Last week, Rach asked me, "What do you want to do for your birthday?"
I'm not real big on birthdays, so I said, "Oh, I don't know, maybe take the kids out to eat or something. It doesn't matter."
"Okay, good. Because I made plans already. Do you think you'll be able to leave work by 5?"
Looking back, I realize now that she was just asking me as a 'courtesy question'. You know, when your wife asks you something just to keep up the facade that you actually have any kind of real input to your existence. Things like: "Which shoes should I wear with this dress?" or "Do you think we should rip out all the carpet in the house?" or "Should we sell this house and move to a place called Wassammassaw?" My answers don't really matter. The outcome stays the same.
Anyway, on Monday at five o'clock I texted Rach to tell her I was leaving work. She texted me back and said not to go home, but to go straight to the mall. The mall? Really? Is she taking me to the food court for my birthday? Is she going to treat me to some Chinese food samples? Maybe the arcade? Whatever. If there's one thing I've learned during our marriage, it's that it is pointless for me to try to guess what's going to happen next. When I got to the mall, she texted me, 'Go to Express. Ask for Christi.'
At this point, I'm starting to feel kind of like a secret agent. But the kind of secret agent that can only accept mundane missions from his wife. So maybe not so much secret agent-like. When I walked into Express, I must've had the same blank, lost expression on my face that Obama had when he walked into the White House the first time, "I think I'm supposed to be here, but I have no idea what I'm doing." Luckily, my confusion was tacitly written on my face, because the girl working there came right up to me, and said, "Are you Jeff?" I responded with, "Ummm, yes?", as if I was confused by my name at this point. "Okay, come with me." She took me to the front section of the store and gave me the option of 3 different types of shirts, and 2 different types of pants. Apparently, Rach had called ahead, and explained to the girl that my current wardrobe consisted mainly of colored wifebeaters and camouflage shorts. Limiting my options was a good idea in theory, but unfortunately my fashion ineptitude foiled their efforts. I still picked out pants that were too big and a shirt that didn't match my huge new pants. Even Jaxon has a better fashion sense than I do at this point.
After I mishandled my wardrobe outing, Rach texted me the address of where I needed to go next. The text led me to a nice elegant seafood restaurant where Rach was waiting for me. The restaurant was so nice that Rach and I were less than half the age of the next youngest person there. Seriously, everyone in the restaurant was in their 60s. Even our waiter looked like he had a bad hip. When he read us the specials, he spoke very loudly, complained about the poor lighting, and confused himself. Okay, maybe not, but the whole place was old. The food was good though, but Rach kept looking at her watch because she was worried about not being able to make it to our next "appointment". She kept referring to our appointment. 'We're going to be late for our appointment.' Appointment? What kind of appointment? A movie maybe? What else could it be? A concert? A comedy show? But it's a Monday night? Oh well, I guess I'll find out soon enough.
So when we left, I gotta say, I was pretty anxious about our next 'appointment'. But a happy kind of anxious. It had been a nice relaxing night up to this point, and I had a feeling Rach was going to outdo herself. As she was directing me where to go, it didn't make sense. We were heading back to an area that I knew pretty well, and there wasn't anything exciting going on there. Just a bar, a couple of night clubs, a few restaurants, and a.......oh no........no.......no........can't be.......NOOOOOOO!........It's a.......a.......COUPLES SPA! Awwww CRAP! I didn't see that one coming. I felt like a dog that just realized he was going to the vet.
See, here's the thing. I don't like people touching me. Especially strangers. I'm weird, I know. But it just gives me the heebie jeebies. That's why I've never gotten a massage before. Not to mention that I'm sort of ticklish. Rach knows all of this, but apparently she thought that my dislike for stranger-rubbing was akin to my dislike for coffee. Because she doesn't believe me that I don't like coffee either. She'll ask me to taste her coffee. I'll decline. She'll tell me that I'm gonna like it. I'll decline. She'll tell me that "I'll barely be able to taste the coffee in it". I'll decline. Finally, my distaste of coffee will be trumped by my eagerness to get out of the merry-go-round conversation that I'm stuck in. And I'll taste it. And it'll disgust me. And she won't believe me. We've done this about nine different times with various coffee-containing substances.
But maybe this would be different. Maybe I WOULD enjoy it. Maybe I just needed to give it a chance. Maybe my reluctance to have my body parts kneaded by a complete stranger would go away. Maybe. But I doubt it. After we signed our release forms, they walked us into our dimly lit torture chamber. The lady told us to strip down to whatever we're comfortable with, and then lie down face-down on the table. And that prompted this exchange:
Me: Strip down to whatever you're comfortable with? Does that mean I should leave my socks on?
