Where the Boys Aren't

"What are you doing at a spa?"

This is my father speaking. I'm on the phone from Canyon Ranch, a health resort in the Berkshires. "Lots of things," I tell him. "I just had a shiatsu massage."

"From a man or a woman?" he asks.

"A man."

Dead silence. I know exactly what he's thinking. My father is of that generation for whom the word "massage" means a seedy room drenched in red light and a wisp of an Asian girl. Finally, I say, "I don't consider massage a.sexual experience."

"Yeah," my father says, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't."

I think better of my temptation to explain further that Canyon Ranch is a destination that makes frank use of terms such as "holistic" and "wellness." Back in his day, in the late '50s and early '60s, my father, too, went to the Berkshires to unwind. He and his buddies stayed at a place called Eastover, remarkable for its Civil War motif. The American Heritage Room, an underground museum filled with artifacts that include a Gatling gun, anchors an array of cottages named the "Lee," the "Grant," and "Jeb Stuart" The indoor pool features portholes for those who enjoy watching people swim. "It's a real hot spot for swinging singles," a local told me when I asked him about Eastover, "where they still drink and dance till dawn."

There are few men at Canyon Ranch, much less pasty-white, thirtysomething guys like me. On my first day, I almost asked at guest services if perhaps I'd booked my stay during a women's retreat. My daily abs class consisted of me and 25 women squatting on exercise balls. The men's stretch class was two other guys and me, plus a staff member limbering up on his break. It's the type of place where my masculinity got an abrupt boost when one of the women at dinner reported seeing James Taylor on the treadmill.

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