48 Hours Living in Wi Spa, Koreatown's Temple of Relaxation

If heaven on earth exists, it’s in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. You can spend hours there just lying down, in rooms of various temperatures, with breaks to eat and bathe and nap—and then you do it all over again.

Wi Spa, a Korean day spa, is one of the best. It has several floors of saunas and tubs, and for a flat fee of $30 you get all-day access. There are optional extras like body scrubs, massage, and food from a restaurant onsite. Some people just hang out on the heated floor of a large central room or outside on the roof deck. Whatever you do, it’s a great place to pass a day. I go whenever I’m in Southern California, around ten visits in eight years.

Wi Spa is also open 24/7, which got me thinking: What if I stopped living in the so-called "real world," and started living where I feel like the best version of myself—at Wi Spa? You can eat and, reportedly, sleep there overnight. The spa’s website says that if you do, there’s an official checkout time in the morning, as at a hotel. But what if you stayed there for a day, or a week—or forever? Was there any reason not to?

I pitched the idea to live at Wi Spa to my editor at GQ and we decided on some goals.

The first was to stay two full days at Wi Spa. Cosplaying as a bored nineteenth-century European noble by spending months at a hot spring to “restore my health” sounds fun, but I didn't have that much vacation time. Forty-eight hours should work as proof of concept, where the concept is you could live your whole life in paradise. My boyfriend thought it should be longer. Seven days, maybe, with no phone at all for the stunt factor. “But you’d miss my funny/cute texts!” I texted him. (The “now-typing” ellipsis showed up and then promptly vanished.) Eventually, my editor and I decided that no more than 10 minutes of phone time per hour was fair.

The second goal was nirvana. Not in a strict religious sense. More in the vein of self-transcendence, release from suffering, fully inhabited bliss. Really, as much nirvana as I could possibly accumulate.

But the closer I got to my stay at Wi Spa, the more nervous I became about achieving this goal. I feel like I get close to nirvana no more than a few minutes a year—early in a vacation, or on a rare empty beach or hiking trail, when anxiety briefly flickers out like New York’s power grid in the summer. So I planned out a few nirvana-maximizing strategies. Every detail mattered: hunger vs. satiation, boredom vs. stimulation, getting as much sleep as possible. How would I keep myself from going stir-crazy after I’ve done everything in Wi Spa one or two or five times?

The key, I suspected, was getting in the right mindset. Not anticipating every last obstacle but remaining nimble enough to respond to what’s anti-nirvana on the fly. It’d be pseudo-spiritual whack-a-mole: the plastic field of battle a collection of saunas, and the mallet my imperfect human mind.

Day One

12:01 p.m.

I check in to Wi Spa, palace of dreams.

A front desk attendant helps me book a body scrub and promises there’s no recommended order to the saunas and tubs. Wi Spa is freedom: I can do what I want, when I want, without worrying about trivialities like time or wearing pants.

I don’t mention my two-day goal. It seems fine—they’ll charge me for a second day when I hit the check-out time, and then I’ll just stay. I worry it’s not something they’ve faced before, and a too-cautious manager might shut the thing down on a whim. But I figure this is Wi Spa and I will cross that bridge when we get to it.

The attendant gives me an electronic wrist key and sends me to the men’s locker room. The keys are magic, faceless black wristwatches that can withstand long baths, hundreds of degrees of heat, and icy cold. When global warming turns Earth into a Venusian hellscape these devices will still work, and cockroaches will use them to enjoy the saunas. A wave of your wrist key opens your assigned locker, and gets you food and drinks at the restaurant because this is a utopian society, a world without money. (You’re charged for everything at checkout.)

One thing you're required to do at Wi Spa is shower, so you’re clean for everything else. That means you must disrobe. In the co-ed areas clothing is required, but in the gender-segregated spas and showers everybody’s naked and there’s no privacy. The communal nudity is a big hurdle for some newbies: a friend of mine had such anxiety when he found out that he refused to go. Many cultures have a bathhouse tradition, but the U.S. doesn’t, which is too bad. The only nude people we see are HBO actors, porn stars, and our own sex partners—not exactly the healthiest combo. Being around a variety of naked bodies at the spa really isn’t gross or embarrassing. In fact, it can be a relief.

