Massages are not okay and I don't care what you say
After my first semester making the Dean's list, I was invited, along with fellow list members in the engineering department, to a one-day purpose workshop with a psychologist.
At one point during the day, we sat down in a circle, all eleven of us, and she asked us, if we had the power to do so, what some of the wild future inventions we would work on would be.
Before I tell you my brilliant idea, I have to remind you that I was a douche. I already confessed to it. Please keep it in mind as I reveal my big idea.
I said I'd love to invent a machine that cleans my body in 1 second because showers were an "inconvenience" to my younger self.
At that point in my life, I measured everything in terms of being hyperproductive, and showering, in my view, wasn't.
There was no clear benefit to showering because it did not move the needle on my studies, even though, mind you, it prevented me from stinking in a part of the world where the temperature and humidity were always at a stable, "I think this is what hell feels like."
I can't do many of the activities designed for R&R — rest and relaxation, for those of you in the know.
They just have this feminine energy I am not completely comfortable with like massages, and manicures, and pedicures and watching sports.
When I make the mistake of confessing this to people, they take it upon themselves to convince me how nice massages are.
They don't know that it has nothing to do with it feeling nice and all to do with having to lie there… doing nothing… while you are half naked with a stranger... and they are just squeezing your body fat... with smell-good oils.
Listen, I don't even care that this is not normal.
Because it is not, it is the complete relinquishment of control.
You go to a place in a light industrial area of town, you approach the clerk, and you say, "Hi, how are you? I'm here for my ten o'clock for my body to be touched in ways no one, not even myself, touches myself. Do you have my stranger available?"
A stranger comes out and commands you, and you just agree.
In any other circumstance, someone tells you, "Take off all your clothes and lie face down!!!! On the table." And you would take issue with it.
Because it is within the confines of a spa, you go, "Yeah, okay, that's fine."
But your boss asks you to do it, and it's a problem. "Thank you for coming, Debbie. Here is a corner. Take off your clothes and lie on my desk face down, while we go over your performance review."
So, no, it's not normal, but my real issue is with someone telling me to lie face down, looking through a hole, while someone applies pressure on my glutes.
Even though I find it objectionable, I have done it twice and both times to please my wife, even though I wasn't the one giving her the massage.
The first time I got a massage was right before our wedding.
Justine and I got married in Playa del Carmen, and the hotel we were staying at had a spa.
Justine, who was determined to turn me into a massage lover, booked a couples massage. I fell asleep almost immediately. The nap was very good, I guess. As good as it can get when you fall asleep, and someone is there to pinch your muscles as if you were playdough.
The second time was right after our wedding.
We went to Tulum for our honeymoon, and a friend got us a couple's massage, which feels more like a "Her" gift, but such is the life of a married man.
The massage was branded as a Mayan mud massage.
The spa was right across from the beach.
After we registered at the front, they took us to a teepee and asked us to lie down on our individual beds. Then we were completely covered in warm mud. It was very relaxing.
I can't explain why.
I definitely wouldn't have been able to explain how good it was to my 19-year-old self, who thought showers were an inconvenience, because this was, by all standards, the opposite of a shower.
All I know is that it felt, really, really good.
What I didn't know was the spa's plan for cleaning off the mud.
They gave us the tiniest pieces of huipul clothing—that looked really old and raggedy, maybe from when Cortés invaded Mexico. Then they gave us instructions to cross the road, completely naked except for the said piece of clothing we were holding over our genitals, and then to "cleanse" ourselves in the salty ocean.
We did as we were told and scurried across the freeway through an alley to the ocean.
The tide was high, and the waves were aggressive. But we jumped in anyway because the mud was getting hard against our skin and hanging in there.
The ocean loved it.
This sudsy bastard was just banging my wife's coconuts with glee, and I'm standing there watching, and all I could think was, "Have fun while you can, but she is coming home with me—we just signed a contract saying so."
I was feeling territorial as I fought the ocean for my little piece of clothing, thinking, "This is no way to start a marriage!"
We got out, and nobody cared that we were naked because the beaches were full of Europeans who were just there smoking their cigarettes and looking at us with disinterest and disdain as if saying, "Mais oui, what's the big deal? We also have le nutsacks."
And that was the last time I got a massage.
I don't judge everything in my life through the lens of efficiency now. But I also know that I can't relax enough to get a massage because they are not only inefficient, they are also weird.
