Everyone seems to have a favorite spa. Here in Tulsa, where sometimes it seems like there's a spa or salon on every corner, each of your buds are likely to pipe up with a different or new place you should try.

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But if you're like me (read: You've been to the spa fewer times in your life than you've flown in an airplane, and considering you can count the times you've opted for air travel on one hand, this is really saying something...or, not much, as it were), all you want in a spa is a place where, though someone you've never met will ask you to strip naked, hide your naughty bits under some towels and lie face down on a table in the dark so s/he can massage your body with scented oils to moody music for at least a half hour, your space won't be invaded. Also, a place where no one will make you feel like a rube for not being a spa fly.

A tall order, yes. But I found it recently at <a href="http://www.thespatulsa.com/">The Spa, at 8518 E. 71st Street in Suite C here in Tulsa</a>.

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Now, don't get me wrong. As I mentioned, I know that there are several spas in Tulsa that could meet my strange requirements. There's <a href="http://www.ihloffspa.com/">Ihloff Salon and Day Spa</a>, where you can emerge from your spa treatment smelling like the Aveda gods just crowned you their sovereign.

Then there's <a href="http://www.spalux.org/intro">Spa Lux</a>, where outside you feel like you're in Oklahoma but once you're inside, you could swear you're in Europe. I've been to both of the spas before for nail and/or hair treatments, and I experienced excellent customer service at each.

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See?

And then there are the spas where, since I'm pretty sure I couldn't afford to have my pinkie nail filed and buffed at those places, let alone finance a 30-minute massage, are probably pretty awesome places to go. And last but not least, Tulsa has its share of spas where you can sign in for a facial and get a half-price breast augmentation while you wait.

But, here's the problem. I get about as nervous about a trip to the spa as I do about an appointment with the dentist.

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I mean, at the dentist your mouth is wide open and your gums are vulnerable and there's a doctor in a white coat coming at you with sharp metal objects, but at least you get to keep your clothes on.

I'm not a hugger. I'm not a big hand-holder, either, much to my husband's chagrin. I can't even pull off a decent high five. Which is why letting someone I've known only from an e-mail or two draw impurities from that place on my chin where sometimes this one pesky black hair grows and I can never know it's there until I check in the rear-view mirror of my car because that's the only place I can see it and sometimes it's like it grows overnight and there I am in a business meeting or something and I graze my chin with my hand and holy mackerel there's that freaking chin hair again and there's nothing I can do about it at this moment in time except let it burn me in my soul while I pretend everything's hunky-dory.

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Great fear!

Instead of visions of relaxation and calm, this is what runs through my mind while I'm waiting for services at a spa. What if the therapist thinks my clothes are stupid? What if the therapist thinks to herself that she was just sure I'd be skinnier? What it the therapist notices that I'm sweating profusely under my armpits? What if the therapist takes one look at me, points and begins to laugh hysterically?

But Heather, who runs things at The Spa, didn't laugh when I told her the only facial I'd ever had was this one time at a beauty college. She didn't even let a smirk slip and then try to hide it.

In fact, all she pretty much did was tell me, you just get ready - this is gonna rock. But not in a space-invading way.

Oh, and here's your super-soft robe and your princess slippers for the afternoon.

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By the end of my hour-long facial, I wasn't thinking about chin hair. In fact, I wasn't thinking about too much at all. I was sort of floating over myself, like how I imagine happens when you've knocked over a giant display at the grocery store. But, without the overwhelming feeling of angst and guilt and that feeling we all get when we're forced to suppress laughter.

That's another thing - I giggle at the spa. In a nervous, dweeby sort of way. It's a most unbecoming reflex, but Heather just giggled right along with me.

Because no one should ever suffer through a case of the nervous giggles alone.

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Thanks, Heather.

Next up was my hour-long massage. What I learned: Did you know that there are tight little wads of nasty hiding in the muscles in your back? And that, given the right touch and a precise amount of pressure, they can be squeezed out and stars will explode on the insides of your eyelids?

It's true. At least, it was for me. It was so supremely cathartic.

I never even knew a massage could be like that. The only other massage I've ever had was at <a href="http://www.palacehotelbathhouse.com/">Palace Hotel and Bath House in Eureka Springs</a>.

You know, the place with the sign that looks like...

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Like a, um...
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Let's just put it this way: If you have to ask, you'll never know.

When I went to Palace I might have been 15 years old and mad that I even had to go to stupid Eureka Springs on family vacation because I could have stayed home to hang out with my boyfriend instead or something. At any rate, what was memorable was that I got to hang out with my mom at the spa and that we still laugh about the phallic neon sign. That was pretty much it.

But those little pods of anxiety and worry breaking open in my back and then melting down my arms and out my fingertips? I'm probably gonna remember that for awhile.

Then I headed to the back for my hour-long pedicure, where I learned a secret that made the next person to give me a pedicure gush and blush and exclaim to my friends how soft my feet are.

But I'm not going to tell you what that secret is. I guess you'll have to visit The Spa to find out.

<strong>The Spa</strong>
Where: 8518-C E. 71st Street
When: Tuesday-Friday, 10am-6:30pm; Saturday, 9am-6pm
Call: (918) 249-1772
Web: <a href="http://www.thespatulsa.com">thespatulsa.com</a>