This places has buffered parking spaces has a citywide standard. Like, instead of having just a line to divide the spaces there is a rectangle. This place has those in even liquor store parkinglots. One would think that they would have something as simple as Chinese masseuses.
I tripped over my own feet, speed walking threw the mall. It was a thick slice of frustration, something a cinnabon couldn’t satisfy. I almost yelled a rant, something like “Damn you, Midland! Damn you and your mall!!”, as I stabilized myself against a chubby six year old eating a cinnabon.
I’m fairly sure malls have to have them now, like you can’t renew the mall license without them. A mistaken assumption? I dunno, but they had all the other mall standards- a toy train looking shuttle service that goes from one end of the store to the other, an accommodation for and sign of the era of fat children. Those also have one of those super bounce trampolines with a bungee cord tether, for moments of fatlessness for said kids. But what about my train ride to joy? Where’s my Chinese massage? You can’t expose a man to something like that and just yank it away... The Chinese mall masseuse is a McDonaldian answer to relaxation and tranquility on the rush. A rubdown in running time. Get some.
Oh but they had some and then some. They did have a Chinese masseuse but she wasn’t at a kiosk this time- behold a whole store front carved out of the corner opposed to the trampoline. A dim, shallow cavity with a row of those seats with face-rests lining the wide opening. Cheap, generic pan-Asian decorations and a cash register. A disneyland opium den.
I can see all this in my peripheral vision. Like the terminator I suddenly broke pace and made a 45 degree turn. Target acquired, moving it, and before I was within 15 feet a middle aged Chinese woman engaged me in eye contact and it was at that moment that inter-cultural commerce was initiated.
I think she must be middle aged but she doesn't look that old. None of them do. That’s the thing about Asians is that there is this black-n-white threshold for aging, like for years and years they could pass for thirty or younger but then suddenly one day they cross that threshold and they turn ancient, like beyond old. Like petrified in time type of old. I- I imagine at this moment I look like I’m the Terminator, like I’m either about to destroy John Conner or save him (depending on which in the series it is)- walking with a dedicated purpose. Throwing fat kids out of the way with one hand and handspring over benches with the other. Without breaking stride.
Contact with target.
We greet each other. The way she says “Hello” tells me “Hello” is about the only English that she knows. I said hello in Chinese in such a way that let her know I speak absolutely no Chinese. It doesn't matter. Everything would be fine if we just keep things simple.That’s the primary thing about inter-cultural commerce- keep things simple.
That’s the give and take of hyper-outsourcing consumerism. The foreigners are behind counters, feet away from your face but billions of cultures away, it’s like waving to someone on the moon. The cheap, dedicated, reliable work they provide more than makes up for the lack of chit-chat that an ungrateful teenager would otherwise be providing. To get your nails did or have your beer bought for cheap and at unreasonable hours- it can be done but the catch is you gotta follow the well beaten path of how the particular business is conducted. Failing to do so and you risk getting lost in confusion.
For example, you go to the same gas station everyday and play the numbers. Everyday, no matter what shift it is, the same arab dude is working there and takes your numbers. No problem there, but what happens if you try to expand beyond this? If you tell the guy one of the numbers you play is your grandmother’s birthday? The guy picks up on the word he knows, birthday, and the repeats it “Birthday?” you smile and nod and now he thinks it’s your birthday. “Birthday!” He exclaims and points to the slushy machine repeating “Birthday”. At first, you think it is the slushy machine’s birthday and this confuses you, like when is a machine’s birthday? When it’s finished being built or when it’s first installed and turned on? But then you realize he is telling you to have a slushy for free because it is your birthday and you politely shake your head in refusal because it’s not actually your birthday and you’d feel awkward for taking a free birthday slushy when it’s not your birthday and then he gets all stern and looks at you with a stink eye because he thinks that you think you’re too good for his birthday wishes and at this point you realize he played the last number strait when you actually wanted it boxed but at this point there is no way you’re going to ask him to run another number so you just leave before things get worse.
