Couple's getaway gives a man's man just the right touch

To say I was shocked would be putting it mildly.

My fiftysomething husband, Bill -- a man of intellect and charm but historically not receptive to any suggestion that he explore his softer side -- inexplicably agreed to join me for a couples spa weekend.

''You'd have to have a massage," I said, reaching for the remote so I could turn down the sound of bodies colliding on a football field.

''OK."

''And then you'd have to choose a facial or a body wrap," I said, prying the Cabela's catalog from his hands.

''OK."

''And then," I said, certain that this would be the most daunting requirement of all, ''you'd have to describe your feelings about the whole experience."

''I guess this is as good a time as any to try it," he said.

Huh?

A few days later I set out with this perfect stranger for The Grand View Inn & Resort in Jaffrey, N.H., to experience its Spa Destination Getaway Package. The package included one night's lodging and, for each person, a 60-minute massage and either a facial, or an herbal body wrap. In the interest of journalistic breadth, we agreed that one of us would try the facial and the other the wrap. While I have had massages and facials, Bill had never set foot in a spa.

I didn't press for conversation on the ride up. I have always believed that my husband has a finite number of spoken words available to him on any given day, and I needed him to save them up for the post-spa interrogation.

The Grand View, encompassing 330 acres, looks like a farm, which not so very long ago it was. Scott and Kelly Mitchell bought the property in 2000 and began the task of converting the main barn into a spa, which opened in 2001.

The barnlike exterior of the spa building gives no hint of the clean, modern, soothing lines of the interior. Cool, tiled floors connect treatment rooms that were once horse stalls. An exposed stone wall recalls the farm's earlier landscape. At the far end of the spa, a door leads to an outdoor hot tub, in what was once the manure shed.

The inn is a regal 19th-century country mansion nestled at the foot of Mount Monadnock. Wood fires burn in the large kitchen and living room. The decor manages to be traditional and bold at the same time -- green or coral painted walls coordinating with large-patterned floral wallpaper and oriental-style carpets over wide board floors. The first floor is a series of oversized common rooms -- all comfortably furnished.

Nine bedrooms are on the second floor. We stayed in the Proctor Suite, a corner room with tall windows on three sides and a great view of the mountain, as well as a wood-burning fireplace.

We checked in on a Saturday afternoon, then headed to the spa for our appointments. I watched the man formerly known as my husband follow a massage therapist into a treatment room. At that moment I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall.

Relaxing under the sure hands of my therapist, Jacque (pronounced Jackie) Jones, I took the opportunity to ask her about what kinds of people tend to seek massages and what advice she would offer to a first-time client.

In the 20 years she has been practicing, Jones has seen massage enter the mainstream, but most of the spa's clients are still women, she said.

''The men who do come in have usually been talked into it by their wives. They come in full of apprehension and are usually delightfully surprised by the experience."

Among the things first-timers of either gender should know, she said, are that they need undress only as far as they are comfortable, that the therapist will undrape only the part of the body she is working on, and that a therapist will not touch the abdomen unless it's requested. A deep Swedish massage, which relieves tension in key areas such as the neck and shoulders, is a good introduction, she said. And, most important, the client should give the therapist feedback on the level of pressure and whether there are certain parts of the body that feel stressed or tight. ''The therapist's goal is to make the client comfortable," Jones said. ''You're in charge."

As I headed for the steam room, I saw Bill standing in the corridor, looking distinguished in his white terry robe, his cheeks just a bit pink from the facial.

''Well?" I said.

''I feel taller," he said.

The body wrap was a new experience for me. I lay on a table and was covered with a moist towel. Then the therapist wrung out muslin sheets that had been soaking in a hot herbal solution and placed them on top of the towel. She then wrapped a plastic-lined paper sheet around me and left me to marinate. It was pleasantly hot and fragrant, and I could feel winter-roughened skin softening.

Kneaded, steam-cleaned, and moisturized, Bill and I returned to our room, where I plied him with liquor to loosen his tongue.

''Any time someone rubs your feet without being asked, it's a good thing," he began.

He said it took him a while to truly relax and relinquish control of his shoulders to the therapist. He was impressed by the variety of strokes; the therapist used her forearm for some, her fists and knuckles for others. ''When she was working on my hands," he said, ''I really got a sense of how strong her hands were, especially her thumbs."

He liked the background music of outdoor sounds: waves and seagulls and, at one point, the cry of loons. Overall, he found the massage more relaxing than he thought it would be.

The best part of the facial, hands down, he said, was the table with a heating pad in the lumbar area. The therapist began by cleansing his face with something he deemed a little too floral, then placed moist, hot towels over his whole face except for his nose. He found that slightly claustrophobic at first, but he got used to it.

Next came a mud mask. He could feel it constricting his skin as it dried. The therapist washed off the mask, applied a toner and moisturizer, and finished with a face and head massage.

''That's it?" I asked.

''That's it," he said.

I was surprised, but glad, he had been spared the most grueling aspects of traditional facials -- the million-watt, zit-seeking spotlight and the dreaded ''extractions," the process of forcibly removing substances from pores hell-bent on retaining said substances. Jones explained later that because the inn does not use aestheticians, the modified facial is offered as a ''massage facial."

Clearly exhausted from the effort of describing his experiences in such concrete and effective detail, Bill headed downstairs to one of the inn's spacious living rooms. When I joined him a little later, he was visibly relaxed, but I couldn't quite tell if his contentment was due to the spa treatments or to his having found the Baltimore-Tennessee football game on the inn's big-screen TV.

Ellen Albanese can be reached at ealbanese@globe.com.