A Good Old Fashioned Whoopin'

She came into the room looking both angry and bored -- two moods that you never want to see your hairstylist or dentist in, and especially not your masseuse.

I didn't know which way she was going to go, with the massage that is. Would she be angry? And would I need to seek medical care afterwards? Or would she be bored? And would I have to rub my back against the wall a few times at the end to feel like I got my money's worth?

Somehow, she managed to be both.

I ended up at the massage parlor in the fancy hotel down the street because the Brit we met there said it was 'proper'. That was all I needed to hear. I'd been avoiding the massage parlors because I was afraid I'd accidentally end up in a brothel and I've made a resolution to stop getting myself into awkward situations where I don't belong.

He also told us that the place had a sauna, jacuzzi, foot bath, the works. "You can spend the whole day there," he said. "And they give you a fluffy white robe to wear," he added.

When I was shown to my room, there was no robe. There was nothing but a small towel. I didn't know what to do: get undressed? stay dressed? It seemed that either of them could be an embarrassing decision if I made the wrong choice -- either I would be sitting there stark naked or it might appear that I wanted a massage while fully clothed. Eventually, someone came by with a giant pair of blue elasticized shorts that I was to put on. But, no robe.

So I sat in the room with the towel wrapped around my chest, wearing the blue shorts, when SHE came in. She, with long black hair and heavy blue eye shadow... She, in her tiny spandex miniskirt and tight white blouse and high heels... SHE was my masseuse? She was nothing like the masseurs I've had in the bay area, the candles n' sandles set -- earth mamas and men with fluffy beards. I began to wonder if the place really was 'proper' afterall.

"Yo," she said, signaling that I should lay down on my stomach with her hands. It was not the kind of 'Yo' someone like, say, Sylvester Stallone would use as a greeting, but more a mispronunciation of the word, 'you'. This was all she said (or grunted) to me during our entire hour together, a few "Yo"s here and there -- she didn't know English and the relevance of this will shortly become clear.

She climbed up right on top of me, yanking the elastic waistband of my enormous shorts down brusquely. And then sat on me, using my bare ass as a seat. I thought about my naked butt and I thought about her mini-skirt, and I tried to envision just what sort of contact was being made. Again I wondered how 'proper' this massage was going to be. Sitting squarely on my tail bone, she began her torture.

She worked her hands up and down my back, determined to crack each vertebrae. Unsatisfied when there was no 'pop', I'd heard her sigh and in that sigh I heard her thoughts: 'I will break you, girl, if it's the last thing I do...'. She jumped on me a few times to no avail, and this was before the brass handlebars mounted to the ceiling came into play. She held onto those and used my back as a treadmill -- feet slipping and sliding from the oil on my back. At one point, she lifted herself up by those handlebars and did a triple somersault, landing a perfect '10' on my spine. But it still wouldn't crack. She finally gave up, but not before leaving my back streaked with bruises -- they showed up within an hour of leaving the place.

Eventually she moved onto my neck and when she was done with one side, she turned my head over by pulling it up with a fistful of hair... Then she kind of tossed my head over to the other side like she was working with bread dough instead of a human appendage (and an important one at that). She nearly pulled me off the table when she worked on my arms and I don't even want to go into the knuckle-cracking -- I swear my toes and fingers are 1/2 inch longer than they used to be.

I began to fear the end of the massage -- every massage ends with a facial rub. If she kept up her vigor, I might leave that place looking like a Picasso painting.

I couldn't tell her to cool it -- she didn't speak English. So I lay there, with her digging hands and sharp fingernails... and her unrelenting beating -- she hit me with open hands and closed fists, knocking the wind out of me each time she made contact with my stinging skin. It was all I could do not to curl up in the fetal position. I have never been so tense in my life. And I began to wonder if that was not working against me... perhaps the more tense I was, the more aggressive she became, trying to work out whatever masses of tightly wound muscle she could find -- which was, in essence, my entire body.

When the massage finally came to an end, she said, "yo," and pointed at my clothes. I was still waiting for a robe, and the sauna, and the jacuzzi. I gave her a confused look and pointed at the door, signaling, 'you want me to take them with me, to the sauna perhaps?' But she pointed at them again and in fact, picked them up and shoved them into my hands. I again gave her a confused look. Was I to carry my clothes to the sauna? Perhaps they ran out of robes... After a few minutes of this, it dawned on me that it was time to get dressed... and I realized that there was nothing more to this 'proper, all day experience': none of the bells and whistles that the Brit boasted about -- no sauna, no jacuzzi, nothing. I waited for her to leave so I could get dressed, but she didn't. She stood there and watched me get dressed with a scowl on her face -- her last way of torturing me: humiliation.

Benjamin came out from his massage looking happy as a clam. He'd just finished with his sauna and a slice of water melon while he relaxed in a reclining chair in front of a large screen TV in a cool, air-conditioned room. "Waiting long?" he asked. In fact, I'd been waiting for 15 minutes.

This, the final torture.