In the Beginning...

I'm a big fan of storytelling. When the mood strikes, I like to write my stories down. I've written a few true ones over this past summer, and this is one of the first I finished. I'll post the others as soon as I finish editing them. This one, about a bizarre weekend with my friends, is pretty long. If you're in for it, enjoy. ______________ “The Robe is for the Guests, Too” At Penn State, for those who don’t know, there exists a summer tradition known as Arts Fest. Any PSU student willing to party -that is to say, um, a lot- who doesn’t already live in the area embarks on a pilgrimage back to the university for a weekend of debauchery cleverly disguised as a “festival of the arts.” One road is closed off for artists and craft makers to sell their wares out of tents as hung-over undergraduates roam around, searching for greasy hangover food and discussing the previous night’s activities. Many families and people who actually want to see the art come as well, but, you know, who cares. Since the dorms are closed for the summer, Arts Fest devotees without apartments in which to crash often have to rent hotel rooms. This is where our tale begins. My friends Sydney, Laura, Michelle and I planned to attend the epic weekend, and Sydney, always the planning one, told us that she found a cool place for us to stay- The American Chiropractic Spa and Retreat. Syd told us that the hotel was basically a spa and inn with a few guest rooms, and the price of the relatively cheap stay included two spa treatments for each of us. Imagine our excitement at the prospect of a relaxing weekend of massages and facials after long nights of alcohol-induced humiliation! What’s more, the guests’ rooms included a hot tub in the rooms themselves! We were overwhelmed with enthusiasm. There was, however, a sort of glitch. Syd showed us the spa’s website and some user reviews, and while the website boasted pictures of relaxing-looking treatments and the typical soothing images of waterfalls and the like, the picture of an actual guest room was mildly sketchy. The bed and a section of the room were visible, as was the giant hot tub, but the edges of the picture were “artistically” fuzzed and paled. The picture itself didn’t indicate anything weird, but as the reader might find, it was what the picture didn’t include that made our stay so very unique. The reviews were mixed. Three of the four were very positive, raving about the comfortable rooms, exquisite spa services and even some kind of wine service. One, however, indicated that the spa professionals had no idea what they were doing and the room was cramped and uncomfortable. We figured the fourth review came from stuck-up spa elitists and the room was good enough, and went on our merry way. The drive to Penn State was easy enough, and everyone was really excited to begin our “spa retreat” weekend. Since the spa only had a few rooms, the person in charge of our stay was in pretty close contact with Sydney to make sure the arrangements were all set. The guy she made the reservation with, Kevin, even called her on our way up to verify that we were all set. We were flattered and figured that our stay would be extra special, given the attention they were paying us. We even heard Syd on the phone with Kevin, and his voice sounded like a fifties-Dad type, the kind of voice that chuckles and says things like “aw, shucks, fellas!” We imagined that Kevin was a Buddhist dork who became wrapped up in New-Age spa propaganda, and we were alright with that. Turns out we were sort of wrong. Syd pulled the car up to the spa, which from the outside looked like a first-floor office building, what with the high glass windows and doors that say “pull” on the front. The spa had set up massage chairs out front to give free massages to passerby to promote its services. After all, we lucked out since the building was tucked right at the end of the street where all the Arts Fest action was. As we parked, Kevin appeared out of nowhere. He was a tall, skinny, bald black man with a huge toothy grin. He was dressed in all white with what looked like wicker sandals on his feet, and about four gold chains around his neck. He waved his arms around in a hilarious motion to guide our car, and then stopped us to pop his head into Sydney’s window. “Hey, gals!” he grinned maniacally. “How’s the drive? Everything okay? Got your luggage? Are you Sydney? What’s everybody’s name? Everything good? Wanna bring the car around? See you in a minute!” For someone who worked in a spa retreat, Kevin was awfully high-strung. Maybe we were a little put-off by his friendliness. We did get hooked up with our very own parking spot right behind the spa, which was nice since we had imagined crammed parking garages and fees out the ass. After unpacking the car, including the forty-pound bag of alcohol bottles, we trudged up to the spa’s entrance. Kevin and Dr. Kimberly Trainer, his business partner, lover, or relative (we still aren’t sure) were waiting at the desk for us. Kevin’s overwhelming welcome was the complete opposite of Dr. Trainer’s subdued, hippy-dippy tone and soft voice. Basically, Kevin was on speed and Kim was hitting the bong in between spa table wipe-downs. Dr. Trainer’s weird sweetness was further exemplified by her misguided good intentions. Laura actually had to drive her own car up to the spa later than the rest of us after work the same day. Since there was only one guest parking spot, Dr. Trainer, in a very nice but kind of creepy