Never Been to Spain

Hello, Innernetz!  I guest posted at Kelley’s blog, Magneto Bold Too, a few days ago.  I’m cross-posting it here just in case you didn’t get a chance to pop over there and read it.

I went to see Wolverine earlier this week.  Did I replay the Hugh Jackman in his birthday suit scene over and over again in my dreams that night?  Oh, quit whining.  That’s not a spoiler, folks.  That’s incentive.  Now plop your $12.50 down and go get a gander at some man candy. 

Anyway, no, I did not dream of Hugh “Come-to-me-Baby” Jackman.  I dreamt that my mother was trying to get me to go to church.  But not just any church.  It was some country church with hard wooden pews and a preacher who looked like he just stepped off the set of The Scarlett Letter.  There was a fruit stand just down the street selling cherry pie and I could see it from my pew.  I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.  I don’t even like cherry pie all that much.

Anyway, I woke up craving pie and pissed off that I did not dream of Hugh “You Know You Want Me” Jackman.  But the universe was not finished fucking with me yet.  I packed up my bag o’ books and headed to Starbucks to study.  As some of you know, my Starbuck’s study days are often rather interesting.  I am a magnet for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who want to critique my hair or otherwise flaunt their crazy.  This particular day was no different.

The coffee shop was relatively empty.  I set my laptop up in my usual spot, a tiny table that’s just large enough for my computer and a book.  About an hour later, I was thoroughly engrossed in my work when I heard someone say in a pissed off voice, “I said hello!” I looked up to find a woman standing beside my table with a Tupperware bin filled with a murky biohazard and, in her other hand, a newspaper.  “Um, hello?” I said, sure that she had mistaken me for someone else — like someone who was about to share my table when there were at least ten empty ones in the store.  At my acknowledgment, she beamed.  Her face broke into a smile and her hair, which radiated out from her head like braided spokes on a wagon wheel, practically shivered with delight, each braid giving the others enthusiastic high-fives.  My stomach dropped.  And then she dropped into the seat across from me, pushing my laptop across the table and placing her Tupperware Dumpster of Death and newspaper in the now-empty spot. 

Now, for the uninitiated, if you MUST share a table at a coffee shop, all that is required is a civil acknowledgment of the other person’s existence.  You do not need to engage in small talk, exchange phone numbers, or arrange for a house swap while one of you is in France.  No, just nod.  Smile.  And done.  Apparently, Wilma Wagon Wheel didn’t get the memo.  She plopped down and immediately started blathering, only pausing to inhale enough air to re-inflate. 

“Do you think we’re going to get some sun today?  I like to go barefoot when it’s sunny.  It makes my corns feel good.”

*deep breath*

“What kinda laxtop is that?  My brother has a laxtop but his looks better than that one!

*deep breath and a shaking of the braids over the sorry state of my “laxtop”*

“Did you see Medea Goes to Jail, Race to Witch Mountain, Mall Cop? ”

*deep breath*

The easiest thing would have been for me to move to another table, but once again I was cursed by my southern upbringing.  I didn’t want to hurt her feelings so I stayed put.  And, as she opened the Tupperware Dumpster and began gobbing its contents like a mouse trapped in a cheese wheel, I figured she’d either finish and leave soon or the hazmats she was eating would kill her.  I tried to focus on my work only giving her a nod and an “uh-huh” every now and then.  I figured she’d get the hint.  She didn’t.  Instead, she stopped mid-slurp and slammed the container down on the table slopping a few tentacles over the edge and soaking her newspaper with ooze.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled.  Oh, crap.  What the hell is going on?  I looked up from my laptop to see that she was directing her ire toward a man at a table several feet away.  “What are you looking at?!” she yelled again.  In an indignant stage whisper, she turns to me and gestures, “That man is staring at us.”

And then I sealed my fate.  I answered her.  “He’s not looking at us,” I said.  He’s working.” With an emphasis on the “working.” That simple answer appeased her and now, having gotten my attention, her braids did a happy dance.  “I’m going to Hallelujah!” she said.  “Have you ever been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  Shitfire, I thought.  She’s going to whip out her Gideon Bible, or Watchtower, or copy of Dianetics.  My dream of my mom trying to get me to go to church became less of a dream and more like a premonition. 

