to show for my life—recycling my old roles, one version of secret agent after another, trying to recapture my prime, when it’s hard enough just holding my looks together? I turned fifty-seven this year. Christ.”

He was silent for a time. “But you know, the truth of it is, I’d have gladly done more Bond pictures, before Daniel Craig took over, if only they’d given me some better scripts. I gave up on Bond because the last film I did was pure shite. I was driving a stupid car around by remote control, and then Craig gets to beat the crap out of people. Why didn’t I get ‘Casino Royale’? Why didn’t I get the revamped franchise, the return to decent, basic plots?

“There was a scene in ‘Casino Royale’ that was pure genius. Some rich gobshite mistakes Bond for a valet parking guy and throws him his keys. Bond takes advantage of it—now he can get into the resort, and once he’s in he deliberately crashes the car in the parking lot, thereby getting back at the rich gobshite while luring all the security people away from their posts so he can infiltrate their office and steal the surveillance tapes. Brilliant scene, such a clever, efficient Bond. Why couldn’t I get that kind of movie?

“It’s not because of my age. Roger Moore was older than Sean Connery; he was fifty-eight when he did his last Bond. The writers could have played with the age thing, like with Connery’s Bond in his last one. He tells Moneypenny, ‘I’m to eliminate free radicals,’ but doesn’t mention those were orders from his doctor. Great line, that.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess I should let you get to your mud bath,” he said. I’d have liked to hear more, but didn’t want to ask. As it was, I felt like an eavesdropper. So I just lay there and enjoyed the sensation of neither sinking nor floating, and having tiny air bubbles, trapped in arm and leg hairs, creep along my skin before making a slow dash for the surface. I felt a bead of sweat slide against my cheek until it hit my facial-mud cat whisker.

Time passed. Much more time than I’ve ever spent in a mud bath. In fact, I was being gradually poached alive. Finally Brosnan’s voice said, “Okay, come on out.” He wasn’t doing bad as spa attendant, but I did note various minor breaches of protocol. For example, he was supposed to give me needless instructions about how to pull myself out of the mud, and to caution me about moving slowly (lest I faint away from the sudden shift in temperature). I wondered if he would learn the ropes over time, or if this was a one-shot deal.

He gestured toward the shower. This time he had the water running in advance—see, he was learning!—and I began the labor of excavating the mud from my body. Wilkenson’s has peaty, tufty, almost crumbly mud that really lodges in the hairs. My thoughts rambled: something about a spa treatment really sets the mind wandering, and Brosnan’s soliloquy had only enhanced this. I pondered how much of his own hygiene he still has to do. Surely nobody outsources the removal of caked mud from his armpits?

I stepped out of the shower. Brosnan looked me over with the frank, appraising eye of a tailor. “What happened to you?” he asked. Puzzled, I didn’t reply. “Your physique,” he went on. “You look like you’ve got the frame of a much larger man.” I suppose I could have felt hurt—he’d just commented at how rail-thin I am—but I was actually flattered. Pierce Brosnan, no less, had just called me a man! I’ve never felt like I made it past “guy.” True, I’ve passed forty, and my hairline is making a slow retreat as my scalp gradually surrenders to age—but I still feel like just a guy. “I’m a cyclist,” I explained. Brosnan give a little nod—a slight lift of the chin.

Next he led me to the mineral bath. It was a basic bathtub, and for bubbles had a perforated mat in it, with a little bubble-making machine at one end, a vacuum-cleaner tube coming up out of the water. I climbed into the tub. It wasn’t quite long enough, so my knees stuck out the top, the left one brushing against the bubbler hose. “You know, over at Solage they have proper tubs. I’d say you have in inch or two on me and I wouldn’t settle for this,” he said. “Economic downturn, eh? Let me get you some water.”

When he returned I’d already closed my eyes, and now I felt something cold on my forehead. He’d balanced the cup of water there. I took a drink and set it carefully back on my head. I felt very poised, like a girl walking with a book on her head to improve her posture. What a brilliant idea, I thought. My spa had become a validation of my health and balance.

