Baring It All At King Spa

on reclamation, on being seen

It ain't the being alone. It ain't the empty home, baby. You know I'm good on my own. You know, it's more the being unknown. So much of the living, love, is the being unknown. - Hozier

---

Omira, 2020 by Nadia Waheed

Immediately, I’m met with naked bodies. The women’s locker room of King Spa, the Korean day spa in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, is busier than I had anticipated. But it’s a Friday afternoon. Of course, we all have the same idea – ease into the weekend a few hours early, likely at a discounted rate thanks to Groupon. On the walk to my assigned locker, I take extra care in keeping my gaze balanced between the terracotta tiles beneath my feet and forward, zeroed in on my destination. My vision is purely utilitarian here. Nothing more than a means to get efficiently from Point A to Point B. In my peripheral vision, the diversity of bodies – race, age, size – feathers out of focus. It is my respectful offering to the women around me. It feels indecent and presumptuous of me to dare to allow my eyes to linger over their vulnerable bareness. It’s as if I’m infringing on their privacy – rights that weren’t explicitly signed over to me.

Once at my locker’s alcove, I mentally note my plan for the day. Get dressed for the all-gender sauna rooms, spend a few hours sweating, return to the women’s locker room to prepare for the wet spa. And so, I strip with strategy. By my third visit to the spa, I naturally have developed a system. First, I take off my top, something uncomplicated to remove. Under it, I’d remember to opt for a comfortable sports bra. I need something I can sweat in, something that won’t poke or jab into my flesh, something that doesn’t mold around my breasts or lift them to an unnaturally higher landing on my chest. Then, I pull the spa’s oversized branded pink cotton t-shirt over my head in one swift move. It settles on my frame like a dress. Swimming in it, I feel like a child in a nightgown. Finally, I take off my bottoms, a garment that’s easy to slide off, and slip into the matching pink cotton shorts that hit below my knees. I adjust the elastic waistband to a comfortable home on my body before turning to the floor length mirror tucked in my corner of the locker room.

Instinctively, I hold my arms out and languidly swing my hips side to side watching my body both exist and disappear in my matching pink set. It’s hard not to feel silly when looking at my reflection. I am there, but I am not; the act of swapping a garment of mine for a garment of theirs prompts a peculiar transformation. But my calculated effort feels a bit trivial. Because once I am done sweating in the sauna rooms, I will head back to the locker room to disrobe for the wet spa. Soon enough I, too, will be another naked body.

-

I see everything. It is impossible to enter the wet spa – an intimate space with low ceilings holding four bubbling hot tubs, a cold plunge backdropped with a dramatic waterfall, and an enclosed steam room – where everyone is naked and not see it all. Breasts that are perky, flat, askew, wide set, rounded, inverted, removed, enhanced. Butts that are muscular, jiggly, cellulite streaked, square, bubbled. Stomachs that roll and flatten and bulge covered in skin that is tight and firm and saggy and stretch marked and wrinkled and and and. Earnestly, I believe every inch I see is beautiful in its own right. I allow space for my innate curiosity to waft around without shame; my eyes linger on these bare bodies for brief moments. And other eyes extend me the favor.

Each time I have made plans to go to King Spa, it is on the heels of a romantic ending in my life. It feels too perfect to be a coincidence. It’s as if my subconscious and the universe have conspired together. A meeting of the wisest minds where they look at each other with knowing glances – they see the ending before I do. This intervention toes the delicate line of being a gossip session. I imagine my subconscious bringing up the red flags. Something about how he had no problem with showering together but felt holding hands was too intimate. The universe will then mention the guy before him who described the type of woman he wanted to marry on one of our dates, attributes that I clearly did not fit. And my subconscious and universe will lose their shit thinking about the last guy who stood me up on a date where I spent a whole day making him eggplant parmesan – homemade mozzarella and a six-hour sauce I ate alone.

Despite their animated volleying of my genuine heartbreaks, I know that they both just want the best for me. But despite their warnings, I make excuses for these men because I want to see the best in them. And so, they gather their powerful forces and drop “King Spa Day” on my calendar.

Up until now, the only people who have seen my naked adult body are men. I don’t frequent nude beaches. I opt for an enclosed stall at the gym. My friends and I turn around when changing if we are getting ready together. So I suppose this is normal for me as a straight woman in the U.S. But the realization that my body has never existed in its candid form with another human unless something sexual was desired from it breaks my heart.

To me, sex is a beautiful, spiritual experience of give and take. It’s exciting to learn how to move with someone else’s body. What is preferred, what is wanted, what is vocalized, what is understood. The joint discovery through intimacy is sacred to me, and yet, I’ve been left feeling empty at the end. While I don’t regret sharing myself like this with these men and do have deep gratitude for the people we were then, there is still a part of me that feels deep sadness for how, in the aftermath of an ending, I’ve seen the inequity of the relationship.

As I thaw in the heated pool, it occurs to me that my body, the vessel that moves me through this world, in its most vulnerable state has only been witnessed by men who have failed to see me. And in turn, I feel like I lose a part of myself in the process that takes a great amount of time and effort to recover. It isn’t because they were horrible men set out to use me for my body. Or that they had sinister ulterior motives rooted only in their desires. But rather, it’s because there was a lack of awareness of what sharing my body in its most vulnerable state meant to me. As I was willing to share the entirety of my being, they had one foot out the door. How could they truly see me if their entire self wasn’t there to begin with? How could I begin to explain the gravity of this experience with someone who was unable to hold the whole of me? But I only come to terms with this in the aftermath. I see that they only met a version of me that felt manageable to them after the fact. I step outside of my body and witness someone who is devastated, inconsolable, and furious at this realization: my naked body has never actually been seen.

As I submerge into the water of the wet spa, I make space for a cleansing. In the absence of erotic desire from men, I feel disarmed. My body isn’t neutral here. But it also isn’t sexualized. For my naked body to be among other naked bodies where nothing is asked of either of us, where nothing is wanted or expected from us is revolutionarily. No efficiency, no strategy. I am not worried about the lighting or contorting my body a certain way or tactically covering another part of my body. All of that doesn’t exist here. And so, I release. The grief from these romantic endings I’ve suppressed moves out of me and swirls in the gentle rumble of the water. There is no need to bury any part of myself.

In my most exposed form, I feel a freedom in my body that ushers me towards a state of euphoria. I can’t help but bask in it. And I see it on the faces of these women, even the ones who are still warming up to the idea of being so candidly bare. When one of them glances my way and smiles to acknowledge our shared existence in this state of leisure, I don’t feel on display. For a moment, I feel known. This place we enter together holds a quiet knowing that our naked bodies can feel seen in its entirety. Here, we heal.

At the wet spa, there is nothing to prove. My naked body can exist with other people just as it is. And that, in and of itself, is plenty. There is no need to perform or worry about how I’m being perceived. No one wants anything of my body. I can just be. And all the while, with deep reverence, I can connect to a part of myself that has yet to be seen outside of these walls. I can meet her, speak with her, grieve with her, and rejoice in leisure with her. The weight of this reclamation of my naked body is boundless.