Massage, My Ass

This was no massage. 
Massages are those things that feel so good you almost fall asleep during them, right? And think dirty thoughts. Not be trampled on like you're at a fire during a Slipknot concert.


Afterwards, I came home and Googled it once more just to make sure that I went to the right place.


Shiatsu: A form of therapy of Japanese origin based on the same principles as acupuncture, in which pressure is applied to certain points on the body using the hands.

(Also known as: I May've Just Gotten Run Over By A Car.)


Maybe I'm crazy, but when I think of the word "massage", there's definitely a few adjectives that can't help but come to my mind: Soothing, relaxing, luxurious, hedonistic, and of course, sensual.  So when I say: "Wow, I really need a massage", those are the words I'm hoping to acquaint myself with. 


I've learned however, that these are the adjectives applied to the word "massage" only when your adorably hot boyfriend or girlfriend is the one giving you the massage. Or possibly the fictitious swedish lady with the big boobs.

However, my previous lingual perception of "massage" was all about to change. Like turn on it's head and slam you in the knee caps with a battering ram, kind of change. At 3 p.m. today, the words "anguish", "Help!", and "Anata ga daikirai (I hate you), made it to the top of that previous bullshit list.

As part of a holistic detox mission I'm on, I decided to book an appointment with a hugely reputable Shiatsu massage therapist from Japan. 

For weeks my whole body had been aching from numerous injuries and defeated muscles. 
And all I wanted was nicey nice.

I walk in today for this supposed, luxurious, deep tissue, relaxing, hedonistic "massage".
I was greeted by a rather small, very sweet, demure woman who for now, we'll call Miss Yamamoto, even though my heart is now tempted to refer to her as, That Little Fuck. 


She gestures toward our massage room destination, and I quietly follow her.

She opens the door and I walk into the room where my luxuriousness is going to be realized. 

It's uber clean, beautifully tranquil, and there's a delicious candle burning to my right, along with delicately audible sounds of Japanese music, possibly playing in the closet, as well as a wide massage table draped in eucalyptus scented, soft linens, beckoning my arrival.

Although now I know it was beckoning my quiet whimpers. 

The ceilings are pretty high, and I glanced up and see dark wooden parallel bars mounted to the ceiling. Interesting.

I assumed it was either nothing more than just a decoration, or she and I were going to partake in a little friendly chin up competition after this supposed massage.


I was wrong on both counts.

As it turns out, I discovered that the parallel wooden monkey bars contraption mounted to the ceiling were more than likely, the weapons of mass destruction that George W. Bush could never find. And lo and behold, I innocently find them just casually hanging from the ceiling of some Asian massage parlor. 
Huh. 


In broken English, she proceeds to tell me to take everything off, and go under the sheets because this type of massage is done with the sheet completely covering me. 

I was definitely a little relieved that she wasn't an orthodox Jew because I had no intention of going there to get pregnant. Don't kid yourself. 
I still checked for sheet holes as I got under them.

I lay down, completely covered in the hole-free sheet. She walks in, smiles, and tells me I look like Julia Roberts, (and by the way, that's the racist equivalent of me telling her she looks like newscaster Connie Chung ), and she immediately digs in and starts "massaging" me - like she was trying to exorcise several demons from my spine. 
So I'm assuming at this point, for some reason, she wants Julia Roberts dead.

She continually whispers to me, to "relaaaax….Breeeeeeathe". And I would be relaxing, if the Swedish woman with the big boobs were in here massaging me, but as it turns out, I had Miss Yamamoto trying to violently knead me into a 9" pie crust.

Sensual? No. There was nothing sensual about this massage. Relaxing? Nothing relaxing about this massage. Deep? Yes. At one point her hand came out of my mouth. There wasn't even anything massagey about this massage. Unless you consider being crushed under someones entire body weight for an hour, a massage. 
It was like she was trying to manually move my lower intestine up to my armpit, and my liver into my eye socket. Pleasant, like that.

One session and I'm convinced they should offer you a Xanax or, shit, keep it in the eastern culture and offer you a few Sake Bombs before this massage. Without it, I was about as relaxed as a high resin surfboard. 

But the fun had only just begun.

A little side note.
Starting this New Year, I had made a solemn promise to myself; I wasn't going to take anyones crap anymore. And what do I do? I start it out signing up for someone walking all over my back. That was already the second broken New Year's resolution. (First one was to only spend time with people whom I enjoyed).

After 20 minutes of "loosening me up" (?), she folds a small, beautifully scented towel into a rectangle shape, and puts it over my eyes. I think, great, nows she's gonna shoot me. 
At least my suffering will soon be over.

My eyes were closed this whole time, so I have zero idea about what is ready to happen in the torture chamber that is my room. It smells good. But all other sensory information is saying "Hell child has spawned". "Run".

It gets quiet for a few seconds, and a few moments later, I hear strange sounds, like clanking metal. For a brief second I thought it was because my jaw was closed so tight that my fillings were banging together. But then I felt a pressure on my back that I had never felt before.

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I slightly turn my head so I can get a firsthand glimpse of the sadism du jour.

This little, quiet, understated woman, has climbed on top of the massage bed, and is now hanging from the bars on the ceiling, and walking across my back with her feet. This is Shiatsu. Kicking and crushing me to death. Said nothing about giant angry feet in Wikipedia. Thanks for the heads up on that one.

For the longest 40 minutes of my life, she dug her heels into my spine, ass, neck, calves, forearms, ankles, liver, wrists, spleen, lungs and some other body parts I never even knew I had, with the force of a gorilla hanging from a vine, kicking for his life as it's unwillingly being torn from his natural habitat by poachers.

"Relaaaax. (clank, clank, clank)…Relaaaxxxx", she whispers. 
Yes Lucifer, I'm trying to.

With 160 lbs. of guttural conviction, she presses her heels even deeper into my back, flattening my lungs into the depth of a glaze on a donut.

"Relllaaaaaaxxx..." (crush, crush, crush, clank)

"Mis...tress Chang??… it's.... hard... to... re......lax... when... I'm... spitting... blood... and......i.... think ... one... of... my... boobs... is... gonna... ex...plode".

Desperate for relief, I decided to start trying this impossible technique she earlier on called "breathing", and I found that to tolerate the pain, I was breathing so hard that she probably thought I was having a quadruple orgasm. 
But when I finally squeaked out a  "please…sss.....ssss....sstop", in the high pitched voice of a helium balloon sucking hamster slowly being crushed by a titanium steam roller, she knew I probably wasn't.

Orgasms. Pfft. No such luck. No happy endings here. Just miserable middles. 

Finally, the torture is just about done. I know this because my body is buzzing, my organs are in there new locations, and she just did a double spin, triple summersault dismount.
She turns me over.
Paint thinner and a putty knife was required.

But this time, she pulls up the sheet, not just to my shoulders, but all the way over my head.
And for a minute, we sit in silence.

Makes sense.

I guess this is the part where she's filling out my toe tag and we wait for the coroner.

;|

~dawn