The last time I’d lain on a that kind of surface was during my most recent visit to the gynecologist. I had been bleeding during sex, only after orgasm, always a week before my period. The last time it happened, I jumped off my husband and ran to the bathroom, panicked. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked, tears streaming down my face as I inspected my blood on a piece of toilet paper.
In the gynecologist’s office, I sat up as she asked me questions about my body. I answered straightforwardly, noticing a single bead of sweat sliding down my ribs under the paper gown I had tied under my neck. “How often has this happened? Have you had more than one partner in the last few months? Do you use protection?” She fired off question after question without looking up from her tablet.
“Is this, um, normal? Like, do you see it with a lot of people?” I said, trying to get her to meet my eyes.
“It’s not unheard-of,” she answered, finally putting her iPad down. “Let’s take a look.”
I laid my head back and felt my hands tremble. “Can you scooch your butt closer to the edge?” she asked. I obliged, wiggling my bare ass down to the end of the platform.
“There.” She was focused, I noticed. “That’s perfect. Now you’re going to feel something cold. It might be uncomfortable. Please let me know if there’s any pain.”
I felt the speculum slide between my legs, and then inside of me, as my bare toes clenched in the metal stirrups. I tried to remember to breathe. I could feel the texture of the walls of my insides against the instrument’s unnaturally smooth sides.
“Ahh,” I made a sound as I exhaled, trying to instruct my body to unclench, but everything tightened instead.
“Is this painful?” the gynecologist asked, jolting up. I tilted my head forward. Her face was framed perfectly between my knees. I shook my head.
“Try to relax,” she said. “It’s normal for this to feel uncomfortable, but there shouldn’t be any pain.” I was suddenly embarrassed by my apparent lack of control. Why couldn’t my body do what she was asking, what I wanted it to do? I smiled at her weakly.
“This always happens.” I paused and then went to reassure her, “There is no pain, though.” I could tell that she wasn’t sure whether to believe me, that she doubted I was a reliable reporter on my own body. “I don’t think it’s pain,” I offered, and she nodded, silent.
When I told Sara about this experience, she looked at me knowingly before I was even finished and interrupted me. “Victims of sexual assault seize up at the gyno. It’s, like, a known thing.” I raised my eyebrows.
“Interesting,” I said, but the reason I can’t relax at the doctor’s office isn’t because of sexual assault, or at least not exactly. For a second, I wished I could lie to Sara and point to one specific event in my past that would easily explain my body seizing up. I know that a speculum inside me reminds me of sexual violations I’ve experienced, sure, but I also hate the gyno because I’m not the one holding the instrument, opening myself up. I hate that I’m expected to trust someone other than myself. I hate that I am being looked at so intimately. I hate being assessed.
When I became pregnant and started to weigh the pros and cons of giving birth at home versus at a hospital, I made a list of what I feared most in each scenario. I wrote “pain” and “hemorrhaging” under home birth, and under hospital, I added “doctors and nurses.” It was only then that I realized how much I’d come to distrust those in positions of power who, often without my best interests at heart and without my explicit consent, had made my body feel like it wasn’t my own.
While the staff at the Korean spa are authoritative, they don’t inspect and evaluate you. The terms of the service and their interaction with your body have been agreed upon in advance. They are all women. They wear minimal black undergarments that keep them cool and dry. There is a solidarity in their stripped-down attire that makes me feel safe, like we are all on the same side.
* * *
“FACE UP,” THE tiny attendant tells me. A washcloth falls over my eyes.
“Thank you,” I mutter, but she ignores me, already busy running hot water into a bucket. Splash. The water hits my body and rolls off as I quiver with pleasure.
Here at the spa, I’m not thinking about cleanliness or my insides or who I belong to. I’m just here, one of many women who are unwrapped and undressed. I’ve never known this kind of rest anyplace else in my life. I let my body unclench. I let myself relax. There are no binding belts or high heels or stirrups. There is no being looked at.