No one wants that, a cultural relations snafu. One thing can lead to another and before you know it we’re all getting 9/11’ed on because some soccer mom unintentionally insulted the heritage of that woman to plucks facial hair by crossing strings.
That’s why FOBs (fresh off the boat) get hollar and gesture based jobs in the first place. Come to the country, for example, to be a physiatrist not only do you have to have a masterful command of the English language, but also American culture. However, a medical doctor (who are stereotypically foreign), while requiring alot of knowledge about medicine and cancer and stuff, it does not require fluency in English. Tap on a chart, point to the scalpel, thumbs up and thumbs down. The nurses will get what’s going on. That’s why it’s easy for a foreign doctor to emigrate, there willing to bust there ass through school and continue you to bust there ass as a doctor. But if you’re a doctor with no fingers, forget it, because they will take one look at you and say “Hey, how’s this guy suppose to point to a vial of penicillin without fingers?”
Sorta-a-pro at inter-cultural commerce and having been anticipating a rub down since the night before, I already knew what I’m looking for and how to get it. Usually at these types of places there’s a sandwich board or something with a menu that looks similar to their chinese food cousin’s. And there is one, above the massage chairs, you know those ones with the resting part in the front and with an O to rest your face on. I see
A1. 20 minutes back massage .........................$20
Bam, sold. That’s what I got the time and funds for.
Following the standard protocol, I went to point at the sign but before my arm fully raises and green flier is put into my hand. It’s another menu, so I’m like “why is this woman queering the deal? She’s going to get us off the beaten path!” This menu is different. I dunno, the layout wasn’t the same and there are alot of stars and exclamation points.
I placate and pretend to read it over.
Knowing she wouldn’t know what I was saying I move my eyes back and forth across the flier and mumble under my breath I tell her “Girl, I’m on my way to the bank and I just need a quick rubdown so I can super-size my way to the next day. Nawww’I’m sayin? I’m just a man with a tight back and a tight budget. Get this knot out of my should and it’ll all be good. Believe dat.”
I don’t know what it was, what the misidentified trigger was, but suddenly this lady just shouted out “OK!” and clapped her hands. Until then I hadn’t even noticed the table back there but she pointed to it as if to say “that’s where we are going”
An Unknown unknown. What’s this lady doing? We were totally going off course into the dangerous bermuda triangle of social situations. Doesn't she realize it stuff like this that could get a country Operation-Enduring-Freedomed on? Hell, the Bush-Hussain fallout was over a damn parking space at the UN headquarters.
“No, no” I say and I’m pointing feverishly at the sign. “A1, A1. Only my back. Back”
She just smiled and clapped hands together again. A clap that sounded like fate’s thunder roll across a meadow. “OK, ok” she said and parrotted me “Back, back” guiding me with an open palm to the same table in the back of the room. “Good. Goooooooooddd”
Perhaps it was the way she confidently clapped her hands or perhaps it was the way she slightly squinted with one eye as she done it, like a mother giving her disobedient child an angry look, but I walked back to that table despite knowing full well that chairs were for back-limited massages and tables usually meant a full body type affair. I mean, she did confirm the whole “back” thing. Maybe we arn’t going to the massage chairs because they suck or she gets better leverage when the client is laying on the table. I clung to that hope but in reality, I knew better.
Underneath the table was grey bin. Like the type you put your things in while crossing thru a metal detector. She pointed to my waist and then made tube motion around her own. I took off my belt and placed it in the tray, trying to figure out if I could back out of the whole with out coming across as a neurotic, Woody Allen-like American. The stern eye she gave me and the clap still echoed in my head. I really didn’t want her judging me, tell all the others about me (I assume they all live together in a big dormitory somewhere in Montana).
After my belt was off she made a motion with both her hands starting at the waist and then going down towards the ground. She wanted me to take my shorts off? For a moment I had clarity from what was going on like “I’m going along with this, sure, but how far down the rabbit hole am I going to go?” She repeated the motion a few more times. Oh. Empty my pockets. So I did, realizing the point of no return was right before me taking off the belt. There’s no way I could just stop the process, grab my belt and take off. The beginning of disrobing is where the commitment to a massage lays.
