For my college graduation in 2002, my sister gave me a spa gift certificate for a full body massage and a facial. It was meant to be a “Hey, you made it through 4 years of college and you deserve to de-stress” present.
I had never had a massage before, so I was pretty excited to wear the fluffy robes and smell exotic-ly clean.
For the facial, I was expecting something akin to the face masks and scrubs my friends and I had bought at CVS and used during high school sleepovers. Which is to say, textured but soothing.
Incorrect.
Instead, the woman wheeled over a 2,000 watt bulb with a magnifying glass that looked like it belonged in an ER over someone whose head was being stitched back together. After a cleanser that felt like straight hydrogen peroxide, she proceeded to squeeze anything and everything that could be popped on my skin. I’m not certain, but she may have tried to pop my freckles.
After that unnerving experience, I was pretty excited to get a calming massage on my recently kinked muscles.
Incorrect again.
It started off ok, with me lying on my back and her massaging my upper neck and my arms, my legs, and feet. At this point I realized the error of my request as I have always been extremely ticklish. When I thought about how relaxing a massage would be, I was thinking of a cool, collected James Bond on a massage table, not a squirmy Tickle-Me-Elmo. When a bonafide masseuse was massaging my feet, it took everything to keep it together and not laugh and kick my legs out from under her like a small child.
But I hung in there.
When she told me to flip onto my stomach, I obliged, excited to get to the heart of the event: the back massage.
For anyone who has ever had a massage, let me ‘brief’ you and tell you the same thing the receptionist at the spa told me: keep your underwear on if you aren’t comfortable with massages on the upper thighs and lower stomach. Granny panties, check. Not only am I extremely ticklish, but I also get weirded out by strangers touching me (I hadn’t thought this entire thing through, obviously).
At this point, I was finally starting to relax despite my face being in what looks like a hemorroid cushion facing the floor. It felt great to be massaged on my back, my arms, my ass….? Wait.
Did she just MOVE my underwear over my cheek so she could massage my ass? Why is she…? “Wow, you seem tense, is this too hard?” No, no, for an ass massage it’s perfect….I guess? The entire time I thought, “But…but…I have my underwear ON. I thought that was the signal? I’ve never done this before so is this supposed to be happening? Ok, Heidi, just relax—-oh, and she’s moving on to my other cheek now, excellent yep, get both of them.”
After the ass massage, she gave me a full body salt scrub then told me I could shower off in the bathroom before leaving. I wasn’t sure if it was a common shower or just my shower, so I half-assedly rinsed and ran out to the waiting area where my sister sat serene, glowing, and free of any salt granules stuck to the inside of her thighs or between her toes.
Once we were in the car, I asked my sister about the ass massage technique I had just experienced and was faced with a blank look. “She massaged your ASS CHEEKS?” Yes, Gretchen, one at a time. Is that…not…normal?
To this day, I’m not sure if I had a free happy ending or that woman was just very in tune with the amount of stress I carry in my ass.
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