I’m in Ontario on holiday at my brother’s house. For one week, I have exchanged the blistering summer heat of the Middle East – where I’ve lived for the last five years – for a more civilized Canadian summer.
I am finishing off the last few morsels of French toast for breakfast. My sister in law is on the phone to her local spa arranging a holiday-treat massage for me (her idea, not mine). She’s plays intermediary between me and the spa receptionist. I answer absent-mindedly in between mouthfuls:
“They’re asking what type you want? Swedish? Aromatherapy? Deep tissue?
“Not deep tissue, just, erm, something relaxing”
“Full body, right?”
“Aha, sure”
“Is 2pm ok?”
“Yep, erm, great”
And then, still with my mind elsewhere, mopping up the last of the maple syrup from the plate, I say it:
“I guess it’s a male masseuse, right?”
I say this because in the Middle East – the only place I’ve had a massage before – the protocol in spas is strictly man-on-man action, so to speak. It’s just a knee-jerk question, not a special request, but it’s dutifully relayed to the spa. After a pause, she finishes the call:
“Ken? Sure, that’s fine. Ok, he’ll be there. So that’s 2pm, with Ken”.
I think nothing more of it. Later, I’m sitting in the reception of the spa. I’ve just finished the medical questionnaire that seems very “deep tissue” in its detail: whether I’ve ever had a pimple, or a headache or been scared by a spider, and such like. The only question that interests me is what firmness of massage I’m looking for: “light”, “medium” or “firm”. I tick medium, of course.
The masseuses arrive one by one, all women, and lead away their clients (customers? patients? massuesees?). I’ve just started to think why exactly I mentioned the thing about having a guy, when a rotund, short and bespectacled gentleman in his 50s, casually dressed in a dark polo shirt and slacks, arrives. I glance up and immediately assume he’s the maintenance guy, come to fix a LED light behind the reception desk or something. But alas, no, this is Ken and he is here to fix me.
He has the look of someone you’d expect to walk into a room wiping his hands on an oily rag having just completed an oil filter change on a large 4×4. He could be used on a game-show where contestants win a huge cash prize if they correctly guess what a person’s job is. With Ken, the show’s producers would never lose a dime. If I was used on the show, I dare say the contestants would sooner suggest that I am the new lead aerial acrobat for Cirque du Soleil’s residency in Orlando than suggest that Ken is a masseuse. You get the point.
A business–like handshake and I am led down a corridor to our room. Whist I didn’t expect Ken to tap dance into the reception and greet me with jazz-hands exuberance, I’m getting the vibe that he’s feeling a bit awkward. Professional, but not relaxed. It then occurs to me that he must know that our pairing is not random, that I specifically requested a male masseuse. He shuts the door to the room: I resist the temptation to say “alone at last”.
Ken gets straight down to business. “So are there any problem areas, anything in particular you want me to work on”.
Ah, I see what you’re doing there, Ken, I think to myself. You’re trying to turn this into some kind of alpha-male-friendly sports/chiropractor session. To justify this to yourself as if you are the only sports massage specialist in the spa and that’s why we’re here together. No, Ken, you and I are going to stare into the same abyss for the next hour: there will be nothing here except the two of us and the awkwardness, unspoken, unrelenting.
“Erm, no problem areas, just looking for some, erm, relaxation” I answer. I immediately think of Lavender oil for some reason but decide that mention now of scented oils might push Ken over the edge. Ken is definitely a “deep tissue” guy. Well, he’s certainly not “Swedish”, and as far as “Aromatherapy” is concerned I don’t think Ken will let me close enough to find out.
“Ok” Ken continues, “I’ll leave you to get undressed to whatever level you’re comfortable with”. I spot the subtitle floating beneath his mouth: “I will be perfectly, perfectly happy if I return to find you on the bench still fully clothed… and if you want to keep your shoes on too, then that’s just fine”.
He returns. I am on the bench, down to my boxer shorts. Take that, Ken! Deal with your issues, boy!
He goes to work on me. He’s obviously taken no heed of the “I don’t play sports, don’t have a sports injury” message. He’s going for it, pressing and sliding his full forearm up my calf. It’s as if he is practicing to iron out an industrial-sized pancake with his body weight.
A ghosting twitch of cramp starts to hover around my calf. I say nothing initially: is this my British-ness coming out? Like privately grumbling about a poor meal at a restaurant but not complaining when the opportunity arises?
I then admonish myself that the silent mantra that I’m repeating through a grimace (“this is relaxing, it really is, this is good for me, this is definitely relaxing”) suggests I should really speak up.
Ken dutifully works his way around the bench (using extremely unscented oil). I realise why he uses his forearms: his hands, while not exactly callous-y, feel a little rough. I wonder whether, in these tough economic times, Ken does in fact have a sideline going at the local mechanics. I begin to feel at this point there would be merit in having Barbie in the room instead of Ken.
He works on my hands, impatiently tugging at the fingers as if he is baffled why he hears no clicking. Finally he arrives at my neck, clasping it in a manner in which Mr. Spock might reserve for his enemies. I tense up involuntarily and the lines on my now furrowed brow read “WTF”.
50 minutes in, and not a nano-second later, he gently taps me on the shoulder: “nice to have met you” he lies, and, without missing a beat, exits the room. Well, I guess that’s it, I think to myself.
Later, back at the house, my surprised brother is educating me. “It’s really not the done thing here”. He’s looking at me, shaking his head with a benign smile: “it’s just a bit weird, mate”.
Apparently man on man in the Middle East may be fine but in North America it’s an eyebrow-raiser for a man to specifically ask for a male masseuse. I protest. What difference does it make if they’re male or female? I realize I’m not really making my case with that remark since that’s exactly the point he is making.
So it seems my North American social convention naivety has been laid bare (or at least stripped down to its boxers). It seems I have to acknowledge that, unbeknownst to me, a red line in the massage world was crossed; that I’ve been chowing down on a faux pas pie all afternoon without really knowing it.
My mind goes back to the spa reception on the way out as I was waiting to pay. I recall the jar sitting on the reception desk for customers to put tips in. For a second I think that I should’ve left something for Ken given the apparent mild trauma I put him through.
Then it occurs to me that to do so might have been another faux pas: after all, the last thing Ken would have wanted is to receive my tip.