Massages and Breakfast Cereal

I don’t know if any of you have gotten a professional massage.

I said “professional”. Not “happy ending”. Pigs.

They put you in a dim room with a nice bed and play some tinkly music with intoning vocals singing things you can’t understand in it for you to relax by. (With the wrong balance of tinkly music and vocals, it could sound a whole lot like a chinese restaurant.) Also in the room, there’s a stool, a few bottles of smelly stuff, and a little dual refrigerator/hot box thing. (Not that kind of hot box. Pigs.) Oh, and the room also comes with a massage therapist, armed with a  tool belt of pump bottles filled with oils and what must be ninja potions.

I laid on this bed for a massage, hoping that this would magically make the ouchiness of running a half marathon go away. It was working pretty well, and I drooled a bit as I drifted into the oblivion of what I imagined may have been a shamisen and a lady describing different ways of stir frying chicken.

“Excuse me, ma’am. When you’re ready I’d like you to filp onto your back,” says the massage therapist, whose name was Cindy.

“Mgrrruhh.” says I as I turn over. I felt barely conscious.

I hear the minifridge thop open and swack closed.  She lifts up my head and places a hot towel under my shoulders.

“Mugmmm.” says I.

Then a small roll of cloth was placed over my eyes. I hear the stool roll around to the foot of the bed. “Splutch splutch” goes the oil bottle. My feet start to feel like sunshine is walking on them, and I drift even further away from this world. Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I realize that I’m unable to move. “Ah,” I think to myself. “Obviously, she has used something from her tool belt of ninja potions to render me catatonic. How pleasant this feels.” Then Cindy stops massaging my feet and ankles, and moves somewhere else in the room.

I politely wait for the massage to resume when I hear something confusing. Is that… Is that a friggin’ bowl and spoon I hear?

I waited. My eyelids were heavy to start with, but I swear the cloth roll she placed on them felt like a force-field effect numbing swath and prevented me from looking around the room to see if I had imagined the bowl and spoon. I decide I’m delusional — high on lavender and rosemary aromatherapy. But i’m not sure. Not quite yet. I tense, ever so slightly.

Then cindy pulls a fast one. Sensing my discomfort, she quickly disarms me by rubbing the knots out of my shoulders.

“Gggurcp…” says I.

“Too much pressure?” asks she.

“Nyurrp…” says I.

She delicately pulls her hands away. Then I hear a sound. It might best be described as exactly the sound that cereal being poured into a bowl would make. And that’s exactly what my delusion tells me it is.

I hear the fridge thop open and swack closed again.

Now, my delusions are telling me the sound I’m hearing is exactly the sound that milk would make, if it were being poured gently into a bowl with cereal and a spoon in it. Stupid delusions. stupid delusions, and stupid cloth stopping me from seeing what the hell this Cindy lady is doing.

The stool rolls around to the head of the bed again.

I wait for it. The seconds draw out.

Then I hear what I was waiting for. It’s a crackling noise, soft and constant. Then metal spoon against ceramic bowl again and then…

The unmistakable sound of stainless steel against tooth, and the un-self-conscious chewing of breakfast cereal.

She’s eating f’in rice f’in crispies, right by my head, while I lay here completely paralyzed by ninja massage tactics!

I hear more crunching, and spoon against bowl bottom. Slurping. Oh, the slurping!

Any second now, her numbing technique will wear off and I’ll call her out on her brazenness! Holy wah, when her boss hears about this… This must not be tolerated!

I twitch a shoulder, ready to wrest the bowl out of her hands and run in my undies up to the front desks with it, proclaiming her abuse of power to the housewives waiting their turns! At this point, I lose time. I picture her, sitting at the head of the bed, knocking me out with a smart thwack of spoon to head.

She’s diabolical.

I wake to the gentle sound of her voice.

“Ma’am? Unfortunately our time is up,” says she.

“Werrm?” says I.

Cindy leaves the room so I can get dressed. I search for the cereal, the spoon, milk, and bowl, and I come up empty. The minifridge is nearly empty. Just a bottle of icy-hot type stuff and some damp towels.

I’m in a daze as I totter out of the room and sit heavily behind the wheel of my car.

Did I just completely f’in imagine that?

~ by jesstracey on August 16, 2011.