I love Basic Beauty. Strange how those words can roll off my lips without any hesitation but to say them otherwise I am very selective. The little beauty hideout tucked away on North Road is unassuming though there was nothing modest about those advertisements they had packaged about a year ago and marketed to women in search of a new experience.
I love my girlfriends. Oops! Here go those words again. But honestly, I do appreciate them a great deal and am so grateful they decided to abandon the idea of buying me perfume or scented lotions for my birthday this year and opted for a gift voucher for a specialized facial from Basic Beauty. There was just a tiny part of me which debated whether a cute blouse would have been better… nah it would have ended up in the closet with the other cute ones that I pull out ever so seldom because I hardly go anywhere. But for the last time, I love the fact that I am surrounded by smart women.
Three minutes after setting foot in Basic Beauty for the first time [I am so ashamed to say this now] I wondered what the heck a specialized facial is, and can you believe these people wouldn’t even say. When did such information become top secret and instead of a response people politely look at you and smile? Should I smile too and while we are at it can I skip and dance and maybe even serenade you folks? I pondered so many things when they ignored my question and hauled me off to another of the salon/spa to get the facial done.
It gets better… somehow in all my silly worrying I missed the point about me getting undressed and slipping into a towel. What is this again? A facial and I am supposed to change, but there was no point asking the young woman; I simply obliged. I forgot the questions and accepted that I was being silly — this was a birthday gift with an element of surprise and to question it was to ruin it. I lost the clothes and welcomed the towel. As I sat in that chair getting my face and neck massaged I floated back to those days when my face was so flawless it made people ask what I was using. Besides the coca butter lotion I lathered my skin with, the answer was, nothing. There was no Sacha oil-absorbent powder in perfect bronze or Constance Carroll eye pencil in dark brown, and or even the coconut flavour lip balm from Avon, it was simply the coca butter and for my lips, my mom’s petroleum jelly.
I closed my eyes, actually I had no choice, the beautician covered them with what felt like chilled cucumbers and I slipped into a dream where this well-trained young woman was standing over me and romancing my face like it was her long-lost love. There was nothing remotely sexual about the experience, but as a tiny little machine hit my cheeks and started massaging I kept thinking that no man and I mean none could reproduce that in a touch.
“Oh my, is this for real? Am I really sitting in a chair and being pampered like this?” I thought and I quietly prayed that it would last longer than the scheduled hour. The young woman had disappeared at one point to let me enjoy a steam rinse on my face and as the time slipped by I kept hoping she had forgotten that I was in there. But she returned only to unleash a barrage of massages and pampering on my face that not only left me speechless but also angry that I had missed out on this all this time. I felt the stress, pain and build-up of fat leave my face and emerged from the seat to stare at the face I had many years ago when life wasn’t as difficult, complicated and self-indulging. To Basic Beauty, my girlfriends and that amazingly good beautician who treated my face like it were her own, thanks for everything.
(thescene@stabroeknews.com)