The Massage

My girlfriend (yes I somehow still have one) decided to book me in a massage the other day at one of those horrendous beauty places. How do these places exist? You drive past them – they’re always on some awful road and are sandwiched between a kebab shop like McDoner’s, and an even worse used car dealership that only deal in fatal accidents. For some reason these beauty places try their very best to attempt to make the exterior appear classy. What’s the point? You know as soon as you walk in you’ll be met by someone called “Stace” or “Tash”. In fact if you name your child Stacey you may as come off the breast and bottle feed them fake tan. The beauty parlour either name themselves after something sensual like the god awful Eden – presumably you’re rubbed down with sheets of paper featuring Genesis – or they try and be clever and name it something like “Facial Attraction”. You name your shop Facial Attraction and you deserve to go out of business.

Anyway, my lady has booked me in for my first ever massage. I wasn’t up for it. She insists on making me try new things and it’s so frustrating. Just leave be woman. I am known to be poor in social situations that are out of my comfort zone – for a start I didn’t know what the rules of the massage parlour were. What clothes should I wear? Do I strip down totally naked? Am I meant to hold some sort of conversation with “Stace”? I was walking straight into the unknown and I hated that. And I hated her for making me do this. All I said was that I had a bad shoulder and I’d only done that because I didn’t want to hoover.

I walk in, beading with sweat. A girl called “Charmaine” introduces herself. What on Earth was she wearing? Head to toe in some purple suit thing. I’ve seen people appear on Crimewatch for less. Charmaine tells me “Jasmine” will come in a minute if I just want to “strip down” and lay on the bed. Charmaine leaves. Suddenly I am faced with my Everest – some weird looking bed with a hole in it. It’s looks a bit like a fancy version of one of those Spanish toilets that are actually meant to be used to wash your feet – learnt that the hard way. I figure out that I am probably meant to lie on the bed with my face through the hole but what I don’t know is what clothes I need to be wearing. Presumably I need to take off my Sandy Balls T-Shirt but do the trousers come off as well? I look to the wall hoping that there will be instructions or a poster telling me what to do but there’s just a sea of purple. I am in way over my head here. Jasmine hasn’t even arrived and I am dropping nervous farts all over the place. All the nerves are making me not only drop bombs but also are making me desperate for the wee. I decide to take my trousers off but keep the pants on. In retrospect getting a massage wasn’t the day to trial the “Hurry up it ain’t gonna eat itself” pants that were bought for me as part of Secret Santa. I lay down on the bed, head wedged in the hole and my hands by my head. Jasmine walks in and says hello. What do I do here? Do I briefly pull my head out of the hole (no come on) and say hello back, or do I say hello with my head buried in the hole (stop it)? I opt for the latter.

Jasmine explains to me that she is going to put some music on. I hope for Westlife but instead Jasmine puts on “Sounds of the sea”. So for the next 30 minutes I have to listen to some dolphin make noises that to me suggest he’s in a great deal of pain, he’s probably found out the Seal he’s seeing has ordered him a massage. The Sounds of the Sea are playing havoc with me wanting to wee as well. I am desperate. A good five minutes has passed and neither Jasmine or I have talked. Is this normal? The silence is killing me. I decide I have to break the silence and treat her as a taxi driver “so you been on long?”, pathetic. Jasmine hated and I hated myself. I didn’t speak again.

15 minutes in and I was in so much pain. Not only was Jasmine physically hurting me (and charging me £50 for the privilege) but the way I had my arms above my head meant that I had chronic pins and needles in my shoulders. I was so desperate to move my arms to down by side but I feared that if I moved them down by my side I might accidentally graze Jasmine and she’d file some sort of lawsuit against me – especially as I was wearing the “Hurry up it ain’t gonna eat itself” pants. So I keep my arms up by my side and endure another 15 minutes of agony. And I mean agony. The dolphin has been replaced by waves crashing against the shore and my bladder was on it’s way out. This was meant to be relaxing but it turned into the worst 30 minutes of my life. I am still letting out bombs and I know Jasmine can smell them. She desperately pours more and more fragrenced oil on me but the curry from last night was doing a conga in my colon and no amount of lavender oil could save Jasmine and I from the smell. I wanted to keep the farts in, truly I did – not least because each time I released one I was closer and closer to pissing myself. Jasmine called it a day – I think the poor girl was overcome by the fumes and inane chat that I’d come up with earlier. She’d put in a fair shift, fair play to her. She told me she was going to get me a towel to dry myself off with. Did she know that some pee had slipped out?

Jasmine leaves and again I am in the situation of not knowing what to do. Do I get up and get changed? Am I even allowed to lift my head out of the hole? Fear gets the better of me so I keep my head in the same position it’s been in for 30 minutes. She told me she was getting a towel but it had been a good ten minutes and there was still no sign of her. Most people in this situation would’ve got up, got changed, paid and left but I decide to maintain my position for a further twenty minutes. Head still in the hole. The room slowly filling with methane and my pants slowly filling with wee. Jasmine comes back in “Oh God, sorry – I’d dropped the towel in 40 minutes ago – have you been laying like this the whole time?”. What’s my move here?

I obviously decided to play the sleep card…

Stan Bennett