Last night my wife insinuated that I was some sort of pervert. I had a break in the tour and we decided to spend the morning having a spa day, which sounds great in theory. But because we haven’t done a spa day before, there were lots of worries about spa etiquette. The whole thing made me incredibly nervous.
My better half has long been concerned about my stress levels and so booked me a full-body Swedish massage. I have only had a couple of massages before; both times I wore swimming shorts, which were ruined by the seven types of oil that were used. I therefore suggested going naked for the massage, at which point my wife told me this was weird – the word pervert was used. A swift online search clarified that my suggestion was entirely reasonable. Still, I decided to opt for a sacrificial pair of pants.
Walking around in a spa robe, I decided, might be more uncomfortable than it’s worth. There is something about the decadence of it that I find unsettling; it makes me feel completely disconnected from the world and in a bad way. Donald Trump has become an orange supervillain Thanos; Boris Johnson seeks innovative ways to incinerate any faith we might have in government; and here I am in a bathrobe inhaling peppermint oil.
My reservations vanished when I was told we had a hot tub booked, which is right up my 90s rap video street. After being told we had to sign a disclaimer, we crossed the hotel garden in our robes, whereupon I removed the lid to the wrong hot tub and then dropped it into the tub, the removal of which I would estimate took up about a third of our session.
Then it was time for my massage. I bid farewell to my wife and headed over to the treatment room, ignoring her heckles about my weird desire for nudity. I met my therapist and felt grateful for my underwear, as if she might be able to see through my robe. She asked when I had last had a massage, and after I told her it was years ago, seemed shocked that I had left it so long. I felt immediately ashamed and promised I would be back soon, lying in the same way that I do to my personal trainer.
She asked what level of pressure I was after and I asked for something between waiting for your scores on Strictly Come Dancing and being Jeremy Corbyn during the antisemitism furore. She said my shoulders had a lot of tension and explained that she had released everything back into my system so I would be very sore the following day. What wasn’t explained was what the benefits of having it done might be, and why I couldn’t just continue carrying the tension around in my shoulders.
During my online search, I had also discovered that a massage is wasted if you are not in the moment. This means there is no point in having a relaxing rubdown if you are worrying about how to pay the mortgage this month. What you need to do is focus on the massage, then you can worry about your mortgage later, only smelling of lemongrass.
But the massage left me feeling great. At one point there was some anxiety about having to turn over, but the lady held the towel up over her eyes, as if the very sight of my stomach might blind her, and embarrassment was avoided. She also told me that massaging my legs would have been easier had I not been wearing boxers, which means one of two things: either I was right, or the massage therapist is a pervert.