offer, told Laura that she could park her car at her house, which was down the street from the spa. Sydney, Laura and Dr. Trainer drove to the address, where Laura parked for the weekend. This really should have been our first signal that this place was much more “relaxed” than most legitimate spas might be. I mean really, Dr. Trainer must not have guests all too often part of the accommodations include her driveway. Sydney had arranged which two spa treatments we each wanted about two weeks prior to our arrival. Kevin and Dr. Trainer, however, seemed to have misplaced those records, as they spent a great deal of time getting everything wrong and rearranging our requests in some great guest book with no more than four names in it and a load of pen scribbles. After that debacle, Kevin’s jolly tone was restored. “Let me take ya’ll back to your room!” her chirped, after introducing us to the three or so other employees of the spa. He told us that they were all Penn State students, which might have explained their nervous expressions and hesitance to say much. I imagine performing massages on people whom with you share a history class might be kind of bizarre. Kevin led us down a hallway that could barely contain the width of our suitcases. The hall led off to two massage rooms to the right, and at the end was a closed door. Kevin opened it, presenting a small guest wing. Our room, the only guest room, was to the left, and another door, the bathroom and shower hallway, was to the right. That’s right. There was only one guest room. We were the only guests in the spa. The bathroom was also the only bathroom in the place, meaning that we shared it with the employees and other guests of the spa who weren’t staying there. Figure that one out. First stop on the tour was our actual room. The 3,000 gallon hot tub in the center was like a great boiling landmass, encompassing almost half the space of the room and giving the entire area a charming chlorinated stench. It also made the room about four and a half million degrees. There was the photo-promised bed in the left corner, and also a conveniently not pictured futon. We had one wardroom in which to put our clothes, and the so-called “entertainment center” was laughable. The TV was resting on a bookshelf much too fragile to hold the weight, given how the entire thing leaned precariously to the left, along with a DVD and VHS player, twenty or so DVD’s, busted speakers and some pathetic candles and other décor. Ah yes, the décor. The bed was adorned with a half-stuffed, dirty teddy bear holding a valentine’s heart, the fake plants were covered in dust, there was a child’s prayer card stuck into the frame of the mirror, two Hawaiian tiki mugs were resting on the nightstand next to an open Bible, its page marked with what I thought were condoms, but turned out to be packages of tea. The entire room seemed to be decorated with castoffs from someone’s basement apartment. The decorator couldn’t seem to decide if the theme of the room was tropical, art-deco, or meth lab chic. Clearly, the budget for the room was also not exactly busting at the seams. The “curtains,” were heavy rugs (yes) industrial-stapled to wood beams at the top of the same office-building like windows. Even our door from the room out onto the street was of the same “push/pull” style that usually accompanies a bell to alert the store that a customer has arrived. Kevin gave the room a sweeping gesture, as if expecting us to run into his arms and thank him for the seven-star accommodations. We were aghast. “Now gals, let me run you through a few things about the room,” Kevin chirped. “You have to reset the hot tub! Every time this light, here, see it, blinks! You just jet back here to this switch behind the nightstand, see, I’ll do it, and you’re good to go!” He then led us outside to demonstrate the finer points of exiting our room. “Oh, and the door, here’s the key, the door, when you unlock it and lock it from the outside, it sticks a little, you see, so you have to kinda, you know, jam it with your hip here, just give it a little slam with your hip, there you go! Look she’s got it! Ha-ha!” Sure enough, the door would not close unless Sydney gave herself a bruise every time we locked up by bashing her ass into the door at precisely the same moment that she turned the lock, which of course, was never timed correctly. “Okay, so, this hallway! The bathroom and shower!” Kevin startled us out of our disbelief. “You got your shower here, and next to that is the fridge and microwave, and then there is a door to the toilet itself, gals, so make sure you lock it in case spa people need to use it too, you see, cause we kind of have to share! Okay so, any questions?” “How often do you change the water in the hot tub?” asked Michelle, a fair enough question and the only thing anyone could manage to utter. “Oh! Every day! Every day I change that water! So have a great time, everybody and we will see you for your first spa treatment tomorrow! Let us know if ya’ll need anything!” Kevin bounded out of the room, leaving us to become hysterical and commence to wipe dust off of surfaces, hide the teddy bear and bible, and rearrange everything we could to make the room seem bigger, a feat essentially impossible due to the behemoth tub. Although Kevin led us to believe that we wouldn’t be seeing his face again until the next day, we quickly realized that he had a very special way of “popping in.” He would blast into our room before leading other guests into the