At this point, I’m just a leaf getting whisked down the river. I put everything in the grey bin, including my Android and headphones. I had originally planed to listen to Gregorian chant music while getting a massage but I had a knee-jerk fear that trying to keep the headphones would inadvertently trigger a special request, like a second masseuse would come out and begin acupuncture or something.
I laid on my stomach and placed my face in the cushy O at the head of the table. Eyes closed. The outside sounds from the mall drifted far, far away. Old girl got to work right away.
I felt her hoist her one leg on to the table next to me and burrow into my shoulders. Like all middle aged chinese masseuses, her hands were those of eagle talons made from Dove soap. Like her persona, her grip is strong, stern, moist and delicate. I imagined an eagle (purposefully because picturing a dragon would be too cliche) perched with one foot planted on the table and a talon grinding my back. Sun setting in the background. Angels flying in trumpet propelled clouds.
Then she stands up and starts rubbing my neck and behind my ears from the head of the table. She honed her attention to the small space on my back where the neck and shoulders meet. Pressing hard against me, my body moved back and then retracts forth and on that upswing I notice two soft yet firm lumps that the top of my head caroms into. A moment of uncertainty came to mind while I slowly came to the conclusion that it was her bosom that I was bumping into. I felt her boobs plot down at the top of my head. She pushed hard into my shoulders, pushing my body back until letting my body retract, knocking into her. All I could think of was that I was “titty ramming” this lady. Over and over again. The thought of me ramming her cleavage like a log swinging into and ringing a chinese gong made me giggle to myself. With every iteration I heard a gong sound in my head.
Eventually those thoughts, and all thoughts fade.
laying on a chinese table under a chinese masseuse
wanting my android, so I can listen to the blues.
I’ve been
buying
things
for so long.
I don’t
know
where
they came from
Getting a back rub and feeling loose
far away from me, fat kids riding in a kaboose.
and relaxation. All the sound from the mall slowly walks far down the coridor.
I’d like to think that’s what death is like. Like falling in to deeper and deeper relaxation and, ideally, this is where I wish the story would end. With me getting a relaxing back massage. But I wasn’t dead, I’m alive and, as it does, life keeps moving on and shit keeps happening, for better or worse.
The Dove talons release, and there’s an empty pause. Then I felt a rustling around my left shoe. The thought “What. The. Hell?” hits me hard like a cheap shot of vodka and the a warm waves washed over me- it’s not a sensation of pleasure but one of utter embarrassment. She was taking off my shoes.
Certainly this confirmed what I had figured and feared- that I somehow got signed up for into a full body but really all I could think about was that she was about to uncork some stinky feet. Before leaving for the mall I had taken the time to thoroughly wash my neck, behind the ears, wear a long shirt that wouldn’t get all bunched up- all things a responsible and courteous consumer would do before having someone rub their bare hands on you.
I was not expecting my feet to be massaged or I certainly would have put on some clean sox. Instead I haphazardly chose some sox that were on day three or four without washing. I mean, one would almost think I went threw my drawers looking for the dirtiest pair of sox that I own. That’s how nasty these things were.
It would have been better if she would have taken off the sox, but she left them on. They had a crunchy film of dirt and sweat worked into them and with every rub of my feet I imagined the the film cracking and popping like street puddles do when they freeze and form a lightbulb-glass thin pane of ice over them.
Also, the sox were mismatched.
Eventually, the poor chinese woman moved on to my legs (and it was then that I realized that she never actually did have her leg hoisted up on the table or anything but instead it was like a buffer cushion, I guess so things like ramming into cleavage wouldn’t happen). For the duration of the massage I felt awkward, like you do when you fart a stinky fart in a car or room full of people wondering if other people smell it, deep down knowing that they do but are too polite to say anything.
I imagined my Chinese lady back at the dorm with the other masseuses.
“God, I tell you what, I knew the Americans were slobs but, Jesus Christ, these sox actually cruched when I touched them. It’s not like this guy was homeless. I’m sure if you can get a massage then you have access to a damn washing machine!