Rach (already completely naked as if she was wearing breakaway clothes): Just take all your clothes off. Don't be stupid.
Me: Shouldn't I just leave my underwear on?
(But on the inside, I was thinking: Why would I take my underwear off? Are they going to massage any lower than the top of my underwear? Or even worse, any higher than the bottom of my underwear? What kind of place is this? What if there's a fire, and I have to run out of here in my birthday suit. Get it? Birthday suit? I kid.)
Rach: Relax, it's going to be some girl massaging you anyway. You don't want your underwear to get in the way.
Me: Get in the way of what!?!
At this point, I wanted to tell her that the gender of my masseuse wouldn't (at least I thought it wouldn't) matter. I would feel just as skittish (or at least I thought I would feel just as skittish) with a girl masseuse as I would with a dude masseuse. I wanted to tell her that, but I knew that I was running out of time to make my underwear decision. The masseuses (Is that the correct plural form of masseuse?) would be coming in any second. I couldn't decide what to do. Underwear? Or no underwear? I was frozen. Could not decide. I would be a horrible bomb technician, by the way. Finally, in a gut reaction, I threw off my underwear and jumped under the covers. Besides, what's the worst that could happen?
A split second later, two masseuseses walked in; a girl masseuse, and a man-sseuse. And as the man-sseuse walked towards me, I noticed that he wasn't slowing down near Rach's table. And then he passed her up and came closer. Oh, I thought, he must need to grab something from this side of the room. Then he put some lotion on his giant meat-hook man-hands, started rubbing his hands together, looked at me and said, "Well I guess I'll be working on you today."
........Wait.......What??????
It happened so fast, I didn't really get a chance to think about it. It was probably the same feeling Andy Dufresne had the first time The Sisters cornered him in the shower. And just to recap, in case you weren't paying attention; I'M LAYING BUTT NAKED ON A TABLE WITH SOME STRANGE DUDE ABOUT TO RUB LOTION ON MY BACK!! AND NOTHING BUT A LITTLE BLANKET IN BETWEEN HIM AND MY JUNK!! And this is supposed to be relaxing? Really? He asked me if I was hurting anywhere, and I was so distraught, that for some reason I thought to myself, "Tell him no. You don't want to show him any weakness." Seriously? Show him weakness? I'm pretty sure the only way I could've seemed more vulnerable at that moment is if that Sarah McLaughlin 'Adopt-a-Puppy' commercial would've came on the radio, and I started crying like a little girl. But even so, I blurted out, "No! I'm fine!" Like an idiot.
Much to my chagrin, he started 'working on me'. So in my mind, I had to try to block out my stranger-touching phobias, and also all of my ticklishness. The last thing I wanted was for me to giddily twitch when he was loosening up my hammys. Anyway, the whole thing made me pretty uncomfortable. Rach claims that she heard me snoring at one point. My response to her was that I was just pretending to be sleeping. You know, like when you're being attacked by a bear. A bear with really, really soft hands. And then, out of nowhere, a bell rang and the guy kind of lifted his hands and said, "Alright, your time is up. Make sure you drink a lot of liquids. Good night." And he walked out of the room and out of my life forever. And that was it. Drink a lot of liquids? I don't understand. Did my skin feel extra dry? Do they always say that at the end of a massage? Does he ever switch it up any, and say something like, "Make sure you don't mix your lights and darks in the laundry."? Was this just his catch phrase? Did he do something to me while I was pretend sleeping that would've dehydrated me? Somebody please explain this to me. Why exactly do I need to drink a lot of liquids? I never got that answered, but that was it. No more. We got up, put our clothes back on, and we left.
Rach was uber-relaxed. I was just confused and oily. I guess I can understand why people would enjoy getting a massage, but I'm just not one of those people. I'll just put it up there with all of the other things that other people like but I don't particularly enjoy; like cappuccino, and Glee, and family Christmas cards, and The Notebook, and cats, and plastic toilet seats, and pickles, and Geico commercials, and neck tattoos, and european vacations, and NASCAR, and Meryl Streep, and shopping sprees, and tempurpedic mattresses. They're just not for me.
But I will tell you this: the next time Rach asks me if I want to go get a massage, I'm definitely going to say no. But I'm also going to go put on a nice pair of underwear, just in case it's merely a courtesy question.
No comments:
Post a Comment