The showers’ water pressure is quite strong. The body wash smells like an ocean breeze; the shampoo like essence of Pantene. A used safety-razor head sits in the corner of my shower stall. After showering, I put on the spa-provided uniform. Utopia strips us of status symbols: Everyone gets khaki shorts and a T-shirt, in off-white (men) or yellow (women). Robes, to wear over the uniform, are provided but optional. I grab two to hoard in my locker.

Dressed, I head to the co-ed area. Wi Spa calls this the jimjilbang, though the term is also used to describe Korean spas generally. I pause to take the jimjilbang in: There’s a spacious heated floor where people read and talk and nap. Doors to the five co-ed saunas line the edges. A restaurant sits at one end, and a kids’ playroom at the other. Between those: public computers, unused except for a kid playing Minecraft and a young man checking stock prices; shelves of Korean manwha comics and American thriller novels; and the stairs up to the roof deck. There are many families. People cluster around outlets, charging their phones. The vibe is International Airport (spa theme). In my notes, I write “I am so happy to be here.”

I start, as I always do, with the salt sauna. The ten or twelve people inside lie on loose, inch-long salt crystals that look like fragments of those Himalayan salt lamps that are supposed to boost your health and mood via “negative ions.” The salt crystals are pleasant. Not that hot. No obvious ion activity. Actually, maybe they're a little hot?

There’s a problem already, though, which is that I haven’t thought of nirvana since checking in. I need to focus. An L.A. friend recently told me that, before an ayahuasca trip, the “guide” had him set intentions. Nagging myself is anti-nirvana, I know, so I set an intention: I want to accept anything I do here as correct. This would strike me as dangerous in the outside world, the mentality of a psychopath or a Wall Street trader. But in here? It feels natural.

Attempting acceptance, I obey when my body says “ice sauna.” The ice sauna is 40 degrees F—eight degrees above the temperature at which water freezes. (In Wi Spa, temperature descriptions are jokes; the only thing you can trust is a thermostat.) This is to provide some light cryotherapy for sore muscles or inflammation conditions like arthritis, I think.

The sauna’s pleasant chill crisps my hair. My clothes are a little sweaty when I enter, and it feels like I’m wearing a glue-covered shirt as it quickly dries.

Ten minutes in the ice sauna and I forget my intention. My inner monologue, usually muted by busyness, cohabitation, and stress, is amped up here and thrashing. A placard on the wall says the ice sauna should be the last sauna used. It’s meant to tighten your pores after you open them in the hot saunas. Which means I’ve already screwed up the Wi Spa experience and the front desk lied, re: freedom.

But I regain my center. The desire to be organized in Wi Spa is false. Whatever I do here is fine, and what I do here is leave the ice sauna to eat.

12:48 p.m.

At the restaurant I order kim-chi fried rice.

While I wait, I check out the guests. Most of the men are solo; most of the women are in groups. Many wisely carry small towels to mop up sweat. Others of us, wise in our own ways, do not.

There are couples, solo guests, and groups of all ages. Interestingly, a third or more of the younger couples appear to be interracial, which holds throughout my stay. What led these people to utopia? Or has utopia chosen them?

Wi Spa’s patrons are mostly Asian. What’s clear, though, is that Wi Spa transcends race. There are black, Latinx, and white visitors at all times. It’s a Korean spa with a “Korean” restaurant, but the restaurant sells teriyaki salmon and chicken fingers.

A potato salad banchan (a Korean side dish) is, disarmingly, the best potato salad I’ve ever had. I didn’t know that was even a category my memory was ready to rank. Is this nirvana already? Maybe not nirvana, but definitely bliss—honed pleasure, dopamine overload. Who would expect the path of enlightenment to be so salty-sweet with miso and seaweed?

1:07 p.m.

The salad dressing, which may be just plain sour cream, is disgusting. Not nirvana.

