I’ve had a facial. For the first time in my life. It was part of a gift token for my birthday (thanks sis!) for a men-only grooming emporium in the City.

Soft music, dim lights, huge soft leather armchairs, wide-screen TV, only the Times and the Financial Times in the magazine racks. Fresh-faced antipodean women in white uniforms and chirpy voices collecting their expensively-dressed charges and chivying them into little carpeted rooms behind heavy doors, with trolleys full of dentist-like tools and gadgets, and racks and racks of lotions. And clean towels, rolled up into cylinders, crisp and dry and cottony, laid out on the massage table in the centre of the room. Firm instructions: “Take off your clothes, you can leave on your trousers, put your shoes there, lie here with your head facing this way, cover yourself with a towel, and I’ll be right back to you.” She disappears.
It’s as much theatre as anything else – everything is a performance, designed to pamper, to attend to a man’s needs. I imagine for a heterosexual man it would be heaven. The women are real, not stick-insect models - full figures, confident, healthy. And I am the centre of their attention.
I take off my jacket and shirt. I see myself in the smoked mirror - I’m bulkier than I thought, and pale. My hair is too short for this place - a grown-out Number 1 - and I feel out of place. But nothing new there. So I unroll the towels, and lie down. I am unused to being looked after - that’s normally my role.
There’s a gentle knock, and Berneen comes in. She’s round faced with a brunette bob. No nonsense. She turns down the lights and places herself behind me. Within a minute my face is being covered in a cool thick gel, and my eyes are shut, and for the next hour I’m in sensory heaven. I’ve always enjoyed being touched - I love going to the hairdressers - but this is the first time that someone’s touched my face in years. With that thought, I feel sad. Maybe it’s the men I’ve been with - but I’ve not gone for very tactile people, it seems. Or perhaps the sort of intimacy in which face-stroking can happen hasn’t happened for me. Or is it that it’s such a maternal, feminine thing to do, and men generally don’t do it? Is it true that the last time my face was stroked was by my mother?
The stages of the facial are gently gone through. Little sponges in warm water are used to wipe each unguent from me. With my eyes closed, my senses of smell and touch are heightened. Menthol, eucalyptus, citrus, camomile, and warm and soapy rose. The textures change too - one is gritty, grainy, spread with effort; another is almost poured on like honey. A little contraption with a rotating soft-bristled brush is gently applied all over, starting under the chin and weaving right over my face to the other side.
Then I hear something being wheeled into place, and I feel a stream of steam being directed over my face. While this is opening up my pores, she takes each hand and massages it with lotion - and then I begin to see that this is not so much about the skin on my face, it’s about cosseting. Once my face is glowing nicely, and another cream is applied and washed off, an astringent one, I feel my skin drying and tightening, and I’m not sure but I feel that she’s blowing her sweet breath over my face. Then she begins to squeeze my zits.
It’s quite an extraordinary feeling - she’s got nails that are surprisingly steely, considering they’ve been immersed in various liquids. Mercilessly she goes right for the root of each zit and prises it out with a vice-like pressure that doesn’t feel human. It’s painful. But as she digs deep into the crevices beside my nose, in a way that my fingers could never manage, I begin to see that it may be worthwhile. When she’s finished, I’m relieved. It was intense. Then a smell that I haven’t smelled since my acned adolescence: Clearasil, being applied with cotton wool. When I asked her if it was, she said, “It’s just an antiseptic that we apply post-extraction.” Extraction. The word was chilling. And exciting.
Then the gloopiest, thickest layer of all was applied, and the sound of a plastic bottle farting out its last accompanied the sensation. I felt I was being buried. Then came the massage - a glorious, vigorous, powerful kneading of every muscle in my head and shoulders. I began floating at that stage. Another layer washed off and then the muscles in my face were explored with her hands - and I never knew that cheeks could hold tension, but I could feel it leaching away as she probed under my cheekbones, around my eyes, and outside my jaws. One last light liquid moistening, and it was done.
She left me to recover, to dress.
I wonder about women, sometimes. And physical touch. As creatures, we need touch to feel alive, I think - like apes who groom each other, it’s not about the nits, stupid. It’s about connecting with each other, sharing the knowledge about each other that can only come through physicality. I could sense this woman’s strength, directness, clarity, and tenderness. And something indescribable that I can only guess is connected to her breezy Australian culture. In a way, the fact that there wasn’t a sexual energy in the space meant I could appreciate something far more important. The fact that I, like many men I know, can mistake our need for physical touch as a sexual need. As I left the building, glowing with bonhomie and with the cheery farewells from the superbly professional women ringing in my ears, I felt right in myself again, centred.
And with perfect skin.