Uecker! Now can someone please give me a Goddamn Newport?!”
Ofcource, she didn’t say anything to me until I was done. She continued to rub my legs and buttocks until finally she gave me a couple pats on the back.
“OK” she said, as in “OK, you’re done now”
I put my shoes on(shamefully). Get everything out of the bin, put it back in my pockets. That was another weird thing, when I was threading my belt through the loops it occurred to me how unsettling it is to be putting your belt on and retightening your pants with some many people walking by. Children, with cotton cady, laughing as I buckle my belt back up... but I suppose that’s life in a fast food opium den.
The Chinese woman was already waiting for me at the counter. Now that everything was over with I began to worry again about the price of this massage. How long was it? 20 minutes? An hour? I was on a very tight budget- on my way to the bank. I started to calculate how much money I should have on my card. I started to look around the store and devise a plan of things I could point to and syllables I could grunt that would communicate to her that “I can pay you but first I have to go to the bank and come back” which I found to be exceedingly abstract for this low-level of a conversation unless she happened to have a model of a bank or something chilling behind the desk.
The Chinese woman rings me up and the green numbers on the cash register read $20.00 (no tax?). I felt relief and handed her my debit card.
After swiping the card in the POS machine there is a pause, and then a look of confusion on the woman’s face as she studies the print out. Oh God, did I even have the $20 on there? I should, I thought, but it’d be close even if I did.
I could just imagine what she’d be thinking and saying about me.
“Then, after rubbing his rubby-ass feet, this two-bit muthafucka’s card done decines on me. I’m serious, y’all gimme a goddamn cigarette!”
Actually, I doubt that my Chinese woman smokes. Instead, her expression turns to a smile and she tears the receipt and hands it to me. I look at it. In bold letters it reads
CHARGED: $0.47
DUE: $19.53
I guessed she made a typo while typing in the charge. “No” I told her “You gotta charge it again. Run again” she makes a soft grunt like sound and gestures a wobbly triangle-like shape on the counter with her index finger and I have no friggin idea what that is suppose to mean.
“No, no” I mentally bring up a English to Gesture dictionary and feverishly look for some sort of translation. I rub my thumb and two together vertically to say money then make the motion of a card being swiped into the machine and purposefully use monosyllabic words “run for payment”
She say “No” and points to the receipt on the counter and gestures some other symbol, then I make the card swipe motion again. It goes back and forth for a minute and thinking about it retrospect I imagine it slowly evolving into a game of paper rock scissors- the winner gets their message across!
It did finally dawn on me that the squiggly shapes she was making with her fingers was suppose to mean “signature” and for the sake of diplomatic relations I sighed and then signed the receipt. She just gave me a 47 cent massage, so I guess I’ll just have to take it.
I smiled and slid the receipt back to her.
There was a tip jar on the counter and I figured the least I could do is give the couple singles in my pocket but when I’m trying to fish them out she produces a bottled water out of thin air and hands it to me, pushing it in to my chest like she’s send me away. I stepped back and almost tripped over a woman sitting in a chair behind me.
She already had another customer but before I leave she makes it a point to give me a business card with ten squares on in and stamps one of the squares. Buy 10 massages, get one free 20 minute back rub- standard protocol (yet in my experience I’ve found they usually pick up and leave before you can fill the whole card)
For a good hour I was OK with all this, thinking that she practically gave away a massage by her own fault but then I got here at cafe and my card was declined. I guess maybe I only had 47 cents on my card or something. The cafe industry has never been penetrated by non-english speaking foreigners and I think that’s because the caffeine makes people want to talk about so many things not pertaining to coffee so I was able to work out a deal where I would come back after going to the bank in the morning and personally pay back the barista.
The incident sparked a conversation that had nothing to do with coffee or debit cards but now that Im sitting here I keep thinking of my poor chinese woman and how I could possibly pay her back- like maybe tip her an extra five dollars every time I visit. But really, I just want to say sorry that I am self-centered, slobish American who can’t keep track of credit or paying bills. If anything, maybe I should learn to say that in Mandarin.
