"I high-mindedly declined the Chardonnay-Clay Body Wrap: it savored too much of yet another method of taking in booze, through the pores."

Christopher Hitchens reports on his luxury spa experience. With gruesome pictures of the man who admits that, naked, he looks, from the front, like "a condom hastily stuffed with an old sock" and, from the side, like "an avocado pear and, on certain mornings, an avocado pear that retains nothing of nutritious value but its tinge of alligator green."

He reflects on "self-improvement" in the cliff-hanger ending of what is part 1 of his spa saga:

I ... had to admit what I have long secretly known, which is that I positively like stress, arrange to inflict it on myself, and sheer awkwardly away from anybody who tries to promise me a more soothed or relaxed existence. Bad habits have brought me this far: why change such a tried-and-true formula?

I also take the view that it's a mistake to try to look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be the register of a properly lived life.