I needed massages when I became a teacher. If you sit at a desk and type all day, you don’t need massages. You like them, your eyes roll up in your head, but you don’t need them. You need a massage if part of your job is telling people the same thing 6-100 times a day, and occasionally being called a bitch for not accepting late homework.
However, teaching didn’t provide me with the salary for frequent professional massages. That’ s an expensive habit. Other teachers advised me that cheaper options were available: you could go get the discount massage at the massage school in town.
Professional and twice a year had been white towels, fresh flowers. Once a month, student, half-price is ER-style curtains and uncertain direction. You sign in at a desk more medical than cosmotological. The student takes your clipboard and says, “Is there any particular reason you’re here? Just to relax?”
“My shoulders,” I say, following into the huge room. The masseuse-in-training leaves you to undress. I hang up my clothes. I slither under blanket, sheets.
There’s nothing unpleasant about being rubbed down by a well-intentioned healer. It’s always good to be warm and naked and touched—whether it’s personal or not. But these beginners, who charge half price, make you realize what can go wrong.
You can run out of lotion. Burn! You can rub nicely, without digging the creases out of a muscle. You can lean over and push your boobs onto somebody’s leg. Tucking those sheets in six different configurations to hide the gynecologists’ territory is not easy. It’s not that I’m so modest, it’s just that it can get chilly.
“I’m sorry,” says the sniffler. “I have allergies.” Don’t be alarmed that I’m rubbing my germ-infested hands all over you.
“You doing okay?” the talker interrupts, while I’m busy visualizing the light opening in my forehead.
“Is that good?” More experienced massage therapists ask this some other way, because the question elicits either an inappropriate, “Oh yeah!” or a grunt. You can’t really say, “No.”
The cushion thingy that’s supposed to go under your ankles can be under your feet instead. Your head can hang too low on the support, dropping your chin or lip on the metal bar underneath. Cold metal. Like getting braces, or lockjaw.
Whatever the misstep, I want to just shut up and take it. I didn’t come here to teach any more. I tolerate the metal under my chin, a little too slimy on the lotion. I’m breathing and sinking, to restore whatever has been eroded in the last few weeks.
Still, afterwards I will fill out the little survey. Drink my cool water. Give her a 3 out of 4 for sheet tucking. I can do that much.
Landing 