“No, I’ve never been to Hallelujah.  I’ve never even heard of it,” I said.  She was flabbergasted.  Her eyes rounded into a Tex Avery cartoon look of surprise and her braids just about leapt off her head in shock.  “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!” she shouted.  “Nope, sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “Where is it?” Clearly disgusted by my lack of world geography, she waved her hand in the general direction of the Starbucks entry and said, “You know, over there!” I just shrugged and gave her a weak smile and said, “Sorry, still don’t know where it is,” as I prayed to God and L. Ron Hubbard that she would not ask me to look it up on my laxtop.  But I didn’t need to look it up because she described it to me in great detail.  How she’d gone to Liberty Travel to book her ticket (I didn’t even know people used travel agencies anymore) and that she just wanted to get her ticket but the travel agent wouldn’t stop talking about transfers, fees, and other mundane things.  But she finally got her ticket.  Just that morning. But she wasn’t sure where she’d put it.  No problem, she’d go back and get another one if she couldn’t find it.

“Are you sure you’ve never been to Hallelujah?” she asked.  The look of pity on her face was genuine.  First, I had a second-rate laptop and now, she discovers, I have never been to Hallelujah.  Hell, I’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!  So, she described it to me. 

Hallelujah has water, and sand, and palm trees and — wait a minute, this is sounding awfully familiar.  “Do you mean Honolulu?” I asked.  “Where?” she asked?  “Honolulu,” I repeated. “It sounds like that’s what you’re describing.” “Honolulu?  I’ve never heard of such a place!  Honolulu?” she said as she and her braids start laughing at my stupidity.  “Honolulu.  Hmph!” Now she thinks I am completely off my rocker.  “It’s just that I’ve never heard of Hallelujah and what you are describing sounds a lot like Honolulu.” I must have offended her with my suggestion because she placed the lid on her Tupperware Dumpster with a brusque snap! and gathered up her newspaper, soggy though it was with offal.  She and her braids turned their back on me and began to walk away from the table.  “What do you know,” she said, “you’ve never even heard of Hallelujah!”

She stomped away.  Three feet away.  And plopped herself down at the table of the man she’d yelled at just moments before.  I sighed with relief, went back to my reading, and pitied the poor man as, five minutes later, I heard her exclaim, “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF HALLELUJAH?!”

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Best Idea Ever!

Three months ago, our Apartment Manager showed up at our door with a big blue tarp and a large skein of rope.  I figured one of two things, either the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the Hudson River, or the landlord had found a tenant who could pay a lot more in rent than I, so I was on my way to the bottom of the East River.  Fortunately, neither of those possibilities occurred, but only because, thank god, I live in an overpriced walk-up with no dishwasher, bad electricity, and obnoxious neighbors.

Anyway, Apartment Manager was finally getting around to fixing the wading pool that covers the rooftop deck of the unit below mine.  It’s not a real wading pool.  It’s more like a catch basin.  Lacking any apparatus to drain water away from the enclosed deck, the lightest rain, morning dew, or spitting contest off my terrace turns the deck into an amusement park wave pool for local pigeons and the occasional vacationing sewer rodent looking for some fun and sun far from the din of the subterranean rat race (what happens on the roof deck, stays on the roof deck).  And of course, what would standing water be without mosquitoes?  We have those in proboscis abundance.  (Get it?  Proboscis = prodigious?  Dingo even makes entomology funny!) Let’s just say that, if you’re a New York mosquito in the know, Casa Dingo is the happening place to stop by for a drink and a bite.

After months of complaints, Apartment Manager finally came to solve the problem.  His solution consisted solely of laying a tarp across the deck.  That’s it.  No renovation, no reconstruction, just a big, blue tarp.  At first, I thought he might be an idiot.  But, as the day wore on, all doubts faded.  If he wasn’t hooting or humming the Vonage Woo-Hoo song, he was whistling the Vonage Woo-Hoo song.  All.  Morning.  Long.  By mid-afternoon, I was humming the Woo-Hoo song as well, but instead of cheap long distance, I was envisioning rolling his ass up in a big blue tarp before using a Hattori Hanzo katana to make my own Kill Bill sushi. Woo-Hoo, Woo-Hoo-Hoo!

I was sitting at my desk Googling tutorials on swordsmanship and wondering why it takes all day to place a tarp over a roof when suddenly, in the middle of the day, outside of the apartment went dark.  UFO hovering over the city dark.  Godzilla-like monster outside the windows dark.  Or perhaps, most frightening of all, ectoplasm-powered giant marshmallow man walking through midtown dark.  I knew this would happen one day.  I opened the terrace door — graham crackers and Hershey bars in hand — to find a waving, trembling wall of blue.  I should have guessed.  Tsunami.

But, I didn’t drown.  The wall just stayed there, wobbling at me.  Blue wobble wobble.  It was the freakin’ tarp.