crapper, asking “Is anyone in the bathroom? No? Okay good, go ahead sir…” or “Gals? Ya’ll need that hot tub reset?” The hot apparently needed to be reset every half hour, and even though Kevin had showed us how to do it, he always wanted to do it himself. The hot tub water, in fact, never was changed. How could it have been? Would Kevin use a bucket to heave water out of the tub and into the street? After the first night of hot tub fun, after our group’s combined twenty-seven rum shots, we decided not to jump into the pool of germs again. The room was one thing, and we probably could have dealt with it, but the bathroom situation was one of the most irritating issues I’ve ever been through. The door to that side of the wing opened to the shower hallway, so if any of us happened to be showering, obviously we wouldn’t want anyone passing through to get to the bathroom. Not to mention that every time someone other than us wanted to use the bathroom, Kevin would pop in to check that none of us were in it, and there were many close calls in which Kevin came very close to seeing his guests’ breasts. The shower itself was the circumference of a toilet paper tube, and I quite literally had to shower without raising my arms too high. Shampooing was made very difficult and I almost came tumbling out more than once. The cocktail napkins we were made to believe were towels hardly covered one of my boobs. We all got a little more than we bargained for that weekend in terms of nudity. And then, friends, there was the robe. On the back of the door to the bathroom wing was a set of hooks. The only thing hanging on that hook was a solitary robe. Not so weird for a spa, right? However, this was not the typical white, fluffy robe often folded nicely and laid out for the guests. This was someone’s robe. It was a deep mauve color, with stripes and some kind of little pattern all over it. It looked old and threadbare, and I suspected it had not been washed in many moons. The robe was quite possibly the most off-putting thing of the entire weekend. It was like seeing someone’s dirty underwear. None of us really talked about it for awhile, until someone finally ran from the bathroom at breakneck speed past the spa door, which Kevin always left open, and said “Um, can we please talk about that robe!?!?!?” a question that led to great peals of disgusted laughter. How could Kevin and Dr. Trainer imagine that guests would be comfortable in this situation? Sharing a bathroom with employees and guests, dealing with the humidity and stink of the dirty hot tub, cramming our belongings into one set of drawers, bruising our hips with the door and sneezing out dust? Not to mention the complete lack of privacy that we felt we had. We never knew when Kevin or some other employee would peek a head in asking about the bathroom, and when we locked the door, it only seemed to infuriate everyone. One of the weirdest things was that the joint would close at nine, and Kevin and Dr. Trainer would say good night and lock the door into the spa. This thankfully left us the entire suite, but also made us feel imprisoned within the wood-paneled walls until the next morning when, hung-over, we would hear the hustle and bustle of people needing to use the bathroom. It became clear that the one good review we had read about the spa had been written by Kevin and Dr. Trainer themselves. On Friday, when we decided to have our first spa treatments, Kevin popped in once again and asked for two of the four of us to come with him for our facials. Laura and I braved it together, and we were lead into one of the two treatment rooms. Now, I have had a facial before, and typically the room includes beds with special chairs at the heads in which the professionals sit, effectively looking down upon the guest’s face. This situation was a bit too much to expect of Kevin and Kim’s spa. The same two chairs the spa had set out in front to give free massages were set up in this room, and a dinky little cart was in the corner, filled with what looked like drug-store brand creams and face masks. Kevin left us, and Laura and I sat in the awkward, straight-backed chairs, listening to the spa music. The music itself provided enough amusement to ensure that Laura and I would have a serious case of the funeral laughs all though our treatments. Most spas have soundtracks of the lulling sounds of waterfalls or rainforests, which are subdued at a low volume. This room sounded like we were trapped in the middle of a Louisiana bayou. The raucous sounds of gigantic bullfrogs and mosquitoes went along nicely with the sounds of crashing movement from the next room. For a moment in the middle of our facials, the soundtrack awkwardly segued into hip hop. One can imagine that hardcore subwoofers aren’t the best compliment to a relaxing day at the spa. The facials were less than stellar, to put it mildly. Two of the employees we met on the first day came in and immediately started slathering creams all over our faces. They tried to make awkward conversation, but when it came to actually explaining what was being put on our cheeks and foreheads, they would say things like “a kind of…avocado scrub,” or “um…it’s peach.” Normal spa employees explain the finer points of the products, which are usually special spa-only brands. Facials also characteristically include a pretty rigorous procedure of popping pimples and blackheads and basically making your skin look red and splotchy before it looks smooth and fabulous. Our facials were the