1:14 p.m.

I head to the best sauna: the red clay ball sauna. About as hot as an Arizona afternoon, it’s filled nearly foot-deep with thousands of clay balls the size of Whoppers malted-milk candy. They feel amazing on your skin. A wall placard says the red clay, imported from Korea, will “stimulate the lymphatic system and assist in the heavy metal detoxification process.” Sure! Why not!

When I step in, I sink. Lying down, I dig my arms and legs into the red balls, which terraform my body into something more malleable, more… goopy. My neighbor sweeps his limbs, making clay angels. A TV inside the sauna airs a Korean program whose hosts make elaborate construction-paper portraits of characters from Disney’s Aladdin remake. The eyelashes on Will Smith’s genie are far too detailed. Two men in the sauna grunt over and over, despite the low effort needed to remain lying down. No one else grunts. When I get up to leave, I have to pick red clay balls from my pockets and toes. The back and butt of my Wi Spa outfit have rust-colored stains.

Outside, four people are already asleep on the jimjilbang’s heated floor.

I’m nowhere near bored enough for a nap, so I head to the roof for the first time. It’s covered in couches and cushioned deck chairs. In my notes, I write: “Spacious. Literally amazing. Tiny fountains all over and beautiful plant-ware. THE WATER IS FLAVORED LEMON LIME.”

Posted up on the roof, a finger reflexively opens Twitter on my phone and I panic-swipe it closed before anything appears. I don’t want to see any news.

Minutes later, I again reflexively open Twitter. Again I freak out.

My phone is an anti-nirvana machine. I keep pulling it out, checking for nothing, rationalizing that my phone breaks total only a few minutes per hour. But the distraction is enough that I set a new rule: No news or news-adjacent Internet.

Completely disconnecting would make me weird, so this feels like a good compromise. And it serves me well. I mostly end up bored during my ten minutes and put my phone down early several times.

Back downstairs, fifteen people nap on the jimjilbang floor. It is immensely calming, seeing strangers asleep in public during the day: it says there’s nothing to fear. The government should pay people to sleep all over for our nerves.

Next is the jade sauna, Wi Spa’s second-hottest co-ed sauna. (The hottest is the dreaded Bulgama, a terror, but more on that in a bit.) The walls inside are set with polished, colored stones, which could be jade, could be something else, dyed agate or aventurine or, like, polymer-coated rocks. Many have fallen or been plucked from the walls over the years, leaving a hundred concave, empty sockets seemingly designed to trigger someone’s trypophobia. A placard says the sauna’s dry heat aids “the balancing of hormones” and is “known to lower the cerebral temperature.” So go here for a cold brain.

Some very L.A. conversations happen in Wi Spa, and I eavesdrop on two women reading what sound like horoscopes with spirit animals. One describes herself as a bear, and her friend as a sparrow. The bear reads aloud. Her spiritual journey is “finally” going to “bring her joy.”

“That’s what I’ve lacked,” says the bear. As proof, she describes how she recently wasted ten thousand dollars on... something.

The sparrow reads that she is going to receive “parenting energy” which, in the past, she has not.

“Yeah, you’re a sparrow,” the bear says. “That’s your weakness.”

2:35 p.m.

My body scrub is at three, and I’m supposed to soak in a tub beforehand to help my skin slough off easily, like wet bread.

So I head down to the men’s spa to soak. The spa has three tubs, two dozen showers, a steam room, and a conventional hot sauna. One of the tubs is a tub I fear. The men brave enough to step in wince, hiss, and yelp. It’s my nemesis, my Everest, the cold tub. I decide to put it off. Fifteen minutes in the warm tub and my first heat-induced delirium sets in, and a phrase appears in my inner monologue: “I am the eternal turtle who lives in this pond.”

When I’m finally called for my body scrub, I am still not prepared. An older gentleman lays me down nude on a laminated massage chair behind a frosted glass divider. He puts a towel over my junk and another over my eyes. Blinded, I’m splashed with a bucket of warm water, making a mold out of my, um, groin towel.