Eventually Brosnan returned and summoned me from the bath. I climbed out. “So … I suppose you have your massage now?” he said, looking decidedly uneasy. “No,” I replied, “first there’s the towel wrap. I inclined my head toward the little curtained cubicles off the hallway where the towel wrap beds were. “Ah, of course,” he replied, leading me to one. I lay down on the huge white towel. There was a brief awkward moment—me naked, he a famous movie star—before he asked, “So I just wrap you in the towel then, and that’s it?” I nodded. “Seems kind of pointless,” he said. I replied, “Yes, it’s completely pointless, which is what I love about it.” He thought for a moment and said, “Right. Yes. We’ll wrap you up then.” He swaddled me in the towel, gave me a little pat, and left the cubicle, closing the curtain behind him.

Pierce

I glanced at my watch. That’s one thing I didn’t like about Daniel Craig in “Casino Royale”—how he pronounced it “Oh-MEE-ga” when it’s “Oh-MEH-ga.” But all in all he did a great performance, I have to hand it to him. Anyway, it had been an hour and a half, and any minute the masseuse would come around, and the game would be up. I took a moment to put a few twenties in an envelope marked “Jose,” put on my socks and shoes, and left out the back door. I walked around to where Jose’s car was parked. It was a crappy little thing, Ford Fiesta or something. I had to stick the key in the door to unlock it—kind of nostalgic, really. It was baking in there. I was surprised to find it was a stick-shift. I got the engine going and the AC, which instantly filled the car with a damp, moldy smell. Backing out, I noticed a string of beads hanging from the rearview mirror. A rosary! Good for him. I swung out onto the main road and headed toward where I hoped my car would be. Slowing for a stop sign, I instinctively double-clutched, than laughed at myself. I’ve still got it!

Dana

I lay wrapped in towels for a really long time. I think I actually fell asleep. Then I felt the slight breeze of the curtain being pushed aside, and opened my eyes. A fifty-something man with light hair and wire-rimmed glasses whispered, “How is everything?” I said fine. “My name is Mark, and I’ll be working with you on your massage today. Are you ready now or would you like a few more minutes?” I sat up: I would not be needing a few minutes. The spell was already broken.

Mark led me into another curtained cubicle and I lay on my stomach on the massage table, resting my face in the little padded ring. I guess I hadn’t really expected to get a massage from Pierce Brosnan, but I hadn’t ruled it out. At least this Mark guy was a professional masseuse. That’s not such a bad thing.

Jose

Believe it or not, it all worked out. I didn’t crash the rich guy’s Jaguar, though I drove in fear the entire time. I didn’t scratch the guy’s sunglasses either. After a nice long drive through the wine country, I parked across from Brannan’s and sat in there having a Coke, keeping an eye on the Jag, and next thing I knew, the rich guy parked my car right behind it, got out, and hid my keys behind the front tire. He found his keys, got in his car, put on his shades, and left.

When I got back to Wilkenson’s, my twelve-o’-clock was just starting his massage. Everything was fine! Nobody said a thing! I checked in with the receptionist and she was as blah as ever, no mention of anything wrong. Unbelievably, the rich dude had actually covered my shift! And you know the best part? He must have done a great job, because the customer tipped me sixty bucks!

dana albert blog

Mud Bath

Why Get a Mud Bath?

For Erin’s birthday we went to Calistoga, in the Napa Valley, to the Indian Springs Spa. This posting is not a review of that spa, nor for that matter is it a review of Dr. Wilkenson’s Resort or the Calistoga Village Inn & Spa or Golden Haven Spa. I am naming these spas alongside the word “review” in an effort to attract some newcomers to my blog.

I highly recommend mud baths. To properly enjoy a mud bath, you must first watch the 1992 Robert Altman movie “The Player.” In this movie, a struggling studio executive, through some twist of fate, murders a screenwriter and becomes the subject of a police investigation. He’s this close to losing it completely and decides to get out of town for awhile, so he takes off to a faraway spa for a little vacation, the highlight of which is a mud bath. By the time he returns home, things have miraculously sorted themselves out: he’s off the hook for the murder, and even his career is looking up. That movie made a lasting impression on me. The decadence of a mud bath is strongly linked in my mind with escaping my troubles—not just for awhile, but for good. In this case, the ceaseless reminders of our global economic crisis made the spa getaway seem especially appropriate.

In case you haven’t had a mud bath, or even if you have, I’m going to walk you through the full treatment so you’ll know what to expect next time you kill a screenwriter or dread the prospect of foreclosing on your home.

