A Tale of Two Massages

Michael was tall, portly and sweated profusely and Li-Li was petite, soft spoken and smelled like cinnamon.

Michael’s hands were like giant blocks of sandpaper, and his bloated fingers felt like boiled tofu on my back.

Li-Li’s fingers were smooth as silk and her hands glided across my body with a delicate artistry I found quite pleasing.

Was Michael even in the room? Hard to tell. For such a large man, his pressure was awkward and barely noticeable. In fact, for most of the massage, I wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing. He said he’d had training. He carried with him a binder with consent forms and questionnaires about my areas of pain and health history. It appeared as if he’d done this before.

But when he stood in the room with me before we began, staring down at the table and said, “Okay, I’m ready,” I thought perhaps he hadn’t a clue how this was supposed to play out.

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“You can get on the table now.”

“Uh, no,” I replied. “You can go out of the room while I get on the table.”

I kept nearly all my clothes on, though I never once felt uncomfortable. My roommates were in the next room and besides, Michael was nothing but a gentle giant who, not surprisingly, didn't get enough repeat customers to know how to act.

He didn’t seem to have a clue about the human body, where the pressure points are, how to stimulate the blood flow or channel the lactic acid from the body. It was the worst massage I’d ever gotten in my life.

Yes, I found him on Craigslist. Still, it was all on the up and up and was the equivalent of $60 usd, the norm for massages in the U.S. Here, massages start at $140 usd and go up to $240. I’m not kidding. I called immediately when I saw his prices.

Of course, I wouldn't call back.

A few days later, while walking down my street, I saw a sign in the window of a Chinese Medicine shoppe: $70 usd for an hour. I thought I’d give it a go.

The woman at the front desk was gruff and spoke in one word sentences. She was ready to get me on a table then and there. Before I even knew it, I was ushered down a long hallway, down several flights of stairs and down another long hallway to a small room with a table covered in paper.

There was no sheet in sight. What was it with the UK and no sheets?

“Where’s the sheet?” I asked Li-Li.

She smiled and nodded. She spoke no English.

“You take off, you take off,” she said, pointing to my pants and shirt.

“But the sheet?” I whined.

She closed the door. At least she let me get on the table in privacy. But what was the point, exactly, if she was going to see all of me anyway?

I decided to drape my pashmina across my unmentionable areas. When she walked in, she laughed.

“Towel, towel,” she said, while draping a scratchy bath towel across the area the pashmina was covering.

Thank goodness.

For the next hour, Li-Li paddled me, slapped me and pounded on me as if she were tenderizing a piece of meat, and the table was rocking back and forth as if it might launch into orbit. I had my eyes open the whole time.

This was not a massage for the faint hearted. Thank God. It was just what I needed. A real massage. One where contact is made on the skin, where I feel the results instantly. My muscles closed their eyes and sighed. They were finally relaxed. Finally free of all the luggage toting, the house and hotel and apartment moving, the rigors of standing so long in a hot kitchen, the feel of new pavement beneath my feet.

“Thank you,” they whispered.