Then the scrub begins. He uses a rough sponge that feels like a microplane or ball of jagged aluminum. Nowhere is safe. It’s mostly uncomfortable but he grates an itch on my outer thigh and I see the face of God. It turns out that I’ve signed up for a pre-civilization ritual meant to strip the body of skin and flesh, revealing the soul.

I’m not shocked until he gets in between my toes. The thousands of nerve endings there, asleep for ages, wake up chugging Red Bull. The strangeness of it tickles my fight-or-flight instinct. After that, he flips me over to scrub my back, and hacks away at my heel calluses. Like a wire cheese slicer on a hunk of Havarti, he slivers those bad boys right off. Then he scrapes the arch of my foot and my whole leg spasms and I nearly kick him and he backs off.

After the initial scrub is a second scrub using exfoliant lather. He scrubs me again, punctuated by splashes from the buckets. When it’s over, I watch dirty water from my scrub swirl down a drain and think, There goes 1/8 of my body.

No one’s ever bathed me as an adult. It’s neither pro- nor anti-nirvana. But weeks later, my heel calluses feel great. I’m positive I’ve been walking better, whatever that means.

3:40 p.m.

Back in the restaurant, emerged from the chrysalis of my lame old epidermis, I order a peach Italian soda and say yes to whipped cream. This is out of character, but I’ve been here a while. Am I a new man already? Am I losing my mind?

My roommate in New York texts that he lost his keys and needs to be let in, a problem I can only hand off to my boyfriend, but which still kills my bliss. So I go to the roof to meditate. I’m new to meditation and this isn’t the best environment: speakers play soft pop music, daytime sports are on outdoor TVs, but I do my best and my head clears a little.

Before my trip, I asked a couple of L.A. friends if they’d visit me at Wi Spa to fill time and keep me mentally stable. The first arrives in the late afternoon. It’s his first time at a Korean day spa and he seems disoriented and overwhelmed. Right away, he locks his wrist key inside his locker. First my roommate in New York, now my friend: everyone’s getting locked out today. Not nirvana. The front desk has to send a technician to open the locker. In the meantime, my friend is naked until I grab him some Wi Spa shorts.

We go through the whole sauna and spa circuit with my scrubbed-raw skin. Before he leaves, my friend reveals a big, insane secret. When I told him I’d be “parked at the spa for two days, pursuing nirvana,” for some reason he interpreted that to mean he would be visiting me in a parked car outside.

Also not nirvana.

9:58 p.m.

I get bulgogi tacos for dinner, and then in rolls the jimjilbang night crew.

I watch a woman on the heated floor play with a brown hand towel, rolling it and folding each end into a little bun. Strange. Then—in a moment that warps reality—she puts the towel on her head, adjusts it, and it is Princess Leia’s iconic hair.

She taps her friend’s shoulder to get her attention. The friend is startled.

The spa uniforms limit our sartorial options. Twice, I see young women roll their tees up to look like crop-tops; another rolls her shorts up to expose her long, tan legs. One teenaged boy wears his wrist key on his ankle. But this is different.

Minutes into my hourly Internet allowance, I look up again. The friend now also has Leia buns.

I escape the night crew’s creeping insanity by visiting the red clay ball sauna a third time. After two sauna circuits, I’ve confirmed that it’s my favorite. In fact, it is many people’s favorite. I hear a woman say, “The clay is my favorite,” and in my mind I applaud. Five minutes later, her friend responds in a stage whisper: “The salt... is my favorite.” No one is wrong here, really, except the salt-favoring girl.

A woman slips on the clay balls. Recovering, she holds her hands protectively against one side of her head. But she’s not injured. She’s only dislodged one of her Leia buns.

Weirdly, it’s not long after this that it finally happens. Five minutes of absolute bliss—nirvana. I feel… not joyful, exactly, just good, supremely unbothered, even unbotherable. Like my anxiety has been set to “off.” I’m calm but engaged, unfearful. Nirvana ends when I wonder if I feel peace because I’m about to die. My tacos were extremely salty. I need to hydrate. And if death is a possibility, I want dessert first.

