I don’t mean to brag, but I have a high threshold for pain. It doesn’t come from cutting myself as a youth, nor from the numerous times my mother dropped me as a baby. I just have it. All right, all right, so the root canal jobs, the two kidney stones, and the broken foot I ignored for over a half a year might have something to do with it. That perhaps, and that wild pitch that bounced underneath my cup when I was a catcher playing baseball.
These days, I am experiencing entirely new forms of punishment. My little son has already tried to rearrange my face on several occasions. How does that work? Well, he will grab a fistful of face (if you’re lucky, it’s only the cheek), and squeeze and pull until you and he are convinced he’s a baker trying to twist you into a pretzel. Last night, to get to his mother on the sofa we both shared, he needed to go over and through me…which is just what he did. On his way to his beloved mama, he kneed me in the balls, elbowed my chest, and finally pushed in my Adam’s apple before adding a swift kick to my forehead once he’d reached the summit. I am seriously considering the foundation of a non-profit organization that works to prevent the abuse of parents.
And yet, all of these things seem to pale compared to what I experienced a few days ago, on the day of my first massage. I had made an appointment at Phora (the American Club) in advance, deciding my nearly middle-aged bones were due for a workout other than the ones I subject it to in the gym.
On that day, I am guided into a small room and ordered to strip by this gorgeous mid-sized lady who shyly announces her name as ‘Gita’. How exotic, I am thinking. Before leaving the room, Gita, with a smile that could melt what is remaining of any polar cap, points out where the towels are and which position I am to assume once I have relieved myself of my clothes. I look around the room. Soothing pipe music tastefully glides from the speakers. The room is almost completely dark, as the shades are drawn. All of these fantasies, mind you, are occurring while my wife is having a pedicure at the poolside maybe a couple hundred feet away. This is unreal.
Finally, I lie face down, my face gazing down the hole of the face rest at the end of the table. I hear the door open and a pair of feet silently shuffling to where my head is.
“Do you feel comfortable?” Gita asks in a sultry voice that completes my euphoria. Every word rains down on me gently, accompanied by the pipe music in this far eastern land. I feel like one with the world.
“Mhm,” I manage to mumble, afraid that the sound of my voice will make this dreamworld of mine that has swelled to epic proportions burst like a ballooned animal that's been filled with sand.
Gita then proceeds to beat the living crap out of me. I have no idea what the victims of the Spanish Inquisition were feeling, but I am now one of them reincarnated, and Gita, for all I know, is the high priest asking me to repent. She yanks and pulls and twists in perfect rhythm, pulling at every finger and toe for emphasis. Throughout this, the pipe music has turned to the crooked and painful chords you would hear from the lead guitarist of a death metal band. This is not just Paradise Lost, I’m thinking, but Paradise positively bulldozed and razed.
Of course, the head comes last. That’s when you know you’ve been subjected to genuine torture. Mother Nature will usually have predators go for the quick kill of their prey. For this purpose, the head must be removed or disabled. Not on a massage table. Here I will be abused enough to tell about it later. I am seriously beginning to wonder whether the words ’massage’ and ’massacre’ are related when finally, gracefully, Gita stops.
When I open my eyes, I expect my body to be scattered all over the floor, like a leper who’s just been worked by a pack of wild dogs. Oddly enough, my body is still complete, my head is still swiveling on its spine, and the pipe music has miraculously returned. True, I admit I feel less like a man than before (think about the baseball hitting me under the cup), but at least my body is still intact and my vocal chords don’t make me sound like Aaron Neville.
And now for the kicker: I get to pay for it. Pain without reimbursement is usually referred to as ‘punishment’. However, if you are paying for it, the definition goes out the window and you might want to search for the term ‘masochism’.
Outside, I meet my wife at the café and put on a brave face about my afternoon of hurt. Gita even urges me to ‘book for next Sunday’, since there are so precious few slots left. Uh, thanks, Gita. Rain check, please.
These days, I am experiencing entirely new forms of punishment. My little son has already tried to rearrange my face on several occasions. How does that work? Well, he will grab a fistful of face (if you’re lucky, it’s only the cheek), and squeeze and pull until you and he are convinced he’s a baker trying to twist you into a pretzel. Last night, to get to his mother on the sofa we both shared, he needed to go over and through me…which is just what he did. On his way to his beloved mama, he kneed me in the balls, elbowed my chest, and finally pushed in my Adam’s apple before adding a swift kick to my forehead once he’d reached the summit. I am seriously considering the foundation of a non-profit organization that works to prevent the abuse of parents.
And yet, all of these things seem to pale compared to what I experienced a few days ago, on the day of my first massage. I had made an appointment at Phora (the American Club) in advance, deciding my nearly middle-aged bones were due for a workout other than the ones I subject it to in the gym.
On that day, I am guided into a small room and ordered to strip by this gorgeous mid-sized lady who shyly announces her name as ‘Gita’. How exotic, I am thinking. Before leaving the room, Gita, with a smile that could melt what is remaining of any polar cap, points out where the towels are and which position I am to assume once I have relieved myself of my clothes. I look around the room. Soothing pipe music tastefully glides from the speakers. The room is almost completely dark, as the shades are drawn. All of these fantasies, mind you, are occurring while my wife is having a pedicure at the poolside maybe a couple hundred feet away. This is unreal.
Finally, I lie face down, my face gazing down the hole of the face rest at the end of the table. I hear the door open and a pair of feet silently shuffling to where my head is.
“Do you feel comfortable?” Gita asks in a sultry voice that completes my euphoria. Every word rains down on me gently, accompanied by the pipe music in this far eastern land. I feel like one with the world.
“Mhm,” I manage to mumble, afraid that the sound of my voice will make this dreamworld of mine that has swelled to epic proportions burst like a ballooned animal that's been filled with sand.
Gita then proceeds to beat the living crap out of me. I have no idea what the victims of the Spanish Inquisition were feeling, but I am now one of them reincarnated, and Gita, for all I know, is the high priest asking me to repent. She yanks and pulls and twists in perfect rhythm, pulling at every finger and toe for emphasis. Throughout this, the pipe music has turned to the crooked and painful chords you would hear from the lead guitarist of a death metal band. This is not just Paradise Lost, I’m thinking, but Paradise positively bulldozed and razed.
Of course, the head comes last. That’s when you know you’ve been subjected to genuine torture. Mother Nature will usually have predators go for the quick kill of their prey. For this purpose, the head must be removed or disabled. Not on a massage table. Here I will be abused enough to tell about it later. I am seriously beginning to wonder whether the words ’massage’ and ’massacre’ are related when finally, gracefully, Gita stops.
When I open my eyes, I expect my body to be scattered all over the floor, like a leper who’s just been worked by a pack of wild dogs. Oddly enough, my body is still complete, my head is still swiveling on its spine, and the pipe music has miraculously returned. True, I admit I feel less like a man than before (think about the baseball hitting me under the cup), but at least my body is still intact and my vocal chords don’t make me sound like Aaron Neville.
And now for the kicker: I get to pay for it. Pain without reimbursement is usually referred to as ‘punishment’. However, if you are paying for it, the definition goes out the window and you might want to search for the term ‘masochism’.
Outside, I meet my wife at the café and put on a brave face about my afternoon of hurt. Gita even urges me to ‘book for next Sunday’, since there are so precious few slots left. Uh, thanks, Gita. Rain check, please.
