If you’ve never had a massage, you’ll probably understand the hesitation with which I entered the Bettye O. Day Spa (5200 S. Harper Ave.; 773-752-3600), to get the first one of my life: the more clinical the place, the less apt I was going to be to shed my clothing with alacrity.
Luckily, Bettye O.’s resembles a cozy Southern cottage more than it does a hospital, loaded down with silk flowers, wicker furniture, Ionic columns, gilt frames, twinkle lights and a bird chirping away in a cage. According to the spa Web site, in 1978 Bettye “introduced the concept of total skin care to the Chicago Black community after her return from studying in Paris, France,” and she runs the place with the good manners of a Southerner and the charming insouciance of a Parisian.
In my candlelit massage room, where I was lulled by a strange medley of what sounded like Gregorian chant, jazz, and then gospel, I stripped down and climbed on the table. All that mattered was my muscles, which my masseur Bruce treated the way my grandmother treated the Smithfield hams she prepared–respectfully and gently, but with confident vigor (at one point he managed to get me into an embarrassing but necessary position by wrapping the sheet around my leg and giving it a curt tug).
They charged me $75 for a 60-minute “Personal Massage,” which incorporates a variety of techniques, but Bruce applied pressure (sometimes too gently, it seemed, but never too hard) to every tense tendon for more than an hour. I was surprised by how transported I was when he rubbed my head (I have muscles on my head?) and my feet, but the most luxurious aspect, hands down, was the amount of time he spent kneading my back, long after it had unclenched its grip on my holiday stress. When Bruce finished, I was indeed like one of my grandmother’s hams: cured.
The Red Door Spa (919 N. Michigan Ave.; 312-988-9191) was, of course, started by Elizabeth Arden, a Canadian who began her empire in NYC, the land of the tense and crabby. And they really know what they’re doing there. I felt like Dorothy in the makeover scene from “The Wizard of Oz.”
After walking down the red carpet and through the big red door, I was led by an attendant into a champagne-and-silver-hued land of women in big robes and Red Door sandals, who were wandering like blissful sleepwalkers from treatment room to treatment room. Seeing their glow, I quickly stashed my stuff in a locker in the dressing room (which features a Swedish shower I was afraid to turn on) then turned myself over to my appointed massage therapist Nick.
The scented oil at Bettye O. had irritated my skin, and when I mentioned this to Nick he seemed faintly appalled. “We only use lotion here,” he said. And it turned out to be a wonderful eucalyptus and lemon concoction that I can still smell on the coat I walked home in like a zombie.
In some ways, the Red Door massage was gentler than the one at Bettye O. Nick told me I’d signed up for a Swedish massage (actually, I had simply asked for a massage when I called), and I assumed that since the Swedes don’t go to war they also don’t give brutal massages. On the other hand, he zeroed in with what seemed like psychic precision on a couple of very small muscles in my back, and he worked them with such command that I felt like handing him my banking card and password on the condition that he not stop.
If Nick had suggested I join the Symbionese Liberation Army with him, I would have.
After that point, I went into a dream state, almost dozing, as he paid worship at my temples, unclenched my jaw muscles, wrung the tension out of my neck, disarmed my arms, tamed my calves, and released my soles. The massage went by so quickly that until the cashier rang up $85 (the price for 50 minutes), and before I checked my watch, I was under the impression that I’d only had a half session.
The thought that perhaps they were overcharging me entered my mind then slid away. I languorously handed over my credit card and smiled like a Zen monk.
