Creepy People

 

By Tara McTigue

 

 

Try to relax.  Try to forget that when you requested a Swedish massage, you had thought it would be delivered by a big, harmless Swedish lady, preferably over fifty, and preferably with a doughy, red face and earnest demeanor. 

 

The smallish, elf-like gentleman who has stepped into the role of Helga tries too hard to come off as tranquil, but you must ignore the obvious awkwardness of this whole thing.  Yes, it is a little too personal, and yes you do feel so very alone here, but it’s all good.  A sheet thicker than the bed variety covers you and that is what matters. 

 

So as you lay under your army blanket you try your best to tune into the music being piped in through the vents: a little Beethoven, interfused with what sounds like laser beams shooting through space. If the more you try to relax, the worse off you become, don’t let that bother you.  Because in truth, if relaxing makes you anxious, so will worrying.

 

When your spritely captor finishes with your back, he moves onto your upper arms.  By now the overbearing awkwardness is really getting to you.  You prefer the massage you received in the East Village a few months ago, during which a Chinese lady beat the shit out of you for half an hour. She could have cared less if you were feeling relaxed or not; so long as she got to insult you in one sly way or another, she was happy.

 

By now the music has changed; gone is the space symphony, which has been replaced with bird sounds, parrots specifically. You feel as though you are lost and afraid in a rain forest.  In the next room, it sounds like someone is being brutally tenderized with a mallet and after a few minutes this fades into the distinct noise of snoring.  You wonder what exactly it is that your neighbor is paying for.

 

Now it is time for the feet, which thankfully is over rather quickly.  Having no sense of time, you instinctively feel that this experience is almost over, and your suspicions are confirmed when you feel your scalp being kneaded.  As he pulls your ears away from your head in a very un-calming segment of your massage, you think, “I wish I was dead.”  You then correct your grammar and think, “I wish I were dead,” and continue to repeat this phrase to yourself for the remaining three minutes of your time in this room.

 

You are then told via forced whisper to continue to relax and then come out whenever you feel ready.  Your eyes are now open and watching sideways as the little man leaves the room, God bless his tiny soul, and closes the door ever so gently behind him.  You shoot upright like a bullet and throw your clothes on as quickly as possible, adding your sunglasses and artificially flavored lip gloss to make you feel like a citizen of the real world again, and not like one of the creepy people who would enjoy this sort of thing.