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20 December 1998 |
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So I decided to treat my friend to a massage for Hannukah. "Where?" he asked. I shrugged and said, "The yellow pages." "You gonna let me get you one?" "I don't want a massage." "When?" "Now?" "Ok." So in the car he said, "Ah c'mon you're gonna let me get you one too right?" I caved. I saw that we were headed somewhere besides the nearest phone directory. "Where are we going?" "A place I've been to before." "Ahh, ok, so that saves me the trouble of doing the yellow pages." We drove for a good long while and finally pulled into the parking lot of a place with a huge "Accupressure" sign. We walked into the reception, and he rang the doorbell on the inner door. The reception window had its blinds closed. The tiny Korean woman who answered the door nodded when he said we were there for a massage, then looked at me utterly stunned. This gave me a bad feeling. "Her too?" she asked, looking nearbout bewildered. He answered yes, and with an unreadable expression, she led us inside. The hallway was darkened with many doors on both sides. She pointed him into a room and me into another. The thought flickered across my mind that if he liked the place so much, it was probably one of those places where you can get sexually serviced, but I disposed of that when I saw the room, with a very ordinary massage table draped in towels and sheets. The aromatic candle and soft radio seemed completely appropriate. My masseuse, another smallish Korean woman, came in and relieved me of $50 apiece for the 45 minutes, and told me to get undressed except for undergarments and to wrap myself in a towel. When she returned, she had me lie down on my stomach. She them began to torture me. She kneaded my calf with her foot, which started out ok but quickly became excruciating. "Too hard?" she asked. "Yes!" "Ok." She eased up on that calf, then began to mercilessly squash the other one. She then started over again. I was crying into the towel and sniffling like a baby. I didn't say anything though, because I had no idea if it was supposed to hurt or not. The place was, after all, called "Accupressure," a word I have always associated with therapeutic pain. And these professional masseuses, they should know what they are doing, right? She walked, yes walked, right up onto my butt. I sobbed afresh. She tread up my back, stopping periodically to do a little jump. I wasn't getting a chance to breathe. On the trip back down my back, she stopped at intervals to jab her toes cruelly into my vertebrae. My face cloth was soaking. Everything from my neck down, minus the arms, was throbbing. She returned to the floor and began kneading all these places she had trod, and I sighed heavily, thinking I might survive after all. I asked for a tissue. "You have cold?" "No, " I said, thinking my ordeal was over, "no I am just sad today." "Oh, whassamatta?" "I don't feel like talking about it, but thank you." I have no idea why I felt like I had to be so damn polite. Then her colleague came in and applied her jabby hard little fingers to my neck and shoulders in such a way that made me yearn for the delivery room. She grabbed hold of the tendons coming off my neck and pinched the freakin blood right out of the capillaries. She gripped those muscles where headaches are born and liked ta ripped em right off the bones. I was bawling, grunting, and sniffling. She turned my head and popped my neck, about the only thing she did that didn't nearly kill me, then turned it the other way and popped it in that direction. I did nothing to hide the grimace on my face from her ministrations. The she grabbed ahold of my hip and stabbed me in the very weakest part with her thumb. I just about jumped right off the table. "I'm injured there!" I yelled, although it was a decade-old injury. She had just brought it to screaming life. Before my eyes I saw crutches, distraught at the idea of reliving all the time I'd spent on them. "What? That hurt?" "Yes! Yes that hurt!" "Oooh." She left the room. My original masseuse kept at the gentle kneading, about my feet and legs, arms and hands, spreading my back out once more. I prayed the heavy stuff was over. After a quick trip out to check the clock, she began to step on my calves again. Oh god no, not another back walk, I was praying in my head. She used as much pressure on my calves as she had before, but after the neck and hip torture, I was bearing up a lot better under the calf agony. Finally she said the time was up. I helped myself to a huge sigh of relief and got into my work clothes. Once I was clothed and was putting my shoes on, the door opened and my friend was there hoking and joking with the staff. "You took care of her, right?" he asked my torturer. "Ooooh yes." He looked at me, but I was making a point of not looking at him. "She take care of you?" I grunted noncommittally, gripping my jaws tight not to go into a screaming fit. Once we were out of the building, he asked me how I felt. I told him I'd much rather have given birth, thank you very much. He was completely shocked, and wanted to know what happened, so I told him. He wanted to know why I hadn't said anything. I told him that I did, and when I did, and he was so surprised that I didn't say more and sooner. My neck and shoulders were still screaming such that I began to bawl again. I felt so weak and foolish. "Did she touch you in a sexual way?" I figured he was angling at harassment. "No." "Did you ask her to?" I looked at him in confusion. "No." "You could have, you know. They are trained to finish you off with a hand job." "Well I didn't and I didn't want one! Is that all you fucking think about, sex?!" I went off into a yelling rant about what I expected from massage, what I got, and what I certainly wasn't looking for. What I didn't say was that there was no fucking way someone who just roughed me up that way would get within elastic distance of my tenderer parts. I cringe now to think about it. On the way to lunch, and over lunch itself, he apologized profusely. He said maybe they are not used to treating women. The expression of the woman who greeted us at the door certainly seemed to back that up. He said maybe they are used to giving the rough treatment to guys and didn't know they couldn't be that way with me. I was too busy being disgusted to care. If I were going to get a massage, I'd really like to get one at a massage place that actually is a massage place, where they know how to treat people of all ages and sexes, not just pummel a guy and then get him off. I think he took me there specifically hoping I would be offered or ask for sexual contact. He takes entirely too much interest in my sex life and orientation. He's been trying to set me up with a girlfriend ever since I've known him, and he always picks shallow, sleazy acting women. Not a gray cell or interesting personality among them. Strangers, all, and yet I'm supposed to leap off into bed with them the instant I meet them. It frustrates me so much that I cannot get through to this well-meaning person that his idea of sex is very, very cheap and I want nothing like it. That part pisses me off as much as my still aching shoulders and neck. --Spring
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