I’m no stranger to awkwardness. In fact, I think my entire personality is seeped in it. I crippled myself a few months back and only recently decided to go see a doctor about it. Resulting in a series of awkward semi naked visits in which I get my neck snapped by a chiropractor. A portion of my treatment, though, is to also have manual therapy (very thorough deep tissue massages). As a person who has never had a massage before, and let’s be honest, is mostly hesitant about touching in general I probably didn’t do a good job hiding how uncomfortable I was.
The first time I had the deep tissue massage I was also blissfully unaware it was going to happen. I had thought I was coming in purely for the snap crackle pop of getting my bones shifted back into place. But noooo. I also apparently had a massage scheduled. I was lead down the hall from my original treatment room to “the relaxation zone.” The sound of trickling water was everywhere and just made me have the uneasy sensation of needing to pee. Also the fact that I’m just sitting on an uncomfortable bench seat in my backless hospital gown wasn’t comforting.
Eventually, after having exhausted my patience attempting to get my phone’s mobile data to work, the masseuse came to get me. I don’t know why I had imagined
a tiny housewife of a stranger would be getting super cozy with me, but the lady who I actually got was like the exact opposite. She was very large and could
probably snap me in half if she didn’t like me. Thinking back on it, she’s who I should have imagined would be very good at making people cry. Deep tissue massage
is in fact a method of torture. Just FYI.
She told me to take of my shirt and bra and lay on this massage table and left to let me get down to it. Of course, at this moment it really dawns on me that I should’ve probably shaved, knowing someone would be in such close proximity to my armpits. It also pained me slightly that the only reason I have for needing a shave is going to see a doctor. #catlady
I do a kind of porpoising to get my body half under the sheet because I didn’t even bother untucking it. I still maintain that there is no graceful way to be shirtless while wearing jeans and sneakers and laying half covered by a sheet. Anyways, I’m doing everything I can to keep my arms glued to my sides when the masseuse comes back in. My head is in that weird cradle thing that lets me look at her shoes but also acts as a sort of blinders. She starts out slow and I’m thinking that I can get through the next half hour with her not noticing my armpits. Then of course, as soon as I feel a sense of relief, she starts rearranging me. No. Please. Leave me as is.
The massage room is fairly dim, but with all the arm positioning she’s doing to me I’m fairly certain she knows and is toying with me. I remain silent. Like am I supposed to warn her? Apologize? Make a joke? I’m sure she’s seen it all. Then I start thinking about how it sucks that I have to be so embarrassed about not shaving. Mind you, this is my mindset the ENTIRE time I’m in the room. But there’s a point of no return where if you haven’t spoken for a certain amount of time, then you can’t ever start up a conversation. It’s too late. Missed chance. So I just grit my teeth against the embarrassment and the considerable pain as she throws an elbow into my spine for a good ten seconds past the time when my eyes tear up.
At one point she said I had a lump on my back. Probably just years of tension building up into a miniature hunch. I am the stress Quasi Modo. I chuckled a bit, my back wobbling just enough that she probably thought I was crying. Because really, only a psychotic person would laugh during a deep tissue massage. She said not to worry, she’d get rid of it. I thought maybe she was saying over the span of all our sessions. Nope. She meant right now. Down came the elbow. I think she got rid of purely from sheer will, and a lot of laying on me. It probably still exists, just as a divot now. She turned my lump inside out.
I’m here for my back, after all, so I thought she’d spend most of her time on that but instead she then moves to my right butt cheek, which apparently is where I store all my tension.
Not only was I under the impression that leaving on my pants meant nothing below my back would be going on, but the very fact that someone was touching my butt with such a violence threw me off. I forgot about my pits as I tried not to tense up my cheek against the pain because I knew she would feel that and I thought that would just add to my
awkwardness/mean I was enjoying the massage more than I actually was.
She then spent a majority of the rest of my time rolling a spiky rolling pin across my legs all the while mumbling about how messed up I was. She finished with my right leg and broke the pregnant silence with a “your left leg won’t hurt as bad because you do all the driving with your right.” I made a weird noise to acknowledge, but kept my silence. Then she moved to my left leg and all hell broke loose. She makes some clucking noises of disbelief and then jams her pointer finger into my hamstring all the way to the part where the finger connects to the palm. At that point I laugh. I thought it would be better than groaning. That’s not creepy right? Laughing at pain? Maybe it was a bad choice. Granted, it was also not a normal laugh either, like it sounded mostly like a laugh but if you were looking at my face it definitely would’ve looked like a silent scream. Probably like I was possessed.
It felt like she put a screwdriver into my leg then decided to wiggle it around, briefly took it out, then stuck it back into my leg. Instead of being a nice cathartic stab it was like a stab and hold. A situation where you want the person you’re stabbing to know, like really know, that it’s you who’s doing them in. to look into their eyes as they realize you’re stabbing them and you can’t stop it at all. With that creepy laugh I broke my silence and asked if she was mad at me. She just laughed and slapped on some icy hot.
Sitka or Bust: Commute The World 