Rituals One

This weekend the St. louis Diner Review traveled to Hot Springs Arkansas for some golf, drinking and handicapping. Although all those activities went well I found myself on Saturday morning sitting in a big old ceramic tub at the Buckstaff (pictured above). The water coming from the 47 protected hot springs located along the lower slopes of Hot Springs Mountain maintains an average 143° at their source at an average flow rate of 850,000 gallons per day. sitting there I began to consider...rituals. This Diner likes his rituals...in an almost pathological and certainly mentally unhealthy way...and bathing at “The Spa” is a ritual among rituals. I am certain it seems like I am always defining things but good rituals...define themselves. The Spas at Hot Springs are all run by the Park Service who describes them...thusly:

“The Buckstaff Bath House still offers a traditional style treatment with its staff of highly trained and dedicated personnel. Offering you the privacy of individual tubs, with an all men's department on the first floor and the 2nd floor being dedicated to the ladies. To bathe at the Buckstaff, you need only present yourself during the admission times (no reservations or appointments accepted). All supplies and linen are provided to cover your self Roman style between your bathing stations (bathing suits optional). Each department has locking lockers and small valuables may be deposited at the front desk in private lock boxes. Some age and health restrictions may apply, your inquiry welcome.

Operating under regulations of the U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service, the Buckstaff offers traditional Thermal Mineral Baths and Swedish style massages. Our services include a 20 minute tub bath at a maximum temperature of 100°, Hot Packs for a maximum of 20 minutes, Sitz Bath for 10 minutes, Vapor Cabinet (steam cabinet) for a maximum of 2 minutes with the heads in cabinet or 5 minutes in the heads out cabinet, finishing it off with a 2 minute maximum rinse in the needle shower. Each tub is equipped with its own whirlpool and may be used while in the tub bath. You may then top the whole experience off with a full body Swedish style massage making your visit to the Buckstaff the most enjoyable and refreshing part of your stay in Hot Springs National Park Arkansas. Please allow approximately 1½ hours for the entire process and longer during peak periods.”

This description does not do the ritual justice. You walk into that beautiful building above after parking somewhere in downtown Hot Springs (boyhood home of Bill Clinton) which is a truly charming place even on a rainy January day. There has been very little development downtown and it sits in a narrow (often flooded) ravine of the Quachita (waw-shee-taw) mountains and many of the buildings back up to bluffs blown out of the mountain. It is a dying downtown but charming and a little eclectic and is dominated by the two large hotel spas, The Arlington and The Majestic which have been there since... forever and certainly since there was still legal gambling in Hot Springs. I arrived with three gambling compatriots deciding to take a mental health break and refusing to golf in the rain with the rest of the tribe. You enter a small lobby and there is a que for the reception desk where they ask you what services you want. The “classic” along with a loofa rub clocks in at about $51.00. At the desk they take all your valuables and put them in a safe deposit box and give you a key on a band you can wrap around your wrist or ankle. They also hand you a grocery store plastic shopping bag with a loofa mitt in it. Once you pay if you are a man they usher you to one side or the other depending on the crowd. Both sides are a mirror image to one another. The woman ride in an old fashion steel grated elevator to pleasures above that I can only guess at.

Once you enter a greeter (in this case a Willie Nelson look alike...circa “Red Headed Stranger”) acknowledges you and marches you to a small screened in stall with a several lockers and picks one for you and slips another key over your wrist. He also hands you a cheap (but very clean) bed sheet telling you to strip, including your glasses, put everything in the locker, lock it and then let him know. After following orders you come out (in your own poor effort to wear the sheet toga style (ala Blutarsky) and he leads you to a large tiled room with much hissing and spitting of pipes. You sit on a wooden chair and he puts your name on a hook. You absently hold your gorcery bag with loofa mitt wondering whether anyone will come along and thinking how absurd you look sitting in this large room, naked but for a sheet (which you are still trying to arrange to look cool) waiting....

From here, eventually an attendant, in my case James, comes and greets you and tells you to follow him. He does not look behind to see if you are complying having no question of his authority. You walk past a long line of chaise lounges to a large stall about the size of a handicapped commode, but instead of a toilet there is a six foot ceramic tub...very deep. You stand there for a moment as James fiddles with the hot and cold water which all come out of a huge spigot. In the tub there is a large steel thermometer and what looks to be a small outboard engine. That is the whirlpool unit. James keeps the water running as he adjusts the temperature and takes a dixie specimen cup filling it with the mineral water (very hot) and saying...drink it all. And when you drink the warm water he refills it, hands it to you and says...again. You comply.
He then peels off your sheet, briefly examines your sad middle aged body (James by the way is a black man of indeterminate age between 40 and 68) and then he directs you to a stool to stop up into the tub and offers a supporting arm guiding you into the tub. You sink and the water feels hot but not too hot. I notice that the thermometer says 105. James hands me another cup of water which I obligingly down and then he makes sure to tell me how to settle into the tub and stretch out. James apparently is used to dealing with idiots like me. He takes the loofa and allows me to use it as a head rest and grunts approvingly at his handiwork and my ability to follow simple instructions.

You sit in the tub with your back to the entrance of the stall and so have no distractions but a clock about 15 feet up on the wall and the sound of other customers behind you. My ADD does not start to kick in till about 10 minutes when I start to rearrange myself out of pure boredom stretching...wondering whether the whirlpool thing will malfunction and electrocute me...pressing my feet against the jet out of the whirlpool and getting a free foot massage. And then I start to really sweat. Even though 105 is not hot....sitting there...hot water cooking inside you...you start to remove various parts of your body from the soup. You sit up straighter....you hang your arms over the top. You experiment with draping your legs over the edge...you sweat like a pig. Almost all good rituals have some quality suffering involved. (my opinion).

