“I’m the only straight, single guy I know who owns a bed skirt.”
My massage therapist is a paragon of wisdom.
A fitness expert with a deep, soothing voice and a melodious,
bass-toned laugh that sometimes gets the better of him, he has a Master’s in
American literature and sees the world through a thoughtful, introspective lens.
I discovered him last year after buying
a Groupon for a massage, and floated out of his studio with no pain in my
shoulders for the first time in a decade.
In him, I found relief for my aching body and also someone with whom dialogue
comes easy.
I was only planning to go for one massage, but at his
recommendation that I come back so he could continue to help, I now go every
month. My shoulders and back have hurt
for years, the result of long days sitting in an office chair and a pronounced
curve in the bottom of my spine...plus I’d do well to lose 20 pounds. I’m working on it.
It might seem strange, wanting to carry on a conversation during
a massage, but I can’t think of anything more awkward than lying on a table while
a [dreamboat of a] man rubs down my half-naked body in total silence. So, y’know, we chat. We talk about faith, literature, television,
films, his kids, relationships, life.
“It’s because you’re getting older, hon,” he replied when I
told him about this blog last night, his fingers digging into my neck.
“Think about it,” he continued. “Think about the books, movies, songs…the
stuff that inspired you the most, made you the most hopeful. When was that? I got into an argument with this guy recently
because he kept insisting that they just don’t make any good movies anymore,
but I said no – it’s because you’re not as impressionable as you used to be. Movies are just as good or even better than
they were 20 years ago – you just stop seeing the world with that kind of
wonderment.”
Huh.
“Every time I listen to Pandora, I end up going back to
music from the early 90’s, because that’s when I was in my late teens and life was
full of possibility," he concluded.
I thought about it as he rocked my head back and forth
underneath his wrists. He was
right. Given a choice, I tend to go back
to music and movies circa 2001. I was
18. The world was my oyster.
“It’s just that I feel like maybe God doesn’t care as much
as I used to think He did,” I offered, a bit pathetically. “I bought into all that evangelical hype in
the late 90’s when I was growing up, and now it seems like that’s a really
selfish form of religion. Does God
really take an interest in every little thing we do?”
“You have to find what works for you, what feeds you,” he
said. “When something doesn’t feed you
anymore, you move on and find what does.”
As usual, I walked out of his studio with my head swirling –
from the massage and from our discussion. I listened to Matchbox Twenty all the way home.
No comments:
Post a Comment