Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Pampered Pop - A Father's Day Story in 4 Chapters

Today is Father’s Day, and I hope it’s not too late. Those gifts you just opened? Wrap them back up and return them. The rototiller in the garage? The oddly shapen kiln-fired ashtray for you, the non-smoker? The Punky Brewster Complete Series DVD box set? Thank your family for the gesture and return everything. I’ve got something better for you.

My wife gave me an early Father’s Day gift this year, suggesting I spend time at a local salon. Days later I find myself in Lotions ‘n Potions on Main Street in Concord. Andrew Hatch greets me at the door, welcoming me into his well-lit, cozy yet expansive store. Andrew and his wife, Julie Cooke, have owned Lotions ‘n Potions for the past five years, in the spot that once housed Fickett Jewelers. Andrew speaks in a soft English accent as he shows me around the store, explaining what they’ve planned. Julie appears. “You’ll start with the ear candling and a pedicure, and then we’ll wax your chest and give you a facial,” she tells me. Before I can clarify what she means by the term, “wax your chest,” I’m introduced to Maria Richards, who leads me away.

Chapter 1: So a Guy Walks into a Salon with a Candle in his Ear . . .Maria ushers me into a treatment room. “You’re going to enjoy this,” Maria tells me. She pokes a hole in a paper plate, showing me a candle she’ll insert in my ear. I’m not sure what’s going on, but Maria’s warm smile and gentle nature make me forget that we’ve just met and that she’s planning on cramming a lit candle into the side of my head. She explains how ear candling’s been around for so long that no one culture lays claim to its origins. “People have been doing this for a very long time,” Maria tells me as I rest on my side. She carefully nudges the candle bottom in my left ear and lights it, the picnic plate resting between my face and the flame, catching the melting wax.

Ear candling, according to the pamphlet Maria hands me, sounds as complex as the launching of a weather satellite. “The vortex pattern occurring inside of the ear candle in conjunction with the warm air into a highly stressed nervous system initiates the flow of energy . . .” I know bupkis about vortex patterns, but the faint hum of the burning wick in my ear and Maria rubbing my scalp is enough to make me want to hole up here for the weekend, candle after candle burning away the stress in my life.

Maria finishes the second ear, and we’re done. I feel lighter, like my head is more compact – as if the candling’s stopped the marbles from rattling around in there. I like this. If a woman kneading my thinning hair while a controlled fire burns near my eardrum isn’t the essence of Father’s Day, then color me koo koo.

Chapter 2: The Wookie’s Wife Skips the Pedicure
“I’ve never given a pedicure to someone with such hairy legs,” Maria tells me as I slide my feet into warm, salty water. I take that as a compliment, or at least a comment on the grooming habits of Lotions ‘n Potions’ steady female customers. “First, you’ll soak your feet and then I’ll clean up those nails and cuticles,” Maria tells me. We’re upstairs now, the mid-day June sun shining through the windows as the hustle and bustle of Main Street flows silently on the sidewalk below. Time stands still as Maria moves effortlessly from drying my feet to taking an emery board to my toe nails.

By the time she finishes applying fancy cuticle cream to my toes, I’m beyond comfortable, the reclining chair swallowing me up. I barely notice the work she does on my feet with what looks like a lemon zester and don’t give a second thought to the fact that Maria’s spent more time with my feet than any other woman in my life. By the time she slathers on Shea butter, covers my feet in plastic and slips on warmed green elfin boots, I’m thinking that this may be the best Father’s Day gift ever.

Chapter 3: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
There are moments in a man’s life when he ponders the path he’s chosen, those fragments of reflection that give pause, making him question if he’s taken the right fork, rolled the right pair of dice, flipped the coin high enough. As Julie rips the hair from my chest, I wonder what the hell I ever did to end up here. Julie’s no amateur – she’s been named the Best Waxer in Boston magazine’s “Best of Boston” two years in a row – and she applies the hot wax to the paper strips and then to my upper body with lightning efficiency and precision. We try to chat as she works, but I’m in too much misery to add much to the conversation. Julie tells me about the virtues of waxing versus sugaring (she swears by waxing) but might as well be comparing Farsi to Romulon because the intense pain I feel as she tears the hair from my body in a rip, rip, ripping motion has rendered my comprehension of speech patterns to nil. She gives me no time to protest, knowing I might try to make a run for it, applying and tugging in such fluid motions that I dare not move.

“Most guys get their backs waxed. I don’t do many chests,” she says with a smile in her eyes. Earlier, before my day here started, Wynelle Staller, working the front desk, told me that she likes a man, “with a little hair on his chest.” I think of that now as Julie finishes up, my torso resembling a naked mole rat’s smooth, stark-white belly. So much for giving the ladies what they want because I’ve just been deforested like acres of Brazilian rain forest. I resist the urge to show off my pale, freckled, ghostly gut devoid of all vegetation. I’ll embrace the idea that sometimes the tease is better than the real thing.

Chapter 4: A Perfect Ending
Julie wastes no time transitioning from the horrors of waxing to my final treatment of the day, a Deep Cleansing Facial. I remain on my back as Julie begins coating my face in lotions, liniments and scrubs. She scans my face for problem areas. “You have nice skin,” she tells me as she attacks the trouble spots, pinching, squeezing and cleaning as she goes. Andrew told me earlier that, “Julie’s a picker. She really gets into it,” and I see what he means. She’s giving my entire face, neck and head a workout, and it feels so good. She coats my hands in lotion and puts them in warm gloves while she whips out a glass wand. “This is the High Frequency machine,” she says as she moves it across my nose, cheeks and chin. “It uses ozone gas, ultraviolet light and electric current to disinfect your skin.”

Julie then moves onto the aloe vera algae mask, encasing my entire face in a green clay she later peels off like inch-thick sour apple fruit roll up, never forgetting to massage my head, neck and temples. This is one of the best sensations I’ve ever felt, and I swear I’ll never go back to a Father’s Day of “Best Dad’ coffee mugs, cave-painting quality grade school art work and dress sock three-packs.

No, I reject those gifts and their ilk – instead I embrace the Father’s Day of the New Man, the Well-Groomed Dad, the Pampered Pop who’d rather spend four hours at the downtown salon than surrounded by well-meaning children who wouldn’t know pedicures from Parcheesi. Father’s Day should be about doing what makes you feel good, and I highly recommend a spa day. Although call me before you sign up for the waxing. We should probably talk about that.