12:15 a.m.

I reward myself for nirvana with ice cream at a low, Korean-style table in the restaurant.

A military-looking guy bro-nods to me. Something about him seems off: twitchy, eyes darting around, maybe high or drunk. Anything he says, I think, will be good material. He walks over and tries to sit at my table but he doesn’t fit. So he crouches, but still looms awkwardly above me, making small talk. When I ask if he comes to Wi Spa often, he responds with a spastic grin. We chat about overnight sleep spots and I start to reveal my GQ mission.

Abruptly, he stands. He sputters something that I can’t make out. Then he shakes my hand, says, “Nice to meet you,” and rushes away.

It was intensely weird. I guess he was high? But after a few seconds my brain catches up, deciphering what I missed when he stood up to leave. What he said was, “Do you want to snuggle with me tonight?”

That’s pretty anti-nirvana. And right before bed...

Midnight, I soon discover, is too late to get the choice sleep spots. The large couches on the roof are full. The jjimjilbang’s heated floor is packed. (One sleeper wears a full, black-belted karate gi.) The recliner room—literally a room filled with recliners—is too bright. And when I grab a recliner anyway, I see that guy lurking nearby.

My last option is the men’s Sleep Room. Two of the twenty rock-hard sleeping mats in the Sleep Room are free. I tiptoe between dimly lit unconscious bodies to claim one. Luckily for my fellow Wi Spa men, I do not snore. Unluckily for me, everyone else here does. But I have earplugs and the two robes I hoarded earlier (!) to use as a pillow and blanket. The spa has exhausted me. This will have to do.

Day Two

4:00 (?) a.m.

A few bars of music play on repeat. My sleeping brain says it’s the spa, that Wi Spa is chirping an electronic birdsong. After five minutes a man gets up, walks to the source of the sound, kicks the source’s mat, and yells, “TURN. OFF. YOUR ALARM.”

7:50 a.m.

My nose feels cemented shut from, I guess, sleeping thirty feet away from the heat and moisture of the spa. I shower and think about what I haven’t tried: there’s the gym, the Bulgama (the superhot sauna; hell), and the cold tub (hell’s last circle). And I’ve only got five minutes of nirvana so far.

I’m about to leave the locker room when I see a young woman frozen in place several yards into the men’s spa. As if cued, a nude man walks between us, coming from the showers. The woman sees him—all of him—and audibly says, “Oh.” She swivels around, but not back the way she came: toward the men’s sleep room. She wears khaki shorts and a yellow women’s shirt, guest clothes, so she must be lost even though signs in English and Korean clearly mark the men’s spa.

I catch up to her. “You gotta go upstairs!” I say.

“Uh… upstairs,” she says. She heads off that way, slowly.

So now I’m the spa police. Becoming a cop? Not nirvana. Then I wonder, Was she really lost?

Then I wonder, Was she just, you know. Horny?

Upstairs in the restaurant, another surprise: a man buys a Haagen-Dazs bar for breakfast. The social value of his ice cream... is incredible. I’m reminded of the existence of pleasure and to not dismiss eccentric strangers.

He just came from the roof deck. “I can’t believe how cold it is out there,” he says.

“Is it cold?” I reply.

“It’s freezing,” he says.

The roof is a beautiful 65 degrees. Twelve people sleep on the couches, no empty spots. I find a chair and meditate to try to rustle up some nirvana, but my mind is jittery. Instead, I read a few pages of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” I wish I’d brought something on mindfulness or Buddhism or meditation, but “Song of Myself” turns out to be fitting. “I loafe and invite my soul,” Whitman writes, of his first visit to Wi Spa.

8:44 a.m.

I hit the Wi Spa gym and the caffeine and Whitman in my brain somehow combine with exercise to take me straight to nirvana. There’s a leg press at a weird angle: it causes me to appreciate my leg for the first time. It does so much! But I never think about it except when I see it in a mirror and hold it up against impossible standards of male leg beauty.

