Before anything else, I told the woman at the desk that I was using a gift certificate and that the tip had been paid in advance, to avoid any stressful argument or post-massage tension, like we had last time.

While this woman was much more polite than the last, she still said she had to verify and called her boss, while I was standing there in front of her, to confirm.

I noticed her long and badly manicured nails, wondered if she was the official receptionist – As I imagine it would be hard to massage anyone with those claws – and pretended to read the articles on the wall, while I waited.

She then showed me to my room and asked if I would like to take a shower, to which I responded No thank you, and that I had done so before coming for the appointment.

I undressed, and climbed up on the table.

My masseuse took her time coming back, which gave me ample opportunity to get bored, stretch, and notice that the basket of oils actually only contained a no-name bottle of baby-powder, a pump-tub of Jergens hand lotion and a spray-can of Febreze™

I was just gagging a little and talking myself into getting dressed and leaving when bad-nails-receptionist-lady walked in the door, and lunged at me. She started giving me a dry rub-down, which, quite frankly, is just as well. Since I couldn’t get the slide-show of every guy’s bottle of bedside Jergens to stop playing in my head.

I missed the first few minutes of my session, because I was busily lecturing myself about being a stuck-up, judgmental bitch, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss much. The masseuse’s touch was gentler than my cat’s and felt more like suggestive foreplay than a therapeutic anything.

This went on for about 2/3 of the massage. It was boring but I didn’t have the heart to say so, even though bad-nails-receptionist-lady asked me about every 5 minutes, how I was feeling. It was relaxing though. Kind of. But my mind wandered too much.

Especially when she sneezed on my back and then then blew her nose with one hand while continuing to pet me with the other, never stopping to wash either of them.

I decided not to care, and try and find some peace in the moment. The moment being the moment right before the moment that she suddenly started beating the shit out of me.

She just closed-fist started punching me all over my body.

I’m not going to lie. It felt good on the shoulders.

But the weird thing, is that she did a full round, down one side of me and up the other, and then started full out using my ass as her personal punching bag. She just pounded on me fo what felt like forever and then opened the fist and started spanking me.

I kid you not.

And the weird and kind of fucked-up thing about these sorts of personal treatments (massages, pedicures, Brazilians etc…) is that I’m not really sure what the protocol is exactly. SO I can’t tell if something weird is going on or not.

I can, however, tell you that being slapped repeatedly on the ass by a tiny Asian woman with long pointy nails, while she keeps asking

“Feels good Madame? Everything is good?”

feels REALLY FUCKING WEIRD.

And then she abruptly stops and says.

“You can stay and relax. No problem” and leaves the room.

No part of me wants to stay and relaxing is not an option in any way, shape, or form.

So I put my clothes on, take a picture of the vacuum cleaner, and make my way to the front door, where I run into the woman who massaged me last week, mopping the floors.

“You take appointment for next week?”

She asks.

“You know what, I’ll call you…”