I tripped over my own feet, speed walking threw the mall. It was a thick slice of frustration, something a cinnabon couldn’t satisfy. I almost yelled a rant, something like “Damn you, Midland! Damn you and your mall!!”, as I stabilized myself against a chubby six year old eating a cinnabon.
I’m fairly sure malls have to have them now, like you can’t renew the mall license without them. A mistaken assumption? I dunno, but they had all the other mall standards- a toy train looking shuttle service that goes from one end of the store to the other, an accommodation for and sign of the era of fat children. Those also have one of those super bounce trampolines with a bungee cord tether, for moments of fatlessness for said kids. But what about my train ride to joy? Where’s my Chinese massage? You can’t expose a man to something like that and just yank it away... The Chinese mall masseuse is a McDonaldian answer to relaxation and tranquility on the rush. A rubdown in running time. Get some.
Oh but they had some and then some. They did have a Chinese masseuse but she wasn’t at a kiosk this time- behold a whole store front carved out of the corner opposed to the trampoline. A dim, shallow cavity with a row of those seats with face-rests lining the wide opening. Cheap, generic pan-Asian decorations and a cash register. A disneyland opium den.
I can see all this in my peripheral vision. Like the terminator I suddenly broke pace and made a 45 degree turn. Target acquired, moving it, and before I was within 15 feet a middle aged Chinese woman engaged me in eye contact and it was at that moment that inter-cultural commerce was initiated.
I think she must be middle aged but she doesn't look that old. None of them do. That’s the thing about Asians is that there is this black-n-white threshold for aging, like for years and years they could pass for thirty or younger but then suddenly one day they cross that threshold and they turn ancient, like beyond old. Like petrified in time type of old. I- I imagine at this moment I look like I’m the Terminator, like I’m either about to destroy John Conner or save him (depending on which in the series it is)- walking with a dedicated purpose. Throwing fat kids out of the way with one hand and handspring over benches with the other. Without breaking stride.
Contact with target.
We greet each other. The way she says “Hello” tells me “Hello” is about the only English that she knows. I said hello in Chinese in such a way that let her know I speak absolutely no Chinese. It doesn't matter. Everything would be fine if we just keep things simple.That’s the primary thing about inter-cultural commerce- keep things simple.
That’s the give and take of hyper-outsourcing consumerism. The foreigners are behind counters, feet away from your face but billions of cultures away, it’s like waving to someone on the moon. The cheap, dedicated, reliable work they provide more than makes up for the lack of chit-chat that an ungrateful teenager would otherwise be providing. To get your nails did or have your beer bought for cheap and at unreasonable hours- it can be done but the catch is you gotta follow the well beaten path of how the particular business is conducted. Failing to do so and you risk getting lost in confusion.
For example, you go to the same gas station everyday and play the numbers. Everyday, no matter what shift it is, the same arab dude is working there and takes your numbers. No problem there, but what happens if you try to expand beyond this? If you tell the guy one of the numbers you play is your grandmother’s birthday? The guy picks up on the word he knows, birthday, and the repeats it “Birthday?” you smile and nod and now he thinks it’s your birthday. “Birthday!” He exclaims and points to the slushy machine repeating “Birthday”. At first, you think it is the slushy machine’s birthday and this confuses you, like when is a machine’s birthday? When it’s finished being built or when it’s first installed and turned on? But then you realize he is telling you to have a slushy for free because it is your birthday and you politely shake your head in refusal because it’s not actually your birthday and you’d feel awkward for taking a free birthday slushy when it’s not your birthday and then he gets all stern and looks at you with a stink eye because he thinks that you think you’re too good for his birthday wishes and at this point you realize he played the last number strait when you actually wanted it boxed but at this point there is no way you’re going to ask him to run another number so you just leave before things get worse.
No one wants that, a cultural relations snafu. One thing can lead to another and before you know it we’re all getting 9/11’ed on because some soccer mom unintentionally insulted the heritage of that woman to plucks facial hair by crossing strings.