On the elliptical, in the proverbial moment, I feel connected to my sweat and last year’s Robyn album, which I didn’t like before. I push my analyzing mind out to make room. I get twenty minutes or so of not-constant but consistent nirvana. Is this why people SoulCycle?

When I shower afterward I see a man with a huge “#1” tattooed on his back. My normal brain would say, What a dumb-ass tattoo, but a fresh, calm, positive voice—the voice of nirvana?—says something like: “Good for him, believing in himself. Not everyone does.”

I want to use this peace somehow, so I decide to face the cold tub.

When I step in, a nerve running from my left foot to my left shoulder snaps into rigidity, taut as a violin string. I creak forward, deeper, and force myself in up to my shoulders. Stay until you relax! I think. But a staticky, crazed feeling fills my head.

I jump out. As the Zen koan goes, fuck the cold tub.

10:31 a.m.

Outside of the spa I struggle with anxiety, though “struggle with” oversells my day-to-day level of resistance—I often let it win. My isolation here is calming, but I feel disconnected. Outside of Wi Spa, the world continues without me.

My inner monologue asks, Does the world need me?

Strictly speaking, it says, the answer is no, right?

On the roof, I stare at a red-tipped jade plant in a tabletop box when something in me jells like a baked egg. The jade plant is odd-looking: stunted in its small container, it grows in disarray along several angles. But it’s not sloppy or bad. It’s not a failure. It’s exactly the shape it needed to be, the single formation the world allowed. The jade plant is so intertwined with the world that it’s indistinguishable from the world, indivisible from it. It is itself world.

Maybe I am too. Not a brain in a box that the world acts upon, not separate—that’d be the smallest, most superficial view. No: I’m a lucky chunk of the world, one gifted the short-lived ability to see and think and feel. But I’m world nonetheless, inescapably world.

No one on the roof is awake to catch me as I tear up. Afterward, I spend hours—the longest stretch of my life—in nirvana. I am become Chill.

4:24 p.m.

At my complete and utter ease, I go downstairs to buy a canned Thai iced tea. But something’s gone terribly wrong.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says the cashier. My wrist key won’t magically purchase the drink. “You need to see the front desk.”

First, I check my locker. The key doesn’t work there either. That means it isn’t just the restaurant: either my indestructible key broke or there’s something up with my account. I text my editor at GQ. “Update: I think I’m being kicked out.”

I can’t think of a way to stay without a working wrist key. There’s nothing to do but try the front desk.

In the lobby, a receptionist pulls up my account. “It looks like you checked in yesterday at twelve p.m.?” I nod. “One second, I need to check with my manager.” She disappears into an office adjoining the front desk, but returns quickly.

“OK, you have to check out now. You’re not allowed to stay more than twenty-four hours.”

Really? I say. What about Wi Spa charging a new admission fee after morning checkout?

That’s not a new admission, she says. It’s a penalty for people who don’t leave by the suggested check-out time.

“I’d be happy to check out and check back in again,” I say. “Would that be OK?”

No, it would not. Wi Spa’s policy—explained nowhere on their website—is that you may only stay two nights a week and they must be nonconsecutive nights. “Because we’re not a hotel,” she says sharply.

I briefly consider pulling the GQ card. But I’m sure I’ll just seem like an asshole, and I suspect that Wi Spa’s masters, to their credit, bow to the powers of no media, old or new.

“I’ll send someone to unlock your locker,” says the front desk attendant, “and then you have to come back here and check out.”

Guests continue checking in around me. I want to tell them what I’ve learned: utopia is an autocracy. Instead I try to preserve my dignity by pretending nothing weird is happening, all the while burning with shame. I return to my locker, and a technician unlocks it for me and leaves me to change into street clothes and consider my sins.

There’s nothing to do. An attendant totals the bill and runs my card. Before I’m ejected out the front door, she thanks me for visiting Wi Spa.

There is no single path to nirvana, but many. Here the path splits.

