Barber Shop 1,2$ Shampooing hair, Head & Facial Massage For Men. #Hairst...
The Scalp Massage: One Man's Play-by-Play
BY NATE HOPPER
JUL 11, 2013
There is a natural desire that overcomes a man when he enters a salon to immediately turn around and leave. Between the iced glass and softcore electro-pop and the three women smiling enthusiastically at you the second you sneak through the door, you get suspicious. Or at least that's what happens to me, perhaps because of my general skepticism of commodified body-pleasure and situations where three women smile at me simultaneously. But I am here at Younghee Salon with a mission: to get my scalp massaged. And so I must stay.
"Have a seat," Younghee Kim herself smiles. I'm quickly offered a drink; they make homemade iced tea — with berries. Flustered and grasping for even one strand of hardened masculinity, I decline.
At the time they sit me down, I do not know what a scalp massage means. Yes, I assume my head will be rubbed, perhaps lathered. But my knowledge of massages — which is to say, giving a shoulder rub — is that there are untold intricacies. On the ride over, I calmed myself by thinking: Matters of the scalp and matters of pleasure are both best undertaken with minimal knowledge and expectation. Scalp. And pleasure.
"It's like a facial on your head," she says. But I have never gotten a facial before.
When she and my scalp masseuse, Ayo, ask me if my scalp is sensitive, I become self-conscious, though the feeling is slightly alleviated by the pillow they have me hug. If there is one part of my body I happily don't over-concern myself with, it's the part that's covered in hair. But as I sit, I imagine Will Smith would make quite the film out of wandering through whatever wasteland I'm now certain I've built up there over decades of hair, including several epochs of hair gel. Shit. Hair gel. I haven't had a cut in a while. Lathered it on thick this morning.
"Do you usually react to the product?" Ayo asks.
"Sometimes it will get a little flaky. I don't think anything too extreme. Not that I've noticed, at least," I say — but then continue, "But I could be completely wrong. This is about discovering my scalp," I actually say out loud to a human being.
"Does it get itchy or dry?"
"No, not really."
"Your scalp is just a little tense."
Glasses off. Eyes closed.
Ayo begins to rub an orange and lavender oil into my head, and she asks how often I shampoo. ("About every other day" was the correct answer.) She starts to massage my shoulders and nape to get the circulation moving to my head. It's a little rough, and she asks if the pressure is too much, probably because I might be grimacing slightly. (Don't know for sure. Eyes are very much closed.) I think some sort of mental calculus occurs exploring the relative exponential rates of embarrassment for grimacing and pleasure-groaning, the latter of which is the inherent risk of decreasing the pressure. I say the pressure is fine. And honestly, it is.
She then massages the oil into my scalp in a series of spirals that trace from the back of my skull toward my forehead. Then with zig-zags. Then she does some pinches. She also tells me how healthy this is for bald people or those who have short hair or struggle with hair growth; she brings up one client with alopecia.
When she starts digging her palm like a sander gently into my head, my scalp begins to burn. The citrus. It's a light sizzle — not so much painful as a sensation similar to that feeling one gets when the sun is just starting to burn them. (Younghee later tells me that they have an alternative, mint oil, for people with sensitive scalps, which I apparently have. Such is the process of discovering one's scalp.) She then begins to massage my head in a way that I can only describe as feeling like two-child octopuses humping my man-Fontenelle. It's probably my favorite part. Then she drains the blood back out by rubbing down my neck and shoulders. And that's about it.
Afterward, my head still simmers, while, after about 15 minutes of silence, my voice is lower and more dulcet.
Younghee comes back over to check in on me. "It feels nice," I say as she begins to laugh. "There's this nice tingly..." Tingly, I actually said.
"It clarifies," Younghee says. She also adds that it's very healthy for hair growth and brings up the man with alopecia.
I have to wait through a shampoo — twice over with mint shampoo; I recommend finishing on the cold rinse — before I can run my hands through my hair and feel my scalp. But when I do, it's soft and loose and, well, alive.
I should admit at this stage that I was not particularly scientific about this — I neither assigned scalp firmness control variables nor did a preliminary evaluation — but when I later asked Ayo to rate my scalp on a scale of ridiculously firm to a newborn child, she said the normal amount of too-firm. And when I walked out those doors, a baggie of samples in hand, dammit, I felt a centimeter taller.
