i’ve been getting an evening massage every week for the last month or so in attempt to reverse what i’m convinced is years taken off my life due to the stress of the past decade.
i typically see a woman named kathryn, who has both nostrils pierced, tattoos, and soft eyes behind clear, pink-framed glasses. she does lymphatic, which is a fancy way of saying she massages my neck, chest, armpits and stomach. she also does some other stuff around my ears, jaw, and shoulders too. she’s an angel. she’s an easy yes. she’s my girl.
but tonight kathryn wasn’t available, so i scheduled with a guy named andy. i’d seen him at the place before, welcoming another patient, so had a face to match his name when i made the booking. i knew he was a little taller than myself, clean-cut, and beefy with huge calves. what i didn’t know, or even suspect, is how he would take no time at all to make me acutely aware of every cell in my body.
that’s to say that from the jump, andy handled me in a way i’ve never been handled before. i felt like his were the hands of a god – raining down on my shoulders, neck, arms, hands and feet like a great ape. i was done for from the moment he touched my body. i was a child. i no longer had any desire for control. i surrendered.
it hurt, yes, but i discovered parts of myself that are connected in ways i never knew as andy used his palms and knuckles to dig into the back of my neck. when i groaned, he groaned. we became one. it wasn’t weird. it was soothing. “i can feel that in my eyeball,” i said at one point, his fingers somehow inside of my shoulder blade. “holy shit,” i whispered, as he held my right hand, pressing into the mound of my thumb.
andy was like a miner, digging for stress, anxiety, sorrow. and in my body, he found mountains of supply. he got rich, he scored. and me? a part of me died as another part came alive on that bed. it was like one of those moments where your life flashes before your eyes, except i wasn’t in danger. quite the opposite, i was in pleasure. it was psychedelic. it was hypnotic. it was the best thing that’s happened to my body in a long time.
tomorrow, i’ll be sore. the day after too. and i’ll be glad. it’ll be a reminder. if kathryn is my girl, then i’m andy’s.
“how are you feeling?” he asked me after the session, as i was pulling on my leg-warmers.
“like i just got trampled by a herd of buffalo,” i said, shaking my head, laughing.
andy laughed too.
“in a good way, i hope,” he said.
“yeah,” i said. “in a good way.”
“i tend to have a more dynamic approach than the other practitioners here,” he said.
“your hands feel humongous,” i said. “like, on my body… they felt big as frying pans.”
he held up his hands.
“they are pretty big, i guess,” he said.
“yeah,” i said.
in my mind i was thinking about how he had them wrapped around my neck at one point. i liked it. it was the most relaxed i’ve ever been with hands around my neck. it was like heaven.
i tell andy i’ll be seeing him again soon.
“great,” he said. “go home and get some rest.”
you-fucking-betcha, andy. you fucking bet.
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