That’s why FOBs (fresh off the boat) get hollar and gesture based jobs in the first place. Come to the country, for example, to be a physiatrist not only do you have to have a masterful command of the English language, but also American culture. However, a medical doctor (who are stereotypically foreign), while requiring alot of knowledge about medicine and cancer and stuff, it does not require fluency in English. Tap on a chart, point to the scalpel, thumbs up and thumbs down. The nurses will get what’s going on. That’s why it’s easy for a foreign doctor to emigrate, there willing to bust there ass through school and continue you to bust there ass as a doctor. But if you’re a doctor with no fingers, forget it, because they will take one look at you and say “Hey, how’s this guy suppose to point to a vial of penicillin without fingers?”
Sorta-a-pro at inter-cultural commerce and having been anticipating a rub down since the night before, I already knew what I’m looking for and how to get it. Usually at these types of places there’s a sandwich board or something with a menu that looks similar to their chinese food cousin’s. And there is one, above the massage chairs, you know those ones with the resting part in the front and with an O to rest your face on. I see
A1. 20 minutes back massage .........................$20
Bam, sold. That’s what I got the time and funds for.
Following the standard protocol, I went to point at the sign but before my arm fully raises and green flier is put into my hand. It’s another menu, so I’m like “why is this woman queering the deal? She’s going to get us off the beaten path!” This menu is different. I dunno, the layout wasn’t the same and there are alot of stars and exclamation points.
I placate and pretend to read it over.
Knowing she wouldn’t know what I was saying I move my eyes back and forth across the flier and mumble under my breath I tell her “Girl, I’m on my way to the bank and I just need a quick rubdown so I can super-size my way to the next day. Nawww’I’m sayin? I’m just a man with a tight back and a tight budget. Get this knot out of my should and it’ll all be good. Believe dat.”
I don’t know what it was, what the misidentified trigger was, but suddenly this lady just shouted out “OK!” and clapped her hands. Until then I hadn’t even noticed the table back there but she pointed to it as if to say “that’s where we are going”
An Unknown unknown. What’s this lady doing? We were totally going off course into the dangerous bermuda triangle of social situations. Doesn't she realize it stuff like this that could get a country Operation-Enduring-Freedomed on? Hell, the Bush-Hussain fallout was over a damn parking space at the UN headquarters.
“No, no” I say and I’m pointing feverishly at the sign. “A1, A1. Only my back. Back”
She just smiled and clapped hands together again. A clap that sounded like fate’s thunder roll across a meadow. “OK, ok” she said and parrotted me “Back, back” guiding me with an open palm to the same table in the back of the room. “Good. Goooooooooddd”
Perhaps it was the way she confidently clapped her hands or perhaps it was the way she slightly squinted with one eye as she done it, like a mother giving her disobedient child an angry look, but I walked back to that table despite knowing full well that chairs were for back-limited massages and tables usually meant a full body type affair. I mean, she did confirm the whole “back” thing. Maybe we arn’t going to the massage chairs because they suck or she gets better leverage when the client is laying on the table. I clung to that hope but in reality, I knew better.
Underneath the table was grey bin. Like the type you put your things in while crossing thru a metal detector. She pointed to my waist and then made tube motion around her own. I took off my belt and placed it in the tray, trying to figure out if I could back out of the whole with out coming across as a neurotic, Woody Allen-like American. The stern eye she gave me and the clap still echoed in my head. I really didn’t want her judging me, tell all the others about me (I assume they all live together in a big dormitory somewhere in Montana).
After my belt was off she made a motion with both her hands starting at the waist and then going down towards the ground. She wanted me to take my shorts off? For a moment I had clarity from what was going on like “I’m going along with this, sure, but how far down the rabbit hole am I going to go?” She repeated the motion a few more times. Oh. Empty my pockets. So I did, realizing the point of no return was right before me taking off the belt. There’s no way I could just stop the process, grab my belt and take off. The beginning of disrobing is where the commitment to a massage lays.
