I used to have a regular massage therapist but life happened and now I tend to just blindly book a massage at the last minute and cross my fingers that the massage therapist will be adequate. On one particular session it started off like all others, face down on the table with all the regular stuff happening. I’m not certain when things started to go wrong, but I am pretty sure it took a turn when my therapist started referring to herself in the 3rd person. I would have been perfectly fine if she would have been calling herself any old name like Sally Jo, Wendy, or LuLu. I don’t really have any preferences or care about 3rd person talk mostly. I’m always amused by those who choose to talk this way and would love someday to study these folks in my spare time, but until then I will just think deeply about them from time to time.
During most of my past massages I zone out and sometimes sleep, and I’m pretty sure I was on the verge during this one like most of my others. However, when the therapist reached my back and neck area something changed. It could have been all the knots that are constantly residing in my neck that make it almost impossible to turn my head to locate my blind spot while driving that changed the energy during this massage to something else. Or perhaps it was just too difficult for this particular therapist to resist her once removed maternal instinct to stay to the strict massage therapist script. She explained that my shoulders and neck were a mess of knots and placed a heating pad on the area, which was fine with me. However, she sat there and patted the heating pad kind of like how one would pat the behind of an infant. After a few minutes she excused herself from the room, but not before leaning down to almost whisper in my ear to let me know, “Grammy, would be back to work the knots out.”
Well, this changed everything. With every application of lotion and the mention of Grammy doing this and that I tensed up. I realized that I didn’t want Grammy rubbing anything! And it did not help that she started every sentence out with what Grammy was going to do next when she moved to a different part of my body. Even the sounds of the lotion coming from the bottle sounded perverted somehow and I felt dirty. When the massage was finally over I dressed in shame and feel like I just committed some vile unfavorable act. If I was a religious person I would have run to my nearest confessional. The most perplexing thing about this experience aside from the dirty guilt and the urge to find religion was when it was over, as I was driving away, I felt the overwhelming urge for a freshly made baked good and oddly I felt cheated.