In the official story, I leave Wi Spa despondent. My article is screwed. But I realize I can come back in a day to both comply with spa policy and finish out my last nineteen hours. In this version of the story, a truth is preserved: neurotic and anxious, I want to be a good boy. I have a rule-follower’s craven heart. I am easily cowed.

The unofficial story would go something like this: Having my one and only piece of stunt journalism go up in flames stings. But the setback itself doesn’t turn me into a rule-breaker. It’s just that I agreed to a goal: two days. If I don’t try to achieve it, what would I be saying to myself? There’s no risk of hurting anyone else. Worst case scenario is, it won’t work and I’ll look pretty dumb. Most days even that slight, imagined chance of embarrassing myself would shut me down. But for whatever reason this time is different.

“I want to try to get back in,” I text some friends.

It’s probably impossible. Wi Spa could track the credit cards used to check in. And even if they don’t, or I use another one, I’ve attracted attention. I’m sure I’ll be recognized.

Then a friend texts me an idea: “You should shave your beard!”

Oh. I’ve had my beard since 2012—that’s when the first Avengers movie came out. I deeply appreciate what it’s done for my face. At this point, my beard makes me look like me.

Which is, of course, the problem.

I text my boyfriend to ask his opinion (he is a beard fan). There is a definite pause. “Maybe just wear a hoodie instead?” That absolutely wouldn’t work.

I weigh the possibilities. I could shave and Wi Spa could still recognize me. Or they could ask for ID and catch me that way. They could require a credit card on file to get a wrist key and red lights could flash and a klaxon could blare and iron bars could lock the lobby doors.

A side concern: the next weekend is New York City’s Pride, World Pride, and millions of hot visitors will be in town and there won’t be time to grow my beard back and I do not like how I look clean-shaven.

I stare at myself in the mirror, picturing it, and send my boyfriend a warning.

It takes twenty minutes and a gallon of shaving cream, but seven years of my self-conception washes down the drain of my friend’s sink. I look wrong, but the nicks and straggler hairs won’t give me away.

<insert before and after photo of my face>

My friend Wancy agrees to help me try to get in.

6:13 p.m.

When we enter Wi Spa’s lobby, I’m clean-shaven and wear the most different look I have, plus a baseball cap and sunglasses like someone obviously trying to disguise himself.

The plan is for Wancy to pay for us both on his credit card. There are four front-desk staffers and a big line, and the woman who kicked me out is still working. With every guest checked in I calculate and recalculate whether the line will deposit us with her or not. It is anti-nirvana.

The line moves.

“Next guest!”

It’s her.

I hover behind Wancy, try to let him take the focus as we walk up.

“Excuse me,” she says. She is looking directly at me. “Can you please take your sunglasses and hat off?” My heart stops. She points up. “It’s for our security cameras.”

Pathetically, I deepen my voice to say, “Uh, sure.” I slowly remove my sunglasses and hat, afraid to check whether she’s watching.

Wancy distracts her with questions. About the spa, the wrist keys, the cost. It works but extends the conversation, making me nervous.

But no sirens, no flashing red lights.

At 6:21, we’re in. We have two working wrist keys, and I’m thrilled I didn’t waste my beard.

So, two possible paths. A path where God tells Adam and Eve they must leave the garden for their sin, and they do. And a path where they turn around to see His flaming sword barring the gate of Eden and say, “Fuck, that was paradise—we have to at least try to sneak back in.”

Again: you must not break Wi Spa’s rules. But, in theory? With four credit cards and four good disguises? You could stay forever.

6:21 p.m.

Triumph: no nirvana. Isn’t that wild?

Wancy and I take our time going through the saunas and eating. He smokes, so I have a reason to visit the smokers’ nook for the first time, just a dedicated alcove on the roof. I tell him about my nirvana goal—about my intention, meditating, tracking my thoughts.

He says, “Couldn’t you do that at home?”

9:30 p.m.

In the men’s spa, a man of considerable build walks between tubs with his bald head covered in shaving cream. He hangs out for half an hour without ever shaving. He looks like a sundae.

