Massages Are Awkward.

I got a massage yesterday.  This normally isn’t my kinda thing, but I’ve recently been suffering from Rapid Onset Old Man Back and my mom made me an appointment. 

I assumed that I would be going to a white-walled and brightly lit facility where a mannish woman named “Helga” would twist me up like a balloon animal until I was cured of my ROOMB.  I based this assumption purely upon the Saturday morning cartoons that I watched as a child which, as it turns out, aren’t terribly accurate.

This particular place was called “Massage Envy.”  As I entered I was greeted with smooth jazz and a tiny Asian woman who asked me timidly if I would “rike a grass of wata?”  Without listening for a response, the lady lifted a cup of water up to my face.  I took it and she led me to a small room lined with overstuffed couches.  She called this the “tranquirity room.”

She left me on a cushy loveseat sipping my cup of water while panflute music played quietly over the speakers in the ceiling.  The light was turned very low, drawing attention to a tiny, wall-mounted plasma TV that played a short, 30-second loop of waves crashing against a beach.  I suppose this was intended to make me feel tranquil.  However, it did very much the opposite.  I became hyperaware of my surroundings and wary of how calm they were trying to make me.  I felt like a suspicious cow must before getting turned into burger meat.

Pretty soon a masseuse lady came and cooed my name like a nurse does when you’re at the Pediatrician…if it was secretly the beginning of a porno.  I’m pretty sure this was just to maintain the illusion of calm and pampering but it came off like this particular establishment was one of those special massage places.

I followed the woman to a room where she instructed me to disrobe and lay under the sheet on the table.

“A-all the way?”  I stammered.

“Yes.  Everything.”  She answered with an odd tinge of ominousness.  “I’ll wait for you outside.”  She closed the door behind her.

I quickly took off my clothes, not wanting her to accidentally walk back in on me in my nude suit, and jumped under the sheet.  Should I lay face up or face down?  I know she’ll want me to lay face down so that she can push on my back but won’t it be awkward to just be lying face down like a corpse when she comes in?  I was laying in between the two on my side still trying to figure out which one to go with when she came back in.  I must have looked like a sultry jazz club singer sprawled across a grand piano.

“You can lay on your stomach.”  She said.

I rolled onto my tummy and mushed my face into the little donut attached to the table.

“Just relax.”  She reassured as she shot lubricant onto her hands from a squirt bottle in little poop sounds.  I tried to stay still as she started rubbing various muscle groups on my back. 

This room, like the one before it, was dimly lit and Enya was playing quietly over the sound system.  This did not make me feel relaxed, though.  I was acutely aware of the fact that I was alone in a tiny, poorly lit room with a stranger as she pushed on me while I was lying naked on a heated bed.  It puzzles me that this could make someone feel comforted and relaxed, because it had the complete opposite results for me.  I started to get paranoid. 

What happens if I fart or I have to use the restroom?  She’s pushing on me a lot down there.  It’s like she’s trying to get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube.  I wasn’t feeling anything before, but now that I had started to think about it, I began to feel the distinct rumblings of an imminent foofie.  I started to do the math in my head:  How long is this appointment?  An hour?  I’m going to have to hold this damn fart for 55 minutes.  I can’t just let it slip out and hope for the best.  This room is like a broom closet, there’s no way she won’t know.  But, surely I can’t be the first person to face this predicament.  Is she used to this?  She has to be.  She’s basically milking me for farts.

Eventually I hit critical mass and it was time to do or die.  I fired off a tracer shot to see how bad it was going to be.  After a minute or so it seemed as though my sneak attack had gone undetected, which was welcome news because the rest of the regiment was eager for deployment.  I tried to release the remainder in a slow leak, but the masseuse lady pushed extra hard at the perfectly wrong moment.

A sound like a barge horn erupted from my hindparts as the sheet rippled behind me like the flag of an embassy in gale-force winds. 

For the remainder of the hour, the masseuse said nothing.  I said nothing.  My ears were ringing.

After the massage, the lady left and told me that I could get dressed.  I tipped as well as my meager means would allow.

When I got into my car, I started to think about how much money this woman must make and what percent of her paycheck was a result of fart-guilt.  Probably a lot, I would think.  Farts are recession proof.