First, a Soak

While Erin gets her spa treatments, I take the kids to the Olympic size magma-heated pool. I don’t know if it’s actually Olympic size, but that phrase just has a nice ring to it. I’m also not sure if “magma-heated” is entirely accurate, but I love the word magma. (Imagine Dr. Evil saying it.) This pool is really hot, like a hot tub, and there’s just enough of a sulfur smell that you know it’s heated by an authentic hot spring. There are little mattresses to float on, and patio chairs, and a carnival mirror, and the pool has been there for ages and summons the idea of some charming Old World resort (as opposed to an institutional modern American recreation center).

After the Tour of California racers suffered freezing rain all week in this region, we have lucked out and enjoy perfect weather for lounging in a well-heated outdoor pool. Now, don’t take this wrong, but perhaps the best thing about this pool is how few people are in it. Hoards of screaming kids never did it for me. No more than half a dozen other people share the pool with us, and they are all in a totally mellow, happy mood, probably because they’re rich. I know that sounds terrible, and we all like to assume that rich people are all miserable and nasty, but I really don’t think so. What’s to not be happy about, when you routinely get to hang out in a place like this?

After a couple of hours, Erin shows up, blissed out from her pampering, and takes over with the kids, who—though prune-y almost to the point of having the skin on their hands and feet completely dissolve—want to stay in the pool. I report to the spa to begin my indulgences.

The Ambiance

There seems to be an unspoken rule in spas that everybody whispers. The fact that this rule is unspoken is part of the charm: they don’t need signs saying, “For the relaxation of your fellow guests, please refrain from making loud utterances in the spa.” You’re just supposed to know, and the resulting mood suggests a rarified, practically enchanted place. After a short wait in the lobby, which I spend leafing through menus of area restaurants, I am summoned to the men’s side of the spa by Caesar, who will be my … what? Valet? Manservant? Something like that. He will guide me through my treatment and take care of my needs. I love this. For about an hour, I get to feel like a man of privilege, Stiva Oblonsky in Anna Karenina, perhaps, or Wooster in the Jeeves books.

For some reason the valet is always an ethnic minority. I don’t know if this is a simple matter of economics, or whether it’s calculated. Perhaps the management believes that a white guy serving in this role of doting servant simply couldn’t summon the right attitude. I think there’s a stereotype of the immigrant as a hard worker who’s happy to have a job, and a parallel stereotype of the white service sector employee who is bitter about having to work for low wages. (Often these stereotypes ring true: I had to eat at Chipotle once and the white dude making my burrito did the most half-assed job I’ve ever seen. I felt like punching him in the face.) Suffice to say, I highly approve of Caesar.

He leads me to a small room with wooden lockers and, in a soft voice, gives me some instructions. I hang up my clothes and put on a nice, warm white robe. Caesar will fetch me later. I change in like thirty seconds and then wait for several minutes. Where is he? Have I misunderstood the instructions? Am I supposed to go find him? My awkward uncertainty is, alas, all too predictable. But I let it go, and serve myself some cucumber/lemon water. (Is it the famous Calistoga water? Well, we’re in Calistoga, so even the tap water is, by definition, Calistoga water.)

Presently another guest arrives and changes into his robe. At that very moment, purely coincidentally, I am visited by a strong urge to commit flatulence. Naturally, I hold this back forcefully, as I’d do during a job interview or when dining with my in-laws. But then something occurs to me: what would happen if I just let one rip, loudly, right here on this bench in the presence of my fellow mud-bather? It would utterly ruin his entire spa experience, flushing his not insignificant expenditure right down the drain. And there would be no recourse. I mean, what’s he going to do—head back to the front desk and reschedule, based on the fact that “a guy farted in there”?

Of course I don’t do this. Neither do I engage in conversation with the guy. This is another great thing about a fancy spa: people just know not to bother each other with chatter. Not that I mind a little chitchat under normal circumstances, mind you. I swam at the Berkeley YMCA a couple years back and a dude in the sauna regaled me with a fascinating story about the rats living in his car, chewing up the electrical wires, shredding the upholstery, and leaving their feces all over the place. But on a special trip to a fancy spa I just want quiet, and I get it.

The Mud

Caesar appears and leads us into the mud room. Along with a sulfur smell there is a low roar of some machinery here; this place has the feel of both the spa’s main attraction and its boiler room. Our mud baths are waiting: two blockish concrete tubs, side by side, each large enough for Frankenstein’s monster, filled almost to the brim with dark, dark brown mud made from volcanic ash and mineral water, heated by—of course— magma. The mud is all stirred up for us; a third tub nearby hasn’t been stirred and its mud is literally boiling, a layer of water collected at its surface. This encourages me, seeing how they boil (if not replace) the mud between bathers. I want good clean mud for my bath.

