It’s such a disgrace that America doesn’t have bathhouses. Yeah—I know, there are a few scattered across big cities, run by Koreans and Russians who saw the niche market for their own people’s needs and took the risk. But those aren’t nearly enough. What I’m talking about is the culture. The community. What America really lacks is enough people who see meat as just meat, especially when said meat needs to be cleaned. It’s a general procedure. Nudity isn’t inherently sexual. Nothing to be awkward about.
Don’t argue with me. I’ll admit, as a Korean woman myself, the Korean bathhouses near me in New Jersey are total money grabs. Their owners seem to have forgotten that bathhouses are a weekly necessity, not an annual indulgence. Worse, they’ve now become part of some bizarre fandom tourism for K-pop enthusiasts and lifestyle influencers. They giggle when they undress, take selfies in the communal bathtub, and blast Tik-Tok tutorials on how to wrap your wet hair into a lamb head towel hat at maximum volume. They fetishize Korean bathhouses the way their grandpas did Madam Butterfly. A spectacle. Harmless, yet dreadful.
Call me a gatekeeper, but these behaviors have no place in a traditional Korean bathhouse. If I may: The experience begins with a modest wooden front desk, where an overworked young attendant hands out numbered wristbands—blue for men, red for women. Lockers, painted to match the woodgrain of the desk, line the walls, though a few always seem perpetually out of service. In between them, long, damp benches await, but you never sit directly on them. Your towel is both a barrier and a small act of reverence.
Women’s bodies. Shapes—full or not full. Skins—dark, light, saggy, wrinkled, wounded, or new. Marks—pigments, moles, cuts, burns, pregnancy stretches, tire tracks from elasticated waists that are too tight, red scratches from metal-wired brasseries that are too uncomfortable, and shriveled dumpling folds hidden beneath the disguise of a towel, remnants of breast cancer surgeries. Colored hair always looks dry. Permed hair always looks messy. Odors—pleasant and unpleasant—are intrusive, baked into the hot, wet air. A mirror looked into by the bathed, never by those still waiting. Phone conversations that disregard privacy or appropriateness, exposing refusals, pleas, and flirtations.
Walking into the bathing section, you’re hit by another wave of dense humidity, like you’re stepping off a plane in Florida. As the steam clears, you pick one of the twelve stalls, each fitted with a stainless steel showerhead, from which water comes out either too hot or too cold. These showerhead stalls are separated by an opaque glass screen with carp patterns from the body scrub area, where workers in bras and panties loofah away gunk and strips made of dead skin and dirt from reclining bodies. Across from the screen, a whiteboard hangs beside the shelf for exfoliating creams and neatly folded disposable massage bed covers, scheduling upcoming customers for the service by their wristband numbers, written in black marker.
Cordial exchanges with the body scrub workers here aren’t much different from those in hair salons. Except here, you may be praised for the shape of your breasts and you won’t feel weird about it. Occasional inquiries are thrown back and forth over the carp-patterned screen: How many numbers are waiting ahead of me now? Is 231 ready? Is 231 present at all? Yes, 231 with round tits is present and ready for scrub. My point is, here in a bathhouse, you take off your clothes, stash them in a locker, participate in a matriarchal order while emancipating your natural character, briefly feel significant about others’ bodies or your own, put your clothes back on, look at yourself in the mirror, and step back into your lightly-interrupted societal role. None of this should even be a thing in the first place.
The male part of it? Not sure. I wouldn’t know. I suppose it’s more or less the same, or exactly the opposite.
*
That’s what I had thought until I went back to Seoul in January to visit family. Halmeoni is very sick, my mom told me on the phone before my flight. The eighty-four-year-old woman had always been sick since I left Seoul for America, but I guess this time she was sicker than ever. Mom was the only one there to take care of her.
“Do you want to go to the bathhouse in the afternoon?” Mom asked. She hadn’t been for a while, not since my halmeoni started asking what time my grandfather would be home for dinner, even though my mom hadn’t seen the man once since middle school. She said she desperately needed a body scrub.
Seoul in January was not that much different from North Jersey when it came to temperature. Too many winter accessories to stuff the locker. “Annoying, Saturday afternoon crowd. Why don’t you go in and put down our wristband numbers first?” Mom suggested.
I realized that I, once adept at this game, was now green. I pulled off my socks and slid on the public rubber slippers—so wet—before entering the bathing section, not minding the complaining look from the janitor. As I tiptoed back to our lockers to avoid stepping on random hair with my wet feet—
“Done?”