At this point, I’m just a leaf getting whisked down the river. I put everything in the grey bin, including my Android and headphones. I had originally planed to listen to Gregorian chant music while getting a massage but I had a knee-jerk fear that trying to keep the headphones would inadvertently trigger a special request, like a second masseuse would come out and begin acupuncture or something.
I laid on my stomach and placed my face in the cushy O at the head of the table. Eyes closed. The outside sounds from the mall drifted far, far away. Old girl got to work right away.
I felt her hoist her one leg on to the table next to me and burrow into my shoulders. Like all middle aged chinese masseuses, her hands were those of eagle talons made from Dove soap. Like her persona, her grip is strong, stern, moist and delicate. I imagined an eagle (purposefully because picturing a dragon would be too cliche) perched with one foot planted on the table and a talon grinding my back. Sun setting in the background. Angels flying in trumpet propelled clouds.
Then she stands up and starts rubbing my neck and behind my ears from the head of the table. She honed her attention to the small space on my back where the neck and shoulders meet. Pressing hard against me, my body moved back and then retracts forth and on that upswing I notice two soft yet firm lumps that the top of my head caroms into. A moment of uncertainty came to mind while I slowly came to the conclusion that it was her bosom that I was bumping into. I felt her boobs plot down at the top of my head. She pushed hard into my shoulders, pushing my body back until letting my body retract, knocking into her. All I could think of was that I was “titty ramming” this lady. Over and over again. The thought of me ramming her cleavage like a log swinging into and ringing a chinese gong made me giggle to myself. With every iteration I heard a gong sound in my head.
Eventually those thoughts, and all thoughts fade.
laying on a chinese table under a chinese masseuse
wanting my android, so I can listen to the blues.
I’ve been
buying
things
for so long.
I don’t
know
where
they came from
Getting a back rub and feeling loose
far away from me, fat kids riding in a kaboose.
and relaxation. All the sound from the mall slowly walks far down the coridor.
I’d like to think that’s what death is like. Like falling in to deeper and deeper relaxation and, ideally, this is where I wish the story would end. With me getting a relaxing back massage. But I wasn’t dead, I’m alive and, as it does, life keeps moving on and shit keeps happening, for better or worse.
The Dove talons release, and there’s an empty pause. Then I felt a rustling around my left shoe. The thought “What. The. Hell?” hits me hard like a cheap shot of vodka and the a warm waves washed over me- it’s not a sensation of pleasure but one of utter embarrassment. She was taking off my shoes.
Certainly this confirmed what I had figured and feared- that I somehow got signed up for into a full body but really all I could think about was that she was about to uncork some stinky feet. Before leaving for the mall I had taken the time to thoroughly wash my neck, behind the ears, wear a long shirt that wouldn’t get all bunched up- all things a responsible and courteous consumer would do before having someone rub their bare hands on you.
I was not expecting my feet to be massaged or I certainly would have put on some clean sox. Instead I haphazardly chose some sox that were on day three or four without washing. I mean, one would almost think I went threw my drawers looking for the dirtiest pair of sox that I own. That’s how nasty these things were.
It would have been better if she would have taken off the sox, but she left them on. They had a crunchy film of dirt and sweat worked into them and with every rub of my feet I imagined the the film cracking and popping like street puddles do when they freeze and form a lightbulb-glass thin pane of ice over them.
Also, the sox were mismatched.
Eventually, the poor chinese woman moved on to my legs (and it was then that I realized that she never actually did have her leg hoisted up on the table or anything but instead it was like a buffer cushion, I guess so things like ramming into cleavage wouldn’t happen). For the duration of the massage I felt awkward, like you do when you fart a stinky fart in a car or room full of people wondering if other people smell it, deep down knowing that they do but are too polite to say anything.
I imagined my Chinese lady back at the dorm with the other masseuses.
“God, I tell you what, I knew the Americans were slobs but, Jesus Christ, these sox actually cruched when I touched them. It’s not like this guy was homeless. I’m sure if you can get a massage then you have access to a damn washing machine!
