The Health Department Is Even Afraid Of This Place

I have back problems.  These back problems may stem from before I was teaching when I got thrown from horses for a living or, before that, from when I was a flight attendant and spent my days standing during turbulence while insulting little people.  Maybe the back problems are more recent in origin, and stem from the burden of carrying the future generations of this nation on my shoulders so that my students can thank me in emails with such stunning testimonials as, “Thanks for the bad grade and wasting my time.” Or maybe it’s all in my head. 

But, the pain!  Oh, the humanity!  Sometimes I feel as if someone is dripping battery acid on my spinal cord.  Other times, when my back doesn’t hurt quite so much, it’s like sandpaper being rubbed across exposed nerve endings. Alas, those are the good days.

Standing hurts, walking hurts, lying down hurts, sitting hurts, and cartwheels hurt.  I have found that levitation eases the pain somewhat, but that doesn’t solve the cartwheel problem, now does it?  I have tried ibuprofen, a heating pad, and Jim Beam, but nothing alleviates the pain or loosens the Gordian Knot binding the right side of my spine.  And I don’t really want to get used to anything stronger than those things.  Jim Beam is strong enough, thank you.  And what’s the step up from a heating pad?  Dousing my back with gasoline and then leaning into a candle?  That sounds fine but I’m afraid of getting addicted.

Once or twice a year I get a massage at a really nice salon, and that has helped.  I have a favorite salon that offers wine and petit fours with soothing music, plush robes, fuzzy slippers, and silky, scented oils — but that was then and this is The Recession.  Oh, sure, when I was getting mega-bonuses and flying Dingo Girl around the world in a company-owned private jet to hobnob with Branjelina and eat sushi and pufferfish with Kanye, a massage and a facial at a fancy salon didn’t seem like much of a luxury. It was a necessity. But now, on my adjunct salary, I’d be tempted to eat the cucumber facial and roll a rice cake in the Regenerative Seaweed Body Wrap.  Also, Dingo Girl is unemployed and her résumé looks like crap.  Really.  Crap.  And sleeping and eating and that’s about it.

So yesterday, I levitated over to a salon that offers cheap massages.  The way their services were advertised, I expected to see the vice squad surrounding the place as I crab walked my way to the rear door.  There was no vice, but judging by the stained carpets, empty food containers, and pedicure basins covered with marine life not yet discovered by National Geographic, I thought I was in the middle of a Primetime Live Investigative Report: When Toddlers Own Businesses.  I should’ve turned around but the pain in my back limited quick evasive action. Before I knew it, I was ushered into a dimly lit hovel at the rear of the salon.

My masseuse, Mariana, looked disgruntled that I had interrupted her evening meal.  At this point, however, I would have gladly settled for anyone, even Bobo the Monkey, if it would alleviate my pain.  Mariana gestured to a small wooden table and instructed me to lie down.  Yes, I said wooden table.  It looked like a piece of unfinished plywood balanced precariously on table legs someone left at the curb.  I wasn’t sure if she’d just led me to the outhouse or if this was actually supposed to be a massage table because instead of a nice, cushioned O-shaped pillow in which to rest my head, the salon had cut a rough circle into the plywood.  Mariana noticed my hesitation and offered to get a cushion from the moldy, tattered couch I had spied on the way in that was held together entirely by bodily fluids.  I passed on her generous offer.

As my teeth began to chatter I asked Mariana if it would be possible to make her dank, dark cell a little warmer.  She responded with a deep sigh and rummaged around in a box at the foot of the table until she found a small space heater.  She lined the wooden table with towels and instructed me to climb on.  The table wobbled but, using all the poise learned from my years spent serving high-altitude drinks to belligerent businessmen, I climbed aboard the shaky plywood express and stuck my face through the hole.  I half expected that I was being punked.  I was pretty sure that on the underside of the table they had painted a woman in a Super Girl costume that the hole was her face. But no flashbulbs went off.  No television personalities came laughing into the room.  Nope.  All that happened was that I had my face sticking through a roughly-cut hole in an unfinished sheet of plywood suspended on wobbly legs.

I tried to make the best of it.  I closed my eyes and tried to relax.  I took a deep breath and… wax.  I smelled wax and some other pungent odor.  I opened my eyes and, well, you don’t want to know.  Let’s just say that there was a bucket stored under the hole and, apparently, the salon did waxes, too.  Maybe they recycled the wax and stored the used wax under the table in between de-hairings.  And maybe, just maybe, every now and then someone getting a massage on the wobbly plywood table suddenly had to puke due to the constant movement and balancing, and they kept a bucket right under the hole in the table just in case.  And then they recycled the wax. 

That was the straw that broke this Dingo’s already aching back.  I started to get up but Mariana uttered incoherent apologies while pressing her fingers in the middle of my back.  Aaaaagh!  I couldn’t move.  It was some Spetsnaz immobilization trick.  I could only lay there and weep quietly while she whisked the offending recycling away.

When she came back — I don’t think she had washed her hands after handling the recycled hairy wax and puke bin — she began the massage.  It was not the best massage I’ve ever had.  Actually, it was not even a good massage.  I was cold, the balancing act I was performing so as to not tip over the plywood table made my stomach muscles hurt and, yes, I felt a twinge of motion sickness.  But a half hour later I was actually able to get up and put my shoes on — I’d been wearing slip-ons all week because I couldn’t bend over to tie my shoes.  I left the salon feeling much better than when I’d first entered! 

But I also felt a little itchy.  Okay, a lot itchy. Of course I came home and asked Dr. Google about my symptoms and, apparently, I caught some skin disease at the dirty salon that’s going to cause all my skin to fall off.  It’s true!  Dr. Google said so and he’s never wrong!

But at least my back feels much better.  I can actually sit at my desk without crying — until I start to read my students’ papers.  I will never go back to that salon, although they did give me nice souvenirs from my visit. In addition to the skin-falling-off disease, I have a four-inch bruise along the front of my forehead where my delicate flesh was in contact with the jagged plywood hole.  I look like I was halfway through brain surgery but, as soon as the surgeons changed my mind, I just got up and left.  Or it looks like someone gave me a paper-cut lobotomy. 

I hope that if my back ever feels that bad again, it’s after this recession when it will again be okay to go to salons that offer chocolate transfusions and where the employees have their hands surgically replaced with cashmere mittens.  If these back problems recur before the recession is over, I will just lie down in traffic and let tire treads work their magic.  The smell would be better and I would definitely get a happier ending out of it. 

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