“Done.”
So we peeled off our winter coats, sweaters, and long johns, the phantom smell of sourness rippling from our skin as we stripped down to the core. I peeked at our naked selves in the mirror. I looked bigger. Mom looked smaller. I carried our basket with shampoo and facewash, like we were about to pick mushrooms in the forest.
We showered first, then moved to a hot spring bath. There were four of them built into the floor, each with a sign that marked their respective temperatures and healthy minerals that could supposedly cure a multitude of diseases. We picked the smallest, least crowded one. I sat into the water and let it rise to my chin, my shoulder blades kissed by the bubbles streaming from the hot spring pipe. “This is the damn Korean way,” I announced.
“You must have missed this,” Mom said, her eyes shut. Her long hair was tied into a tight bun, compliant with public bath etiquette. “Five years since you last came back.”
“I can feel my dead skin melting,” I whispered. “Five years’ worth. Showers just won’t cut it. I don’t know how Americans do it.”
“Gross! People will hear you and kick you out.” She lightly slapped my knees as a warning, we both laughed. Our numbers were still not called. It was a Saturday afternoon.
I looked around. On my left, an elderly woman murmured to herself with her eyes closed, her towel cushioning her neck against the edge of the bath. Probably in the middle of meditation. Across from us, two teenagers were having a heated argument about whether it was Jupiter or Saturn that had the ring system. Their stomachs were so flat. From a distance, a young woman with a pink basket just like ours walked toward us. She toed the water for temperature—I could see one of her ankles was tattooed with a butterfly—and stepped in. She sat on the submerged step to our right and pulled out a phone from her basket.
“She smuggled a phone in!” I hissed at Mom.
“Young people are so addicted to phones these days,” she said, giving me a blaming look, as if my phone addiction was the sole culprit behind the decline of civilization.
“She could take pictures with it,” I reminded her.
“Of you?” She peeked at the woman, then withdrew her glance. “No, she wasn’t. Not the right angle.”
“I’m still going to put an end to this,” I whispered. “I’ve had enough of this shit.”
So, for the next ten minutes, I tried to stare a hole into this woman. She knew what she was doing. She just ignored me. After a while, she even made a phone call on speakerphone as if to piss me off, with the voice of a man on the other end loud enough for me to hear. From my angle, I couldn’t tell if it was a voice call or a video call, but she was clearly facing the screen. I searched for someone else to notice, but no one did. The elderly woman continued meditating. The teenagers had now entered the magic realm of palm reading each other. The other hot baths were too far away to matter.
“That’s it.” I stood up abruptly. Water splashed with a threatening sound, startling everyone but the meditating woman. I marched out of the bath and headed straight to the locker room to report her to a staff member. Later, my mom told me she’d thought I was going to confront the woman, but I went straight out. “A bit sheepish, I say,” she joked.
The staff quickly walked in and asked the woman to put away her phone. She wouldn’t. “I’m conducting important business,” she argued.
“Not in the bathing section.” The staff scanned the bath and saw the two teenagers who were now watching the incident unfold with rich interest. “There are young girls here, too! Do I have to ask again? If you have business to deal with, please go upstairs to the cafeteria where everyone is dressed.”
“You’ve just cost me millions,” the woman snorted as she reluctantly put the phone back in the basket. Her eyes flicked in my direction but lacked the courage to meet mine.
Our numbers were finally called. My fingers were soaked in water for so long that I could commit crimes without leaving fingerprints—or I’d leave extremely large and clear ones, whichever way it was. I laid flat on a massage bed. The loofah brushed back and forth over my thighs.
“You won’t believe it,” I said to my body scrubber. “A woman was video chatting with a man in our bath just now.”
“What? Did you tell the staff?” She tapped on my wrist. “The other side.”
“Of course. But my point is, people never used to be like this.” I awkwardly shifted, elbows guiding the turn. As she took off the loofah glove to apply milk on my back, I saw her hands. They weren’t nearly as soggy as mine. I wondered why.
“If I saw her, I’d kick her ass,” she concluded, matter-of-fact. We never talked again. The body scrub came with a ten-minute massage. I almost fell asleep.
I reunited with my mom in front of the sauna room. We were both covered in milk droplets and strips of dead skin cells, looking dirtier than ever. We took a thorough rinse, our skin now feeling as smooth as a dolphin’s.
“Another five minutes of sauna?” I suggested.
“Sure.”