“What’s going on?” I shouted as I batted my way through yards of blue nylon trying to find an opening through which I could reach Apartment Manager’s neck.  “This is a great idea!” he shouted back with glee, rubbing his hands together as if he’d just discovered how to make explosives with two three-ounce bottles of shampoo rather than one six-ounce bottle of shampoo.  Apparently, all the whistling and singing deprived Apartment Manager’s brain of much needed oxygen.  I can think of no other reason why he decided to secure the tarp to the top of my apartment, sloping the material over the terrace to the far side of the rooftop deck.  The back of the apartment looked like an isolation tent from a horror movie except there were no cute, superviolent monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses running around.  I did a double-take.  Nope, no monkeys.  Just one whistling ass.

“You’re blocking off all of our light!” I said.  Apartment Manager was convinced that it would be a short-lived inconvenience. He promised that a more permanent and probably far less convenient solution would be in place in less than a week.  I wanted to ask him if a “more permanent solution” meant actually fixing the roof so it didn’t hold water like a woman eating two pounds of taffy a week before her period.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I went back into the apartment to fume.  The fuming only lasted a few minutes.  Not because I took the high road and decided to just deal with living in a cloudless sky for the next week, but because my fuming was interrupted by phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt!  Phhhrrrt! 

I tried to ignore the sound but my curiosity got the best of me.  I went back out onto the terrace to find that Apartment Manager didn’t have enough rope to tie down the tarp.  So he decided to use duct tape.  Yep, Apartment Manager was MacGyvering the tarp to a brick apartment building.  It was his very own Blue Badge of Stupid.  “This is my best idea ever!” he kept shouting.  Woo-hoo!  Phhhrrrt!  Woo-hoo-hoo!  Phhhrrt! Best!  phhrrrt!  Idea!  phhrrrt!  Ever!  phhhrrrt!

Later that evening, a passing thunderstorm made mincemeat of the Blue Badge of Stupid.  It lay sad and alone for two months on the roof deck below forming a delightful mosquito duplex.  I watched passively for the first month, then I ordered Sea Monkeys.  I hoped to have a colony of cute, superviolent Sea Monkeys with cute, superviolent viruses waiting for Apartment Manager when he finally returned.  Alas, that plan was thwarted.  Last week Apartment Manager came to fix the roof deck as well as the roof on the top of our building.  I thought that would be the end of the repair drama, but I think the real drama is about to begin.  Now there is a swath of blue tarp draped over the top of our building.  Realizing that duct tape was not the best way to secure a big, blue tarp to brick, Apartment Manager decided to keep the tarp from flying off the top of the building by securing it with bricks wrapped with rope and draped over the edge of the roof like piñatas for kids you just don’t friggin’ like.  Or maybe the bricks just say, “Best!  Idea!  Ever!”

It’s supposed to storm tonight.  The wind has already picked up and the bricks swing precariously closer and closer to our living room window.  All I can say is that I’m going to bed tonight dreaming of all the Sea Monkeys I could buy with the settlement money.

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Leggo My Ego!

With the end of the semester fast approaching, my scheduled office hours have overflowed with students from the classes I teach who have no hope of receiving a passing grade, begging for mercy.  Regardless of all the times I scrawled Purple Sharpie Words of Doom on their papers, my exhortations of “Please come see me” or “We need to discuss your grades,” drifted through the echo chamber between their ears like tumbleweeds.  Helpful observations like “You are such a dumbass, be glad that breathing is an involuntary physiological function” went without notice.  But now? With a week of class left, now everyone wants to be a model student.  My ass has been kissed so much this past week, it’s burnished to a beautiful copper glow.  And it’s a nice ass, too! 

Since I can no longer run I’ve been doing a bunch of workout DVDs.  Oh, no, not your mother’s workout DVDs.  No Denise Austin or Kathy Smith for this ol’ Dingo.  I’ve been doing Crunch’s cardio dance DVDs.  I have no grace.  I have no coordination.  As we say down home, I look like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.  But it’s fun and I think it’s working. I also love the cardio sculpt DVDs.  The only DVD I’ve had issues with is the Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred.  The title makes me think of shredded cheese!  String cheese!  Blocks of cheese!  And then I wander away from the exercises on the TV screen and into the kitchen for a little snack.  So, yes, I have a nice ass if your idea of a nice ass is one shaped like a Bonbel cheese ball.

