Offline edition: in which I finally get wellness-scammed

I swear everything I’m about to say, even as a dyed-in-the-wool wellness hater, is my earnest experience and/or opinion. I also swear that I just wanted a massage and facial for my birthday. A nice one, with the super-wide beds and thick sheets and hot stones and what have you (though I’ve never turned down one of the no-frills ones, either). But through a series of misunderstandings, I found myself in a dimly-lit room with a giant Doc Ock-looking machine looming at one end, pulling on a white full-length body stocking with sleeves and different laser-cut patterns that made it look slightly like I was wearing a bandeau top and thong, with no clue what was about to happen next.

Let me back up. As a fearful person and internet lover, I’ve developed a debilitating problem with doing too much research. I can do research on everything now before I do it: going to a store to make copies of keys, getting groceries, going to lunch. Why would I get lunch somewhere with a 4.2 on Google Maps when there is somewhere with a 4.5, nay, a 4.7? And that’s before we even open up Yelp—what if the 4.7 on Google Maps has a 4.4 on Yelp, but the 4.5 has a 4.6? Chaos. Bedlam. The tabs multiply like gremlins. Before you know it I've spent 45 minutes looking for lunch. Lunch!

At one point, I decided to experiment with just stopping. If I see a thing and it sounds good, in an act of raw bravery, blind faith, and sheer generosity to my own sanity, I will just go, without vetting it by cross-referencing several different websites. So when I saw some not-that-famous celebrity name-check a particular health-spa-looking place in an interview, I bookmarked it for a time that I might need it. And for a while, it was wonderful. I experienced a great peace in finding satisfaction that the tacos near my house were perfectly good, whether or not they were the best tacos in the greater LA area.

So in the spirit of Just Going, I picked out the most expensive appointment at this health spa place shortly after my birthday and booked it. My muscles are so sore at this point that some of them are sensitive to the touch, and I never foam-roll as much as I probably should. I needed this. The celebrity hadn’t said specifically what was so good about it, and their site had a bunch of foreign descriptive words—sculptural face lifting massage, muscle relief balm. Sure, whatever; the words that go in front of “massage” and “facial” always sound made-up. The price was about in line with what a nice massage and facial cost.

When I arrived to the appointment and was guided into the room, I began to worry I had made a huge mistake. There was a massage table, to be sure, but what stood behind it was a waist-high contraption with several hoses snaking out the top, their heads resting in cradles around the sides. The attendant asked me if I’d done this before. I admitted I didn’t know quite what we were doing. “Lymphatic drainage,” she said confidently.