Is it wrong to fly seven hours just to get a massage?
Let me just say this. I’ve never been a fan of massages. I can count the number I’ve had on two thumbs, and the number I’ve enjoyed on no thumbs. There’s a not-insignificant part of my odd mind that strongly believes that if I go into a closed-door room, take off my clothes, and pay a stranger to rub warm liquids on my bare-ass body, I’ll for sure end up handcuffed (and not in a good way). The whole proposition feels like an excessive indulgence. Yet after one hour in a room on Paris’s Right Bank, I now think there would be nothing excessive or indulgent in flying there a couple of times a year simply to get a massage from Paldon. She’s that good.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
My body has been a mess of knots and kinks for most of the past year. When I get out of bed each morning and look at myself in the mirror, I see a man with the posture not of the letter I but more like the letter K. All through the day I am the crooked man who walks very crooked miles. I can’t turn my head from side to side. I’ve never been good at managing stress or tension, or letting go of it. As one physical therapist told me, I carry it all in my body. And by “all” she meant not just the stress of that day, but decades of days.
Then, after a six-month period that was even more stressful than usual, I developed a horrible sciatic inflammation that ran up my left thigh into my shoulder and neck, before it doubled back and ended in my left elbow. Brooke, my wife, would just look at me and say, “You really should get a massage.”
Brooke believes there’s nothing a world-class spa treatment can’t remedy. If some high-end travel service ever created a train route that connected solely to the great spas of Europe, she’d be Passenger No. 1. So when she learned I had booked us at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, she immediately locked down her treatments at its Dior Spa weeks before we were set to arrive.
Whatever, I thought. I was just looking forward to going to Paris and staying at the hotel that David Bowie loved so much he had a favorite suite, that John and Yoko loved so much they spent part of their honeymoon there, and that the Rolling Stones loved so much they bought out the entire place in 1978 while playing tour dates in the city. It’s where cool meets couture.
By the time we got off the plane, I was such a crunched-up mess that I had no excuses. Thank God I didn’t, or I never would have discovered Paldon. After an hour in her hands, I truly was a man transformed. What’s impressive about her is I never even had the chance to tell her what ailed me. She simply pulled back the sheet and gasped. (Let’s be clear—I was on my stomach.) She took one look and said, “Oh, dear. Your back tells me you are in a lot of pain. But I know what to do.” And then she did it: 60 minutes of deep, intense kneading on my left leg, arm, and hip. And that was that. No more pain.
Last year, the Dior Spa at the Athénée got its own rejuvenation with new treatments added to the menu, such as super-fancy micro-abrasions and high-tech L.E.D.-light therapy in something called the Dior Light. These new offerings are one reason the Dior Spa has become a go-to not just for hotel guests but also for the most hard-to-impress of all clients, Parisians.
As Paldon promised, the best part of the Dior Spa treatment was that it truly did allow me to fully enjoy all the pleasures of Paris. As soon as Brooke and I finished, we got one of the coveted tables that line the sidewalk in front of the hotel, ordered club sandwiches, and then enjoyed one of the world’s best shows: people-watching. All I could think was, Thank God I can crane my neck.
Michael Hainey is a Writer at Large at Air Mail