All this working out had me feeling pretty good.  But that was before I had my ass and my ego handed to me on a platter.  It started innocently enough.  The other day a friend sent me an email about an audition.  A cosmetics company was looking for “real women” to use in their next ad campaign.  The only instructions contained in the email were directions to the audition location and orders not to wear make-up because they wanted our natural beauty to shine through.  Natural beauty!  Ha!  You know they just wanted to us to show up looking like cadavers so they could ambush us for an edition of Extreme Makeover: The Ugly Truth.  Because we all know that women who don’t wear make-up are ugly, right?

Anyway, a week of PMS, getting my va-jay-jay waxed, and re-playing Izzie and Alex’s wedding on Grey’s Anatomy over and over again assured me that I was a real woman, so I went to the audition. Sans make-up.  No one died from fright as I walked down the street, although a few people gasped in horror and averted their eyes.  When I got to the audition location, the sign-in sheet had additional information.  Important information.  Information I should have been made aware of before traipsing my cheese ball across Manhattan during rush hour.  Right at the top of the sign in sheet in a BIG, BOLD font was:

We’re looking for Real Women between the ages of 20-30 to be the new faces of Cosmetics Company blah, blah, blah….

Wait, wha?!  Ages 20-30?  I signed in anyway.  I was already there and what could it hurt?  As I sat in the waiting area with a herd of sixteen-year-olds trying to look twenty, I was relieved to see another woman my age.  Actually, she looked older.  Much older.  As in, those aren’t freckles, honey, those are age spots.  I accidentally on purpose glanced at her sign-in information.  Under “Age,” she had written 23.  Twenty-three!  I wanted to let her know that we were supposed to write our age, not the year of our birth, but she was already deeply engrossed in reading Cosmo Girl.

Another thing I noticed about The Lying Old Lady was that she was wearing make-up.  I looked around the waiting area.  Everyone was wearing make-up!  Bitches!  And not just a light dusting of powder and mascara.  No, these girls looked like living, breathing Bratz dolls.  Geez, am I the only one who follows directions?!  Well, except for that 20-30 years old thing.  I quickly rummaged through my bag for some powder, eyeliner, anything!  But all I came up with was a tube of lip gloss that had lost its top and was therefore caked with fuzz, furr, and other detritus from the bottom of my bag.  It would have to do.  I put my bag on the floor and pretended to rummage through it while surreptitiously using the lip gloss to give me kissable lips and rubbing a little on my cheeks for that youthful glow.  I was proud of my resourcefulness until I looked in the mirror next to the sign-in table.  If they were casting for Bette Davis’s character from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane: the Trailer Park Production, I was a shoo-in. 

When they finally called my name I walked into the room where the Cosmetics Company make-up artist and photographer were taking pictures and scribbling notes on a legal pad.  Most of the girls who had gone into the room before me were back there for at least ten minutes.  I kicked myself for not using the restroom while I had the chance.  But I needn’t have worried.  I was in and out in ten seconds.  They didn’t even ask me to sit in the make-up chair under the bright department store dressing-room-type lights.  The photographer and make-up artists huddled around my information form, cast dubious glances my way and then muttered “Thank you” in my general direction.  “That’s it?  You don’t need to take my picture?” I asked.  “No m’am, that won’t be necessary.” M’am?!  Did they just “m’am” me?  I would’ve beaten them with my cane and flung my dentures at them had my hip not chosen just that moment to go out. 

But I didn’t leave empty handed.  On my way out Make-up Artist handed me a consolation prize. “Thanks for coming in!” she bleated.  “Here’s a 20% off coupon for Cosmetics Company make-up.  It’s also good for our line of wrinkle reducers and fade creams!” Oh, no she d’int!  Oh, yes, Innernetz. Oh, yes she did.

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More About My Neighbors

I know everyone on my block.  Well, almost everyone.  I don’t know most of the neighbors and those I do know, I do not like.  There’s Thing 1 and Thing 2, the Horrible Dog Owner, and the Bread Thrower.  The Horrible Dog Owner used to live in the apartment now occupied by Thing 1 and Thing 2.  We thought that would be the last we’d see of Horrible Dog Owner, but no, she moved to an apartment building three doors down.  Our terraces are within eyeing distance of each other.  Stink-eyeing distance.  She has a beautiful friendly dog that she leaves on her terrace in the worst weather conditions.  Mr. Dingo and I never have to check the weather report.  During the winter, if we can see the dog, we know that it’s freezing with a 100% chance of hail.  In the summer, if we can see his thick, fluffy fur, we know that there’s a heat advisory and we’d best stay indoors eating Popsicles and making sure we have enough ice cubes for our Long Island Iced Teas. 