I pushed open the door to the hot sauna room. It was packed. Mom and I found ourselves a corner to sit, barely able to see each other through the dense steam. The wet towels under our butts soon turned toasty.
“We need to return to our lockers before going upstairs for dinner,” Mom said.
“Why? They provide sauna T-shirts and shorts right outside the lounge area,” I said.
“I need to check my phone,” Mom replied.
“Now look who’s addicted to their phone,” I chuckled.
Pah! I felt a slap on my back.
“Ay, it hurts!” I protested, “That was a lot of slapping today! Everyone in this room heard it loud and clear.”
“So you would not make fun of your mama again,” she spoke with victory in her voice. “I need to see if I have any missed calls from your halmeoni.”
“I know,” I said, feeling a sudden chill despite the heat in the room. “Late-night missed calls from you guys always give me heart attacks when I wake up and check my phone..”
“There was one time halmeoni called me six times while I was at the bank,” Mom said. “My knees went so weak that I couldn’t even stand. Turns out, she just wanted me to buy some pork to make jjajangmyeon.”
“Tell me about it,” rasped a voice I didn’t recognize. The sauna room was dark, small and thick with steam. I couldn’t even tell which corner the voice came from. It made me think, almost randomly, that all murder-for-hire deals should be arranged in sauna rooms. No wires. No faces. And maybe United Nation conferences too, so that smaller countries could feel more at ease sharing their opinions. Without clothes and names we would all be equals. “My Alzheimer’s father-in-law once called me at three a.m., claiming there was an emergency. I almost had my son call an ambulance before I could figure out what he wanted—turns out, he dreamed of an earthquake.”
Amid a few muffled laughs and hums of approval, someone rose to the water bucket and picked up the ladle. The hot stones sizzled, impatiently awaiting another release. As much I prided myself on steam tolerance, these Korean aunties were hardcore. I grabbed the nearest hand, hoping it was my mom’s, and fled the scene smiling.
*
We took a taxi home since it was late. “I still can’t believe that woman was video chatting with a man in the public bath,” I said to my mom.
“I hope they blocklist people like her,” Mom replied.
“You said a woman talked to a man on the phone in the bathhouse? Naked?” The taxi driver suddenly broke his silence.
“Yeah. Can you believe it? She still wouldn’t put her phone away even when the staff came. So selfish,” I complained.
“This is why our society is crumbling. It’s these people. No moral fiber,” the driver commented.
“It’s not like she had an emergency.”
“Emergency? You’ve gotta be joking me,” he cackled, waving a dismissive hand. “She’s taking videos of naked women and selling them online. Loads of people do it. You don’t even know, kiddo.” He sounded weirdly certain.
“I’m sure scum like that exists, but the woman said she was discussing important business, millions,” I parroted, figuring I might as well entertain the driver on his night shift.
“Millions, my ass!” he snapped, his tone sharp with acidic hatred. Some snow slid from the car window as he went on, relentless. “B***hes like her don’t make money unless they sell their ass! That’s her business! Pretentious c**t tryna act precious in their fur coats and fishnets…” His voice dropped to a murmur, as if he wasn’t speaking for anyone else to hear. “I say they just need a real good d**king to learn who’s the boss.”
I froze, realizing what I had done; it was Rapunzel venting about the sorceress to the prince, only to find out the prince was a creep, too. I avoided looking at Mom, not wanting the driver to catch us exchanging glances in the rearview mirror. We sat in tense stillness as the car swerved through some very frantic lane changes and abrupt turns. When we were near our apartment, we asked the driver to stop two blocks away and handed over the fare.
We watched his tail lights disappear around a corner before walking home.
“Don’t talk to taxi drivers anymore.”
“Okay, Mom.”
*
You know what? Maybe I am curious about the male part of the bathhouse. I wonder if they compare penis sizes. I wonder if they get excited seeing each other’s bodies like seeing ours. I wonder if they fantasize about us as much as we disregard them. I wonder if they talk about their own families. I wonder if they wear their scars like a badge the way we hide ours under towels. I wonder if they also have milk and lavender oil rubbed into their skin during a massage. I wonder if they are used to a patriarchy built without us. But I bet they do just fine in there. They do just fine in there and in other places.
Claire W. Zhang was born on the border between China and North Korea. A short story writer now based on Long Island of New York, she has contributed to or have work forthcoming in the Pinch, Hobart, Third Coast, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere. She edits fiction at The Baltimore Review and holds an MFA from Pratt Institute. Explore more on Instagram: @claire.zzzzz.
Photo by: Rahul Pandit on Pexels