kind that fourteen year old girls give each other at sleepovers. My facialist didn’t even wipe the entire dried face mask off, and I might mention that she had quite offensive breath. The girls awkwardly stood above us to apply the creams, and had to keep switching positions and move the rattling cart around. Sydney eventually joined Laura and I, and the extra chair and lack of a third employee made the entire experience reminiscent of a demented, heavily scented musical chairs. The spa people seemed to have no true idea of what treatments we were supposed to get, as Laura and I both requested seaweed masques, and Sydney wanted apricot. Just as the halitosis victim was about to put seaweed cream all over Sydney’s skin, she asked if Sydney was allergic to shellfish. Syd, who is indeed allergic to that and many other things, said yes, and the girls exclaimed, “You can’t have this! Oh my god!” and ran off to get a different product. I imagine the experience gave Sydney the same feeling as almost having the wrong surgery. On the day we were all supposed to have our massages, the spa treatments had become burdensome instead of relaxing. Kevin or Dr. Trainer would badger us the first minute they saw us in the morning about what time we wanted our treatments and frantically write down and confirm our responses. This was strange behavior for an institution that seemed so insanely unorganized. We made our massage appointments for 3:30 and had to rush back to the room to make sure we made the time. We then waited for about twenty minutes before Kevin popped in, asking us if we could wait another twenty minutes. Then, forty minutes later, Kevin asked if we could reschedule the massages for an hour later. Who were these mystery customers clogging up the time slots and hogging the two massage beds in the entire place? For being probably the only paying guests the spa had seen in months, we were being surprisingly ignored. When the time for our massages finally came, Laura and I were once again led into a room where the hot stones and oils were laid out. This time, a guy and a girl were waiting for us. They instructed us to “disrobe to our comfort” and lay on the tables, and to call us when we were ready. We took our shirts off and laid on our stomachs with our faces in the doughnut-pillows, and there was an odd moment of silence. “They said to call them?” Laura asked. “What, are we supposed to yell?” “God, probably,” I said. “I guess just, um…shout?” Laura lifted her head up, bellowed a short, loud “WE’RE READY!” and then slammed her face back down into the hole, and we both burst into giggles. I did the same thing to no avail. We lay there, feeling quite vulnerable, waiting for someone to pay attention to us. Did the free sidewalk massages spur lines around the block? Finally, the two employees returned, along with Kevin and Dr. Trainer. The whole spa seemed to be summoned for a procedure requiring no more than two individuals. Kevin arranged the stones on my back, and for a horrifying second I thought he would be the one rubbing dangerously close to my ass crack. Thankfully, Dr. Trainer did my massage, which once it got going was quite nice. I began to cut her a break and consider that maybe she received her license from a legitimate institution instead of a “school” operating out of the basement of a Denny’s. Laura’s masseur, however, seemed a little confused. “I’m doing…this…to this…um, muscle here? You know? ‘Cause this is like… if you’re doing activities…it gets real tense. And that’s why this sports massage is good you know? Like you requested. I think I’ll do like some deep tissue stuff too, if that’s okay? Do you want me to stray from the typical sports massage?” he asked. “Um… just, you know, the standard massage is okay, I guess,” Laura mumbled. The masseur seemed to think that Laura was supposed to be getting some kind of “sports massage” and was asking her all sorts of questions about which muscle groups she preferred to be massaged at which levels of pressure. I assumed that Kevin confused Laura with some sort of professional athlete in need of an intense rub-down when he scheduled her massage. One of the afternoons, we were sitting around in the room, while Syd waited an eternity for her massage. Kevin entered, performing his usual hot tub dance and scowling at the state of the room. Michelle’s birthday was the same weekend, and Laura had brought one of her fabulous homemade cakes. We had essentially bashed our faces into the cake the night before while running around the Penn State streets relighting the candles and screaming twenty verses of “Happy Birthday,” and the remnants were sitting on the broken radiator in the room. The cake’s displeasing aesthetic value was only matched by the mess we had created with our clothes, underwear, cosmetics and alcohol bottles. We were a disgusting group of guests that weekend, which is usually remedied by room service. As it was, we had to practically beg for fresh sheets. As the room became more and more foul, Kevin seemed more displeased every time he burst in. I understand that he might have thought we were gross, but he knew we were in perpetual recovery from the night before and should have realized that we had no space in which to put away our belongings. Not to mention that in normal hotels, there exists a level of privacy in which guests are free to do what they want as long as they don’t truly trash anything. Kevin’s obvious aversion gave way to a theory that we couldn’t believe we hadn’t thought