I’ve never seen The Bread Thrower.  I’ve only seen the aftermath.  Occasionally, Mr. Dingo and I will be sitting on our couch watching TV and enjoying our Long Island Iced Teas when we hear a series of thumps on our terrace.  Upon investigation, we’ll find partially eaten bagels, crusts of bread, and saltine shards.  I have no idea who’s throwing bread out their window.  I know it’s not Thing 1 and Thing 2 because I don’t think they’ve eaten a carb since the first Bush administration.  Sometimes I’ll hear a window open and I’ll dash to the terrace — but too late.  I arrive just in time to be showered in bread and walk back into the apartment pissed off and looking like a chicken cutlet. 

The neighbors I like the best don’t actually live in my neighborhood; they either own or work in the shops on my block.  There’s the deli where I buy my bagels, the deli where I buy sandwiches (Yes, two delis on one block.  This is NYC), the dry cleaners, flower shop, nail salon, and pizza place.  I’m on a first name basis with most of them.  I know who’s working their way through school and who’s getting married.  They know my class schedule and the results of Dingo Girl’s last vet visit.  And we all hate the nail salon people.  The salon people have an attitude that makes them a pox upon this block.  The rest of us are sunshine on Sesame Street and they’re more like a sleep-inducing moonless night on Elm Street. 

My favorite neighbor, however, is Michael.  Michael works in one of the non-descript buildings on my block. I don’t know exactly what he does but I think it has something to do with the arts/entertainment industry.  He’s very cryptic about his line of work but he often has backstage passes for many of the cultural events around the city.  This weekend he gave me a ticket to an international photography exhibit way uptown where the ladies who lunch live and work and shop.  The exhibit was incredible.  It featured everything from mid-nineteenth century daguerreotypes to freaky experimental stuff that I pretended to like because everyone around me was viewing it with slack-jawed awe.  Okay, I didn’t pretend to like it, but I did have a slack-jawed look on my face.  The price tag on one particularly garish piece was a mere $250,000.  See!  Your jaws just went slack, didn’t they?!  $250,000!  One woman was elated that the recession had made the price of art so affordable these days.  You see, she was looking for artwork to complement the new Italian marble in the Grande Foyer and the completely renovated Petit Foyer (and yes, she pronounced it “pet-tee foy-yay”).  The Petit Foyer was completed last Summer and she’s just positively mortified that it’s Spring yet the Petit Foyer remains barren.  I wanted to tell Lady Foy-yay that I just ordered a venti foy-yay and then ask whether her pet-tee foy-yay was for the pets because I would never be caught dead with anything less than a tall foy-yay, and then it would need to be made with whole milk and an extra shot of espresso.  I didn’t say any of that, though.  I just shrugged and vomited a little when I did.

I left the mewling masses to explore other parts of the exhibit and was completely in awe of photos by Jill Freedman, Minor White, and Ansel Adams.  Poking around the nooks and crannies of the exhibit I couldn’t help but think that Ken Gilbert’s photography belonged there. His work is by turns shocking, soothing, introspective, and in your face but it’s all from a very talented eye.  If you haven’t checked out his photoblog you are missing out.  As I was standing on one side of an L-shaped wall looking at a tiny landscape and trying to convert 1900£ into U.S. currency — unlike Lady Foy-yay, I had forgotten to bring an accountant along — I heard a sound that could only be described as someone trying to play a kazoo filled with Jello.  And then came the “ahhhhhh!” And then, the smell.  Apparently someone chose to go to an out-of-the-way spot to relieve some gastrointestinal distress. 

Imagine a rotten egg wrapped in moldy feta cheese stuck between two layers of decomposing meat.  Now imagine baking that in a crock pot for a few hours before just now opening the lid.  It came drifting around the corner and wrapped my head in its stink molecules like a tight facial compression wrap.  My eyes watered and my throat immediately seized up.  The room started spinning and everything began to fade to black.  I knew I couldn’t pass out because the olfactory offender would be sure to tell the arriving paramedics that I was the one who forgot my Beano.  I don’t know why I was the one who felt embarrassed, but I did.  I thought about leaving before the sense assaulter came around the corner.  My mama raised me well.  Courtesy is about making the other person feel comfortable. But I don’t listen to the mama on my shoulder.  I just held my breath and waited for the noxious noisemaker to appear.  And appear she did. 

Apparently, Lady Foy-yay was also an accomplished player of the ass-trumpet.  The butt-ugly piece of art she just bought?  $250,000.  The look on her face when she saw me standing in her fog of stench?  Priceless.

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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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