Hurts So Good

So yesterday I finally had my first massage from the incomparable H. to alleviate what she referred to as my hunchback termpaper syndrome, and I have no idea why I waited so long. She worked like a dog on me, bless her heart, especially on the two knots above my shoulderblades that I have now nicknamed Thing1 and Thing2. They're not gone, but they're much smaller and much subdued now that The (Cool) Cat in the (Massage) Hat has shown them who's boss. This morning I woke up and, for the first time in a week, I wasn't stiff. Everything moved! Of course, everything also hurt, but honestly I was so pleased I didn't have to lurch to the bathroom like Frankenstein's monster that I almost didn't care. It was as if, instead of being hit by a speeding car and dragged down a cobblestone street (which was how I felt after the combination of "weekend hunched over a laptop" and "Tuesday spent hauling things down many stairs"), I had gotten drunk, laid down in the middle of the street and, while incredibly relaxed, let the car gently roll over me. Okay, maybe I'm not painting a tempting picture here but trust me, in this life you're gonna take your knocks one way or another, and I believe it's better for your sanity and overall tension level to hire a professional to beat the crap out of you all at once. Then you can recover and move on, crap-free. It's an antidote to the amateur-hour death of a thousand cuts that daily stress in Gotham can create. (And H. is an awesome masseur, so don't let my tale of a messed-up back put you off of her magic touch.)

Unlike apparently a lot of people, I don't mind a little pain during the massage either. I sometimes become so used to being tense that the pain is almost necessary to make me aware of it and let those muscles relax -- sometimes you have to swing to the opposite extreme before you can come back to the middle. And that's all we'll say about pain, as otherwise this page will be getting a lot more search engine hits. It's not nice to tease the perverts, after all; they ask for so little.

Of course, H. and I capped off the massage by promptly getting caught in a frickin' biblical deluge while searching for an Irish pub in midtown. Luckily, we finally realized that all you have to do is close your eyes and point to find an Irish pub in midtown, so when the one we were looking for was too crowded we ended up at the one directly across the street. I ordered a mixed drink instead of wine without realizing why; I told H. I was just in a weird mood but I realized later on the subway home that I must have been channeling the fabulously retro, American-style cocktail bar that F. and I ended up at after getting caught in a similar downpour in Vienna. Apparently the Zombies, peanuts and Frank Sinatra made an indelible impression on me and now I just gotta have a cocktail in a tall glass when I'm wet and squelchy. There are worse things, that's for sure.

Off to get my laundry; I'm working from home today which is a godsend as I have not a stitch of clean clothing left to wear. Here's a picture of the flowers on the Columbia campus to close out the post; the camera on my new cellphone is a lot better than the camera on my old one.