of upon the first glance into the room. “This is Kevin’s room!!!” Sydney shrieked. “Look at it! This is totally his room! He probably stays with Dr. Trainer when they have guests and lives here when they don’t! That’s why he is so possessive of the hot tub and so annoyed with the mess! We are fucking with his personal bachelor pad!” A collective, hysterical, “Oh my god!” followed. It all made sense to us in our hysteria. The ugly, obviously male decorations, the teddy bear, the personalized prayer card, the microwave and fridge in the bathroom hallway, the personal DVD collection; I had even found used cereal boxes and Ramen in the cupboard in the nightstand. Kevin clearly rented out his own apartment! What else explained the most crucial and disgusting point of our theory- the robe? After our breakthrough, all questions were put to rest with Kevin’s most shocking statement to date. He came in, bustling around the hot tub, and paused in the door frame right before leaving. “Hey gals, I just wanted to let you know that in the bathroom, that robe on the door? The robe is for the guests, too. See you all later!” The robe. Is for. The guests- too. Who in holy hell else uses the robe if it is for the guests as well? We were absolutely agog. The sound that our four voices created was bubbling over with disgust, surprise, shock, and absolute madness. “Oh my god! The robe is for the guests too? What the hell are we supposed to do, share it?” Laura shrieked. “Hey, Laura, I call the robe after you!” Sydney cried, exploding into heaving laughter. Kevin’s thoughtless admission of ownership of the robe was perhaps the most uproarious event of the weekend. That’s a tough category, considering two other incidents that followed. Since the only trash can in our room held little else than a Coke can, we often had to venture onto the street to throw away our refuse in giant barrels. I did this one day, walking past a small crowd on my left without noticing what they were looking at. After turning from the trash can, I saw Laura’s masseur from the day before absolutely hauling ass down the sidewalk. He was running so fast that he was practically a blur. Kevin jogged after him a bit, followed by Dr. Trainer. I followed the guy’s path, and saw two police officers run after him up ahead. “Oh, he’s gonna get it! He’s gonna get it!” Kevin cried, bouncing up and down with anticipation. I watched as the masseur tackled a man carrying a large object. The police then apprehended the man as well and cuffed him, and the employee jogged back to our group with the object triumphantly raised above his head. The object, as it turned out, was one of the massage chairs the spa had set out for free massages on the sidewalk. Apparently, some idiot attempted to steal one of the chairs and tear off down the street with the item in tow. The spa, clearly treasuring the chairs enough to involve the police, probably couldn’t afford another one, and sent one of the employees into hot pursuit. The masseur placed the chair at Kevin’s feet and dusted himself off. “Good job, man, well done!” Kevin patted the hero on the back as I tried to hide my explosive laughter. The event was probably the most random thing I have ever seen. I burst back into the room, clutching my stomach and trying not to pee my pants. After sputtering out the story to the others, we were lucky not to crack ribs laughing. The same day, we returned to the spa after dinner to find another spectacle. Kevin and Dr. Trainer were standing on the street, watching as the police admitted a sobriety test to a shirtless man on the sidewalk. Given that it was Arts Fest weekend, this didn’t seem too strange, but Dr. Trainer in particular seemed very concerned as her hands fluttered around her face and she tried to get a better view. We walked up to the pair and asked what was happening. “That’s Kim’s son,” said Kevin. At this point, such an answer barely surprised us. “Is he drunk?” asked Sydney. “Nah, nah, he’s not drunk. The police are checking though, ‘cause they thought he was drunk since he drove down Allen Street.” For the record, Allen Street was the Arts Fest Street. The entire road was blocked off and crowed with a multitude of tents, hundreds and hundreds of pedestrians, trash cans, cones, and uniformed police officers. Dr. Trainer’s son drove down this road. He was also allegedly sober. I feel like a drunken driving charge truly would have carried more integrity than fishtailing one’s car through the middle of a festival. Following these events, the most twisted weekend of our lives pretty much came to a close. We cleaned the room, returned the awkward knick-knacks to their original positions, and bid farewell to Kevin and Dr. Trainer. “You gals were great! Come back any time!” Kevin exclaimed, in what I imagine to be his idea of a hilarious joke. “Yeah, see you soon,” Dr. Trainer concurred, obviously still shaking off the embarrassment of her son’s earlier incident. We gave Kevin’s odd, cramped, ugly little room a final look as Sydney slammed her hip into the door for the last time. I have to admit I was almost a little sad. After such an amusing turn of events that I can’t imagine most people are privileged enough to experience, I couldn’t help but yearn to pop in one of Kevin’s DVD’s, slip into the hot tub, and wait three and a half hours for my next massage. “You know,” I imagined Dr. Trainer telling me reassuringly as she rubbed my shoulders, “If you want, after your massage, my slippers are for the guests, too.”