Massage therapist number one was a woman who did Indian rituals on my feet, blew on my forehead, and without ever touching my shoulder, told me only I had the power to heal my pain. She said my struggle with the transitions in my life was causing the inflammation in my shoulder. And I was relieved to be informed of this, since I had been under the impression it was the sand-strewn cement bike path I hit doing eighteen miles an hour on my Trek 750.
Massage therapist number two was a twenty-one year-old guy who played George Michael tunes and danced around the table in between massage moves on my back and legs. Told me he just moved from up from Florida and had trained by working on women in a beauty parlor. Despite my instructions, he spun around to "Faith" and pulled on my arm so hard it popped out of the socket. I didn't stop howling, even after he'd offered me my next session free.
The third one told me his name was Joseph Smith like the Mormon founder and that he'd been a biker and a drug addict in his younger days, naked lady tattoos jiggling when his muscles flexed to emphasize a point. As my breasts flopped around from one side of the table to the other while he wrestled various parts of my body out from under the sheet, he told me that I needed to let go of my discomfort about my nudity. He announced that he felt my shoulder wanted to be loved. "Go home and tell your boyfriend to make love to your shoulder," he said. After that he brought in a man with long white hair and a bone carving hanging from his neck for a second opinion. Who simply observed that he'd never seen anything like it and walked out, leaving the door open. Then Joseph sat me up on the table and bear-hugged me from behind, folding my arm across my chest, leaning me against his protuding belly, and jerking my elbow toward my chin. Ripping and popping noises ensued, and after the constellations cleared and my eyesight returned, I could tell that there was, in fact, some increased movement. I asked him what he had done. "Fuck if I know," he responded.
Massage therapist number four dressed all in black and wanted me to kneel with her before an altar of shells, rock crystals and silver jewelry before she would work on me.
Number five weighed four-hundred pounds and said she was also a spiritual healer and told me to do this ceremony with a bowl. Said I needed to put all my problems and concerns, all the emotion I was holding in my shoulder, into the bowl so she could free me up. The bowl was stainless steel, like the kind my mother brought to the elementary school on the passenger seat of her car when we went home sick. The "throw-up bowl" we called it.
Massage therapist number six stood in the corner with his back turned while I undressed. Told me he had once lived on a houseboat, only it was in the old days when they were really boats and had no plumbing. Said he put a toilet seat on top of a plastic bucket. "Nothing like a good dump under the stars," he told me. I said I appreciated that he felt he could share that with me, after meeting three and a half minutes before. When I had finally relaxed enough to forget where I was, he started chanting, "Ellen's guides and my guides come together and watch over us now," in an Oral Roberts tone. "Please help us take all the pain out of Ellen's shoulder, all the bad feelings, all the negative energy and replace it all with loooove." He put his hand on my forehead, told me I was beautiful. I preferred the poop story.
The seventh one never touched me at all. She hummed and whispered syllables I could not understand and waved her hands and arms frantically four inches above my body like the magician before he saws the woman in half. She held her hands over my eyes and made soft woo-woo noises like someone doing a ghost imitation in a cardboard haunted house. Told me she was "getting a reading" off my shoulder. "You have anger," she said. "You are carrying anger in your shoulder. I think perhaps it is toward a woman. Yes, yes, a woman. Could it be your mother?" Now this was a brilliant original insight I thought. Certainly one she would never be able to use with other female customers. No other women I know have anger toward their mothers. I didn't remember seeing any sign hanging out front reading "Madame Dipsea - Psychic - Five bucks."
Massage therapist number eight asked me if I minded if she massaged the area near my breasts. I told her yes. Yes I did mind. She asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted her to work on. I showed her my shoulder and demonstrated its limitations. If she worked on nothing but some areas of my shoulder, I would be happy, I said. She asked me if I were fine, or if I would like a blanket. I told her no, I was not fine, and yes, yes, I would like a blanket. She asked me about the points of pain she might work on. I knew the names of the muscle groups - posterior deltoid, sub-scapularis - and I said them to her. She said she had taken classes in sports injury, showed me some exercises with hand weights, and told me ice-heat-ice. I cried out "OW, the pain is too much," and "that spot is too tender," when it was, and she stopped. I told her I would come to see her three times a week, and I have. My shoulder is healing.
published in Spring, 1997 in the Kaleidoscope Ink
copyright 2003 Ellen Nordberg . all rights reserved .
ENordberg@mindspring.com