Uecker! Now can someone please give me a Goddamn Newport?!”
Ofcource, she didn’t say anything to me until I was done. She continued to rub my legs and buttocks until finally she gave me a couple pats on the back.
“OK” she said, as in “OK, you’re done now”
I put my shoes on(shamefully). Get everything out of the bin, put it back in my pockets. That was another weird thing, when I was threading my belt through the loops it occurred to me how unsettling it is to be putting your belt on and retightening your pants with some many people walking by. Children, with cotton cady, laughing as I buckle my belt back up... but I suppose that’s life in a fast food opium den.
The Chinese woman was already waiting for me at the counter. Now that everything was over with I began to worry again about the price of this massage. How long was it? 20 minutes? An hour? I was on a very tight budget- on my way to the bank. I started to calculate how much money I should have on my card. I started to look around the store and devise a plan of things I could point to and syllables I could grunt that would communicate to her that “I can pay you but first I have to go to the bank and come back” which I found to be exceedingly abstract for this low-level of a conversation unless she happened to have a model of a bank or something chilling behind the desk.
The Chinese woman rings me up and the green numbers on the cash register read $20.00 (no tax?). I felt relief and handed her my debit card.
After swiping the card in the POS machine there is a pause, and then a look of confusion on the woman’s face as she studies the print out. Oh God, did I even have the $20 on there? I should, I thought, but it’d be close even if I did.
I could just imagine what she’d be thinking and saying about me.
“Then, after rubbing his rubby-ass feet, this two-bit muthafucka’s card done decines on me. I’m serious, y’all gimme a goddamn cigarette!”
Actually, I doubt that my Chinese woman smokes. Instead, her expression turns to a smile and she tears the receipt and hands it to me. I look at it. In bold letters it reads
CHARGED: $0.47
DUE: $19.53
I guessed she made a typo while typing in the charge. “No” I told her “You gotta charge it again. Run again” she makes a soft grunt like sound and gestures a wobbly triangle-like shape on the counter with her index finger and I have no friggin idea what that is suppose to mean.
“No, no” I mentally bring up a English to Gesture dictionary and feverishly look for some sort of translation. I rub my thumb and two together vertically to say money then make the motion of a card being swiped into the machine and purposefully use monosyllabic words “run for payment”
She say “No” and points to the receipt on the counter and gestures some other symbol, then I make the card swipe motion again. It goes back and forth for a minute and thinking about it retrospect I imagine it slowly evolving into a game of paper rock scissors- the winner gets their message across!
It did finally dawn on me that the squiggly shapes she was making with her fingers was suppose to mean “signature” and for the sake of diplomatic relations I sighed and then signed the receipt. She just gave me a 47 cent massage, so I guess I’ll just have to take it.
I smiled and slid the receipt back to her.
There was a tip jar on the counter and I figured the least I could do is give the couple singles in my pocket but when I’m trying to fish them out she produces a bottled water out of thin air and hands it to me, pushing it in to my chest like she’s send me away. I stepped back and almost tripped over a woman sitting in a chair behind me.
She already had another customer but before I leave she makes it a point to give me a business card with ten squares on in and stamps one of the squares. Buy 10 massages, get one free 20 minute back rub- standard protocol (yet in my experience I’ve found they usually pick up and leave before you can fill the whole card)
For a good hour I was OK with all this, thinking that she practically gave away a massage by her own fault but then I got here at cafe and my card was declined. I guess maybe I only had 47 cents on my card or something. The cafe industry has never been penetrated by non-english speaking foreigners and I think that’s because the caffeine makes people want to talk about so many things not pertaining to coffee so I was able to work out a deal where I would come back after going to the bank in the morning and personally pay back the barista.
The incident sparked a conversation that had nothing to do with coffee or debit cards but now that Im sitting here I keep thinking of my poor chinese woman and how I could possibly pay her back- like maybe tip her an extra five dollars every time I visit. But really, I just want to say sorry that I am self-centered, slobish American who can’t keep track of credit or paying bills. If anything, maybe I should learn to say that in Mandarin.
