Touched

I think the last time someone touched me was March 8th. About a month ago. I was coming off of a week of jet lag with a lingering stiff neck from hauling suitcases through airports on both sides of the Atlantic. So on a Sunday afternoon, I paid for a chair massage in the quietest corner of Selfridge’s.

I hung up my coat and straddled a padded leather chair, resting my forehead against a donut-shaped sheet of tissue, and tried to relax. The grey-bearded Slavic man who had nodded gruffly at me when I sat down placed his wide, firm hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes.

For twenty minutes he dug palms and fingers and elbows into the meat of my back. It was grueling, in the self-consciously painful way massages can be. The Slav kept a high pace, and in-between breaths and winces I thought about how massage therapists and butchers must have a lot in common. Both understand the muscly anatomy of a mammal, using their bare hands to seek and separate ligament from bone. I felt like I was being prepared to be quartered.

His forceful hands continued to pummel my back, but when he stood in front of me, probing fingers into my ropey neck, I heard something. He was singing. Under his breath, in a soft falsetto, he sang along to the chorus of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” playing faintly in the distance.

Lay me down in sheets of linen

You had a busy day today

Hold me closer, tiny dancer...

I grinned as I winced.