There’s nothing masterful about Masters Touch in Falls Church. It was one of the unhappiest spa experiences I’ve had.
When I arrived on a Saturday afternoon, I was greeted by a desk full of unsmiling staffers—some with unflattering hair, a surprise in a place that’s mostly a hair salon.
I had signed up a $35 half-hour massage—just enough, I had hoped, to unkink muscles sore from a day of holiday shopping. The massage therapist led me back to a candlelit room, instructed me to “lie face up,” and left. She asked no health questions, so when she returned I volunteered that I wanted her to pay the most attention to my neck, back, and shoulders.
While I lay on the unheated table, I could hear rock music and voices in the salon and an annoying intercom system that would squawk messages such as “Monique, line 1.”
During the massage, my attendant used the same boring strokes on my back and shoulders over and over. Twenty minutes in, just as I was about to ask why she wasn’t touching my neck, she said, “thank you,” and made to leave. That was it? I asked her to massage my neck, and so she had me turn over, spent a few minutes on it, and again called it quits. When I got up, I noticed the clock said 25 minutes past the hour, not even a full half hour.
Sherri Dalphonse joined Washingtonian in 1986 as an editorial intern, and worked her way to the top of the masthead when she was named editor-in-chief in 2022. She oversees the magazine’s editorial staff, and guides the magazine’s stories and direction. She lives in DC.
