So its
Father’s Day and my gift is a professional massage. Not a 30 minute massage, not even a 60
minute massage, but a 90
Minute Massage! I don’t
get a lot of massages, so I’m really looking forward to this. I’m thinking that my biggest challenge
will be just staying awake.
I’ve been
talking with some neighbors about the 90 minute massage and everyone is
recommending the Swedish Deep Tissue Massage. They say it’s absolutely the
best. Now I’m even more
excited as I have a plan and solid advice on how to get the most out of this
experience. I show up at
the place and my first concern never materializes: there are no male massagers
on staff that day. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that, but I always have concerns of turning into
George Costanza and becoming part of a disturbing Seinfeld episode.
I go to my
room and the masseuse is a very small, slight of build woman. She asks what kind of message I’d
like. I very directly tell
her, “The Swedish Deep Tissue Massage!” I’m
a man who knows what he wants. In
the back of my mind I’m thinking to myself, “She’s so small, I wonder if she’s
even strong enough for the deep tissue massage. Shortly my concern is allayed and my
worst nightmare begins.
As she
starts I’m thinking, “Boy, I underestimated her, she is pretty strong.” As we’re twenty minutes into this
so-called “massage”, my body is beginning to feel like I’ve been wrestling with
Gorilla Monsoon. At one
point I can feel my muscles begin to spasm uncontrollably as she digs deeper
and deeper into my flesh pulling muscle (that has been lying peacefully for
over 40 years) off my bones. I
guess she noticed the spasms too, because at one point she stops and asks me,
“Am I being too rough, do you need me to take it easy?”
Let me just
start by making one very plain statement, “I’m an idiot.”
As I’m considering my answer, a
couple of thoughts are racing through my mind in a split second. First, at this point, I’m almost a
cripple and I still have another hour of this torture to go. If I go another 60 minutes, I’ll
probably need a wheel chair to get out of the building and that’ll be pretty
embarrassing. But I very
quickly weigh that in my mind against telling this young woman who has to weigh
less than 100 pounds that, “You’re hurting me, please stop.” I just can’t “Man-Up “ and say
that. Especially after I
came into the room and specifically asked for the Swedish Deep Tissue Massage -
like I’d had 50 of them before. Instead,
I say, “No this is fine” …cursing myself.
You’d be
surprised with 90 minutes how many muscles she found to torture on my body,
even my neck - this became a significant problem later that night. My wife and I went to the movies that
night and I could only see half the movie. And it wasn’t because I needed to
leave half way through the movie. (That
would have pre-supposed my wheel chair aid was ready to leave as well.) No, the problem was that we needed to
sit in the first couple of rows of the theatre. I couldn’t lift my head high enough to
see the top half of the screen.