A TV in the sauna airs local news. Wi Spa has TVs everywhere, but usually tuned to sports or Korean programming I can’t follow. Hundreds of race horses, the news says, are dead.

The news captures my focus, kills my mind’s voice, and creates tension across my body. When I realize what’s going on, I leave. I didn’t come this far for news to ruin my nirvana. Is there a degree of nirvana at which abominable things don’t touch you? Because during that 48 hours, I was unaware that our arrogant republic was edging itself with fantasies of war with Iran. I was unaware, too, that the federal government had forced hungry, terrified children to shit themselves and not bathe, allowed diseases to spread among them, and argued in court that it shouldn’t have to provide children with soap or toothbrushes. All of which feels important to know. But I can say with certainty that I’d have felt no peace at all if I had.

Before he leaves, Wancy gives me a blanket he hoarded and didn’t use. “There are lots of weird people here,” he says of the evening. I try not to take it personally.

Winding down on the roof, I’m chagrined that of my two goals—48 hours and nirvana—the former was very difficult and the latter not so much. I give up my roof couch to a couple staying overnight for the first time, and head to the Sleep Room. There’s one free mat, thank God. But I forgot earplugs when I came back—I have to live with the snores.

The Last Morning

4:30 (?) a.m.

A man in the sleep room full-on screams. Only once, though. So I fall back asleep.

5:13 a.m.

Two minutes of higher self hit me during my morning shower. It’s so quiet this early. But how can I relax, knowing I leave soon? On the other hand: If I feel this free confined at Wi Spa, how much more free could I feel outside?

My editor texts to ask how sick I am of the spa. 2 out of 10, I say: not very. Is that frightening? A third day would be bad, though. Telling him what I (maybe) did to stay in Wi Spa, I feel something that is not nirvana or bliss, but pride. My editor says I should check out an hour early as a reward and to avoid the late-check-out penalty.

8:13 a.m.

I start one last trip through the saunas. Cleaning staff mop the emptying jimjilbang floor; one takes a toothless rake into the clay sauna to even out the balls.

Of the jimjilbang’s saunas, only the dreaded Bulgama has no descriptive plaque. There’s simply no way to make it sound appealing. A thermostat above the door reads 204 degrees. You are here to suffer and make of suffering what you can.

My freshly shaven face burns in the Bulgama’s heat. The tips of my ears burn, my shirt toasts my skin. I crouch to escape the worst of the heat and pass a few blissless minutes unscathed. Two men wearing non-Wi Spa shorts enter, observe that it’s hot, and leave. Will Wi Spa catch these rulebreakers, force them into standard shorts, enforce the all-important social code?

I don’t know. It’s not my problem.

The red clay ball sauna is empty when I enter for the last time, the clay balls perfectly flat. From a pipe in the sauna roof, city noises: helicopters, chirping birds. Twitchy-brained anticipation keeps me from nirvana. But I choose to see it as mental energy, excitement, rather than a problem. It is easy to make that choice in Wi Spa, and hard outside. I’m grateful. I wouldn’t call the gratitude nirvana, but it is nirvana-flavored.

I wait for the perfect moment to leave, the precise balance of maximized pleasure and minimized exhaustion that will tell me I’m done. But will I even recognize that moment?

Nirvana answers: Desire and confusion and instinct are never eliminated. The fetish for control never goes away. It’s what the brain is, what it’s for.

Whenever I leave will be correct. No point (below 15–20 minutes, for health reasons) would be wrong.

I shake off the clay balls with a burst of joy at having this choice, at having life at all—at being given even this one small and silly thing.

Outside, a toddler climbs the stairs with his dad. “The... toy room,” the toddler says.

“We’re gonna go there,” dad replies. “We’re going.”

“Toy room,” the toddler says again.

Before I'm about to leave, for the first time I notice the warning placard on the wall of the men’s spa. There are five warnings. One for people with existing health issues, one prohibiting unsupervised children, and one proscription against using the spa while intoxicated.

The fourth?

Don’t use the spa alone.

And the fifth:

Don’t stay too long.

Originally Appeared on GQ