A narrow board is leaned up against the head of the tub, extending down into the mud at a slant, to serve as a pillow. Per Caesar’s instructions I sit on the edge and swing my legs in, then sit down in the mud. Surely you’ve had the pleasant sensation of mud squishing in your toes; imagine that for your whole body. You don’t quite sink in it, and yet you don’t quite float. A magazine article I read once puts it best: you’re like a grape in Jell-O. Perhaps the most striking thing about the mud is that it’s hot. Really hot. Almost unbearably hot.

This, I think, is the real genius of the mud bath: your natural impulse, or at least mine (being claustrophobic to begin with), is to panic. The object here is to give in utterly and relax in the face of what at first seems like a crisis. As I suck my arms down into the mud and lean my head back, Caesar heaps more mud upon me, literally burying me alive. Every nerve in my body says, “This is too hot! You’re going to get scalded! Get out!” But the brain says, “No, I remember Mr. Wizard [Professor Taylor, who used to give science shows to kids] showing us how he can rinse his hand under plain old tap water and then plunge his thumb into molten iron without getting burned. This is also how people can walk barefoot over hot coals: fear makes them sweat, and the sweat forms an insulating barrier that prevents injury.” I don’t think this in words, of course. It’s simpler than that: a kind of faith. I relax, and sweat, and soon I’m quite comfortable. I can actually forget how hot it is, and so—just to relive the fear-into-faith experience again—I occasionally wiggle, disrupting the sweat membrane and getting a fresh shock of heat.

My neighboring mud bather is a first-timer. “What if I have to scratch my nose?” he asks Caesar. He is both joking and not. Just about the first sensation you have, once comfortably ensconced in the mud, when you no longer have use of your arms and hands, is of a tickle or itch on your face. This, too, you must let go. You experience the itch, ponder it, savor it even, and then feel it fade. (“If your face itches let me know and I’ll scratch it,” Caesar tells him. Just in case, I suppose.)

Eventually bubbles form on my skin. Are they beads of sweat, or air bubbles? I focus on the sensation of them, waiting, waiting, and there one goes, tickling me as it slides around my body before detaching and making its way to the surface of the mud. This happens several times, each bubble an absorbing sensual experience. When I’m not pondering these bubbles, I’m trying to figure out exactly what strange pseudo-buoyancy my body has in this mud. And so time drifts by.

Soon I sense that I’m near the end of the mud bath, and figure out a few last things to experience. First I contemplate the suspension of each part of my body, from my toes to my shoulders, one at a time. Then I wiggle my calves, rocking them back and forth, and to my delight they form slick, curved tunnels in the mud, and they slide effortlessly up and down the walls of these tunnels, like bobsleds in an icy track. How utterly peculiar and fun. A couple of minutes later, Caesar says it’s time to come out.

Hands braced on the sides of the tub, I lift my body out of the mud. This makes a sucking sound, like when you pull your boot out of a thick muddy bog. I sit on the edge of the tub and swing my legs out. Now comes what is perhaps the highlight of the whole experience: looking down at my body. It is utterly transformed—my skin is black, covered uniformly with a dark, dark, opaque brown coat of mud. I stand up and keep staring, transfixed. I look exactly like an Australian aborigine (at least, like the aborigine character in the 1971 Australian movie “Walkabout.”) Just add a makeshift snakeskin belt with a dead lizard or two stuck in it, and a spear, and I could pass for the real thing (from the neck down, anyway). You see, if I suck in my gut, I have the same physique as the aborigines do—the long, slender limbs and fine bones. I can’t help the feeling that this is what God actually intended me to look like, only he accidentally threw me into the load with the bleach. To make this mud bath perfect, Caesar would escort me to a set of three facing mirrors, and maybe do a photo shoot. Does this make me Narcissistic? No it does not, because I’m enchanted by an illusion, not by my real appearance.

Cleaning Up

Of course I can’t dawdle like this forever and must step into the shower. At least it’s a great shower: the shower head is a giant sunflower pointing straight down. It’s what a shower head should be, as opposed to the pathetic hotel room shower heads that come out of the wall around my chest and have eight shower head settings, from “Watts Riots” to “Gorillas In The Mist” (as my brother Max once described them), not one of which setting is actually enjoyable. There are no faucet handles on this shower: Caesar is somehow in control, and I just walk in, scrub the mud off, lather up, rinse, and step out. At home I turn on the spray just long enough to get wet, shut it off to lather up, and turn it back on to rinse, practically timing myself in the spirit of water rationing; here, the water is still running as I walk away. But hey, I’m on vacation, and I couldn’t conserve this water if I tried. Today, this is not my problem.

