The Bathhouse
With a very real looming possibility that I might be leaving Seoul for a while (at will, with excitement), I've already started feeling nostalgic for the city. I'm going to spend the next three months intentionally enjoying everything I love about living here and likely take for granted.
This past weekend, an idea formed and solidified while I was writing Morning Pages. I would have a perfect day in the neighborhood. Cash only and by foot. There is a local bathhouse I used to go to with Miya before Covid—that would be the main event. A proper soak and Korean-style scrub down to exfoliate last year's dead skin cells seemed like an appropriate way to spend the first Sunday of the new year. This was the itinerary:
- Run around Hyochang Park
- Go to the bathhouse
- Peruse Yongmun Market
- Have lunch at the noodle place I like
- Read my book at a coffee shop
I walked over to the bathhouse first. At the front counter, I explained that I'd like to go for a run nearby and could I leave my bag here? She waved me in and said: go, go. I jogged over to the park and ran a few loops of the trails. The air was chilly and the sky bright blue. I remembered, again, how lucky I am to live so close by. An impressive turnout of older men in sweat sets were commanding the outdoor calisthenics gym. I went over to the pull up bars to see what I still had in me. With years of swimming and a stint in water polo and gymnastics when I was younger, I have natural upper body strength and at one point could get a couple pull ups in. That day, I struggled but did get my chin over the bar. I'd like to get strong again.
I jogged back over to the bathhouse. I was a little intimidated because I haven't been in a while and I know how in-your-face these places can be, especially the ones embedded in neighborhoods frequented primarily by regulars, but the layout of the place was already familiar to me and I knew the rules. I stripped in the locker room and headed inside. The first step is washing your hair and body, thoroughly. The women are watching. I'm convinced there is not only a performative aspect to how well you wash yourself but a competitive one, too. I spent over 20 minutes at the seated showers. Other women were there much longer, perched on their plastic buckets, wordlessly turning to each other to scrub each other's backs with a shower towel.
The next step is the hot tub. I made eye contact with an older woman and instinctively smiled because she looked so much like someone I know. I almost said hello but it was clear I was mistaken because she didn't smile back. "I don't think I know you..." she said. Then my mind quickly decided that she was commenting on the fact that I was a stranger among them. "I haven't been here in a while," I responded. What she actually meant was: "You smiled at me so I thought you might be someone's daughter." It wasn't an unfriendly exchange and I eased up. This woman, who looked like the caretaker that looked after my grandmother for seven years until she passed, was holding court in the biggest tub. Others were leaning in from neighboring tubs to hang on to her every word.
There were two vinyl massage beds set up in the wet room for exfoliation treatments. I asked to be next-next. Before me was an old woman. The exfoliator hoisted her on to the bed. She helped re-position this woman this way and that to get every angle, bringing the woman's arms around her neck with the strength and gentleness of an ICU nurse.
While I waited, I did a round of the dry sauna and the cold water plunge. I tried to listen to the tens of women chattering around me but my Korean isn't fluent enough to dial into a single conversation among a cacophony of voices bouncing off the walls. There was a commotion when a different old woman—she was so thin and frail-looking—tried to step into a hot tub, bone dry. From every direction: "Sister! What are you doing? You have to shower first!" She looked confused but obeyed. She came back, but there were soap suds down her arm. "Sister! Go back and get that soap off you!" She was eventually let into the hot tub and she sat there serenely with her eyes closed.
There is the woman I have been going to since I moved to Seoul who threads my face. There is the rotating staff of women who wax my bikini line. There is the hairdresser down the hill from where I live who cuts and perms my hair every five months. More rarely, there is only one woman I go to for my nails. The exfoliator scrubbed every inch of my body, dead skin flaking off like erase shavings. I pointed to the most pronounced scar on my belly and she took care to avoid that area. She flipped me on my back, either side, knees up, back on my belly, doused me in soapy water, and sat me back up 30 minutes later smooth and shiny. I am in awe always of the way women tend to each other.
As I was rinsing off for a final time, there was a second commotion. A women seated in one of the hot tubs shouts (!) across the room: "You have to clean your pussy! Do you know how dirty the pussy is!" I don't know who she was hollering at but I assume there was a woman who hadn't washed herself up to code before getting into one of the tubs.
Walking through Yongmun market, I picked up a package of rice cakes coated in black sesame powder. The street wasn't as bustling as I would have expected. The market seemed to have shrunk, maybe a terrible symptom of the pandemic. I had a bowl of noodles lathered in perilla seed oil. If I had had company, I would have also ordered a potato pancake. I ended my neighborhood excursion close to home, at the coffee shop where I buy my beans with the barista who knows exactly how I like them ground. I sat there for about 45 minutes with a hot oat milk latte and my book. I'm reading "Writers & Lovers" by Lily King. I read "Heart the Lover" first which I think might be unorthodox but I don't mind.