A few words about “the waters”. The water pours out of the mountain very hot. it has a huge mineral content and throughout the bath house everywhere the water has run for years results in calcification and it reminds me of Meramec Caverns or Onendaga Cave’s limestone formations. Anyway, the waters are thought to have healing and restorative powers both internally and externally. FDR swore by the place and throughout his life would come to the spas in hot Springs for relief from the polio he was afflicted with. It taste good and is bottled and sold by at least one company nation wide as Mountain Valley Water. It does not feel different on my skin but once again just knowing other people think it’s special...helps make it magical for me.

Eventually James comes back and he is ready for business. He asks if I hurt anywhere and I say, “No, I actually feel pretty goo”, but before I can finish he is nodding knowingly and saying my lower back seems really stiff and so he bends me forward a little bit stretching me out. Then he begins using the loofa mitt and begins a methodical scrubbing of my body making sure he misses you private parts but firmly scrubbing most of your flesh. I cannot lie, having this man rub my flesh feels good. Which brings us to another point. There is nothing sexual about this experience but it is not for the homophobic. There are a lot of naked men (most of us in various disrepair with a large range of obesity and sagging flesh) walking around and there are at least two instances where men are...rubbing on you.

Anyway...you forget about the sweating. James then helps you out of the deep tub and takes you over to a shower stall with water coming out at knee level into a basin with what appear to be 2X4 as a seat. James scrubs it in front of me with comet as I imagine awkwardly standing there and James works on my feet I guess. He then grabs me, turns me around and tells me “sit down just like you were getting onto your car.” I comply and sit on the bench as James explains that the sitzbath really works on that lower back pain and hemorrhoids (how does he know about those?) and he explains it helps “everything below the waist.” I shift there with hot water coursing off my lower back and ass crack. I can only imagine how ludicrous I look to the other man passing by trying not to stare. Once again I gotta tell you...it feels good.

James give the mineral water a long time to let it do his work and then gets me and helps me up and walks me to a steam closet. This steam closet is slightly larger then my close closet at home and it does not seal tight. For steam it has steaming hot minderal water pouring onto the floor under the bench you sit on which then....steams up. It has been doing it for years and there is a lot of calcification. At some of the old baths they used to have the classic steam closet which you sat in with your head out of the box and they closed it around you. So retro. James assures me that he will be back in two minutes....and then he leaves...and leaves me there for 5 minutes. It is not that hot but...once again you sweat and you keep sweating...It feels slightly dirty in there and looks dirty but when you rub your hands you realize it is not dirt...just more calcificiation from all the minerals. Thankfully before I go into a panic attack he comes back.

He then walks me over to a sink and takes another specimen cup, this time filling it with cold water which I guzzle confidently and then hands me another one...and then another one saying “again.” he then leads me to a chaise lounge where I lay on my coveted sheet. He walks over with two HOT towels and has me lean up and then he pack them under my back and leans me back down slowly...very hot. He then wraps me in my sheet and proceeds to drape a cool towel around my head like a hood. The hot/cold like good asian food is enticing and I laid there for quite a while. Sweating...a lot...back with this hot towel as a lumbar support staring at the same clock...sweating and wrapped like a mummy but not wanting to stick an arm or a leg out of my sweat casing because then James and everyone else who might look would see what a pussy I am...sweating.

James comes back and I assume he is enjoying the suffering he is imposing and knowing that he is taking care of me. He gets me up, removes the towels and takes me to another stall. This stall is filled with a contraption known as “the needle shower” which hits you with 360 degree pinpoint jest of water in about 5 rings circling your body while a gallon a second dumps on your head. The CIA would call it water boarding but it feels like a nice controlled drowning. Somewhere outside the stall James is manipulating water temperature in what I assume is a trained and therapeutic way. First warm...then hot...then cool. I spin making sure it hits me everywhere and then after two minutes I am done. James towels me off mainly concerned with drying my face. James tells me what a pleasure it was to be able to help me and makes sure I know his name so I can tell them at the desk what his tip is and he says he would look forward to seeing me again. I have the feeling that he means it and that there is a reasonable chance he would remember my name.

He leads me to the cool down room, kind of a waiting room with chaise lounges and I lay...wrapped in my sheet and wait. There is a gentlemen laying there with me in his sheet with the Mark McGuire fu manchu. We say nothing. Very little is spoken between the patrons here. Once again my ADD kicks in...huge...very tired of being here. Bath and everything with it is great but I remember that I don’t really even like massages and that I should have just gotten the bath and moved on. They take the guy waiting and two of my compatriots are brought in to wait also and it becomes apparent that there is only one masseuse and we wait and break the silence and chat a little. These guys are 23 and 24 years old and they are in awe of the process and it does feel great and relaxing and it is cool and I like it more thinking about the experience through their eyes.

Finally Taylor calls “BECKER”, and I am up for the swedish massage. Taylor is pleasantly gay in that southern gay way that is so inoffensive to me. He asks where I am from and what I do and we have an excellent conversation about St. Charles and Soulard and practicing law. he works on my back, comments on the dryness of my skin and at my request (because we are running late) hurries me through the process so he can get to the other boys. Massages generally are great but for me they are rarely life changing. This one is no different. It is a quiet finishing ritual that seals the deal.

I go back to my changing space, my body slightly greasy. I get dressed and head out to the waiting area...get my belongings and make my tips and are on my way. This ritual like them all takes you through a process and this process is one aimed at cleansing and renewal. All good rituals have a lot of details, a lot of subdelties and take you from point A to point B. I do not kid myself about the healing power of the water or the massage or anything else but I do feel better. And I like it.