Of course a mere shower can’t remove all that mud, and now we’re led into a room with several bathtubs in a row, two of them all ready for us. And these aren’t just any tubs; these are the platonic ideal of bathtub. First of all, they’re huge. Second, they’re absolutely full right up to the brim. When I climb in, exactly the volume of my body in water is displaced, spilling right over the edge onto the floor, so I am completely submerged. Every tub I’ve ever used at any place I’ve ever lived is equipped with an automatic drain should the water level reach any useful depth. At home I try to cover this drain with Saran Wrap so I can fill the tub deeper, which means I spend my bath fighting with the plastic. If I straighten my legs in my tub at home I have to sit up, so most of my body is out of the water, or else I can bend my knees instead so they stick out like a grasshopper’s legs. In this tub, I can stretch out all the way and still have the water up to my chin. It’s so perfect. I wish this spa had a toaster: I’ll bet it would work, too. And if they sold CDs here, it wouldn’t take ten minutes to remove their cellophane packaging.

Caesar sets down a wooden tray across the top of the tub and brings over some icy lemon/cucumber water. Then he hands us little wooden picks and (in his hushed way) explains that they’re for scraping mud from beneath our fingernails. This is new since the last time I had a mud bath, and must have been the wives’ idea. We happily set to this simple task; it’s a novel one, since men very seldom devote much time or attention to such grooming. When I’m done I lean my head back against a little inflatable pillow that’s provided, and Caesar places a cool washcloth over my forehead.

Wrapping Up

After the bath and a five-minute bask in the steam room (very, very hot, the steam infused with some oil or liniment or something, perfect therapy after my bronchitis the week before), we are lead to separate rooms for our towel wraps. I lie on a little cot and Caesar wraps me in big warm towels. What is the point of this, you ask? Well, it’s late afternoon and I’m lying on my back and nobody is asking me to do anything. That alone is bliss. Plus, they’re playing special spa music. Spa music is unlike any other music. It’s more New-Age-y and vague than elevator music, and seems to favor a certain flute that somehow brings to mind Native Americans. I don’t know why it does; I have no reliable knowledge that Native Americans played this certain flute. But it’s pleasant music, in its when-in-Rome way.

As my mind drifts, the music brings back a certain episode of the 1960s “Star Trek” show, in which Captain Kirk falls into a trap-door in an obelisk on some Earthlike planet, hits his head, and suffers amnesia. He can’t even remember his name; the best he can do is “Kirok.” The locals, who strongly resemble 19th-century Native Americans in every way, mistake him for a god. He hooks up with a pretty young squaw, Miramanee. As I enjoy this reminiscence I realize for the first time that this episode must have been written to meet a clause in William Shatner’s contract specifying a minimum number of minutes per season he got to spend kissing a starlet. That’s practically all that happens for the first twenty minutes of the show: Kirk and Miramanee making out, with this New Age, flute-heavy music in the background.

Of course the show picks up after that, and eventually a rival suitor of Miramanee discovers that Kirk is not a god, at which point the whole village tries to stone Kirk to death. As I ruminate over this, for the first time in many years, I suddenly realize that it’s basically the same plot as the 1970s film “The Man Who Would Be King,” in which a worldly man who has traveled to a relatively primitive place is mistaken for a god and enjoys all kinds of privilege until a woman brings him down and he must run for his life. Could this movie have ripped off “Star Trek”? No, the movie was based on a Rudyard Kipling short story, which means … aha! It was the “Star Trek” episode that ripped off—or, rather, paid homage to—the same Rudyard Kipling story! I always knew “Star Trek” was the best-written network TV show in history, and now I have proof. See what epiphanies are possible when you’re left alone to lie on your back wrapped in towels?

Alas, eventually my time is up, and—my mind completely mushy—I get lost in the labyrinth (or so it seems) of massage rooms. By the time I finally find the lobby, Erin and the kids, under Spock’s command, have reached the deflection point and are patiently waiting for me so they can finally shoot down the asteroid that is at this moment heading for the spa. Such is my rocky re-entry to normal life after a blissful afternoon of glorious spa decadence.