As you’ll have seen earlier in the mag, I’ve spent a lot of time on massage tables this month. No, I don’t expect you to feel entirely sorry for me, but if you could spare a sympathetic thought, I’d be grateful.
Yes, I can see why you might want to cut my sorry name from this page and burn it post-haste. After all, what kind of an arse complains about a spa treatment? I’d have shared your contempt a few years back, at a time before I’d experienced all that these bastions of relaxation have to offer. However, having now had my fair share of ‘treatments’, I can honestly say that spa reviews are the part of this job I fear the most.
I mean, they’re just not natural, are they? How is it possible to feel completely shameless when you’re standing in front of a complete stranger wearing little more than a bashful grin and a pair of elasticated, disposable underwear? The only other place I can envisage this being a normal set of circumstances would be in a hospital, perhaps prior to major surgery. And then to let said stranger rub oil into your prone body? Not even a doctor could get away with that little trick convincingly without losing his medical license.
Month in, month out, I find myself lying on the table, wondering what might entice someone into becoming a masseuse in the first place. Idle hands, perhaps? I’m no garden rake, but I’m no heifer, either – I’m somewhere in the middle – and yet I feel terribly sorry for the poor creature that has to dig their fingers into areas I prefer not digging into myself. Imagine if Danny DeVito knocked on your door, dropped his towel and offered himself up for a rub. You’d lose the will to live. I’m surprised there isn’t a higher suicide rate among the masseuse community.
My naked vulnerability may have also provoked a previously undiscovered ticklishness. I don’t remember having had this problem before, but suddenly I can’t stand the feeling of an elbow being pressed into my thigh muscle (am I just odd?), and the next person to treat the glands in my neck like a pair of stress balls will receive a broken arm. I kid you not.
For your sake alone, dear reader, I’ll keep going on, prostrating myself, albeit unwillingly, across the city’s massage tables. In return, perhaps you might think of me kindly every now and again? Preferably in a full set of clothes, standing next to a burning pile of disposable pants.
