Howlings / Putting your neck on the line

A few weeks ago, I hurt my neck during a particularly violent rugby match, in which I showed legendary athletic ability and won our league championship single-handedly.

None of that's really true, but my neck is sore. I don't play in a rugby league, and wouldn't know a ruck from a scrum. In reality, I had to sleep in my daughter's tiny bed one night after she awoke with nightmares and insisted on sleeping in our room ... without me in it. After somehow agreeing to this arrangement in a sleepy haze, I banished myself to her twin bed, and promptly woke in the morning curled into the shape of a street pretzel and with a knot the size of a Coffee An' doughnut lodged in my neck. My daughter slept great, the little weasel.

After I whined for a few days, my wife (whose patience with my sick-fueled complaining has worn thin ever since the Great Psychosomatic Fever Hoax of 2002) had heard enough. She told me to go get a massage.

While most sane adults would look at the massage experience as something to treasure, I do not. I've never found the idea of a massage particularly appealing. There's something about the intimacy of the act that made me uncomfortable. There's nothing that brings my insecurities to the surface like the thought of a complete stranger in a state of shock over the 43-year-old state of my physique. I imagined a buff-and-tanned massage therapist snickering over my complete and utter lack of deltoids while secretly rubbing toothpaste into my nether regions (to win a big bet the rest of the therapists have had going for years). As a result, I've been avoiding the spas that most adults consider a luxury. To me, the spa sounded like a psyche-bruising hellfire.

But I was in dire straits here. The knot was not going away with my wife's half-hearted attempts at rubbing (although she did seem to take great pleasure walking on my back, especially the jumping part). After hearing another round of complaints, she mentioned that a new massage parlor opened in town, and threatened to sell my holiday presents on eBay if I didn't go there immediately. I picked up the phone, asked for the next available slot for a half-hour massage, and drove there with haste.

(This is probably as good a time as any to get one detail out of the way that the deviants in my reading audience are eagerly anticipating: sorry to disappoint you, oh sad pathetic soul, but this is not one of those places, the kind where that drunk and disheveled trader you know used to go after work in The Bowery for what he called a little "release." That would be an entirely different column, one that would require a different outlet and a whole lot of disinfectant).

I arrived at my destination, opened the storefront and found a room as dark as a cinema. There was instrumental music playing, and (once my irises opened up to their crater setting) I noticed an older man in a robe reclined in a chair with his feet being rubbed. He was fast asleep, and snoring. "This isn't Shake Shack?" I said to no one in particular. I turned to leave but a nice woman gently coaxed me into a private room in the back.

The room was spare, with not much more than a cot, some linens, and a tray of unknown lubricants. Now, keep in mind, I have no idea what I'm doing here. It turns out that English is not the dominant language spoken at this particular location, so the woman pointed vaguely to my clothing and left the room. I stood there dumbfounded for a minute, unsure of the proper code of undress. Surely my shirt needs to come off. The pants are a little more complicated. So I hedge, leaving my underwear on but wrapping myself in a towel. I still don't know if this was the right move (although I figured I'd be able to recognize the universal symbol for "nice tighty whiteys" if she offered it).

When she returned, she pointed nonchalantly to the table. I laid down on my stomach (even that took a minute to figure out) and proceeded to place my face within what seemed like a towel-covered toilet bowl. And she went to work.

And work she did! This small, seemingly harmless woman suddenly turned into some kind of Olympic athlete, a mix between the leaping gyrations of a gymnast and a bodybuilder. She alternated between tender moments of careful, subtle massages and all-out gruesome assaults on my flesh and muscle. Wait a minute, I thought as she beat me hard with either her closed fists or a meat cleaver ... isn't this supposed to feel good?

Midway through, I began to hear moans coming from the room next door. It sounded like a cow. A dying cow. Man, I thought to myself, that guy is really taking a beating in there.

It took a few minutes for me to realize what was happening. There was no other room, and there was no other guy. That moaning was coming from me. And I was drooling like an infant on a sugar rush (thank god for the toilet-bowl face rest).

An hour later (so much for my half hour appointment), I was spent. The knot was gone from my neck. And so was everything else. My body felt completely empty, like it had been turned inside out, gutted, and turned back again.

I wobbled off of the table, put my clothes back on, drank 42 gallons of bottled water and headed to the reception desk. The snoring man had gone home during my ordeal (probably woken from his slumbers by the noises from the back of the room), leaving me alone with my tormentor and her boss. "You like?" she asked me hopefully. I smiled, paid my money and left.

The pain in my neck was gone, replaced by a general ache and soreness through the rest of my body. So this is luxury, I thought. I looked at the "Buy 10 Get 1 Free" offer I was handed on my way out the door, like a Pleasure & Pain (emphasis on Pain) discount card. I kept it in my wallet. I have no idea why.

Michael Wolfe is a Westport writer. His "Howlings" appears monthly.