Oiled and Plied with Touch
Our most honest language.
I feel like Jodi Foster when she first gets a look at alien worlds on her journey in ‘Contact’.
“They should have sent a poet.”
Oh wait! We did.
Oh.
My.
God.
I haven’t had many
hands teach me
what my body knows,
but this one—
this one
spoke fluently.
And my body—
It understood
the assignment.
I’ve had few massages in my young life, but I most certainly just had the best one.
My Portuguese masseuse’s youth belied her strength and skill. She had a grip like iron and pressed hot rocks on my pale veneer with the force of a titan. Slicked with oil and barely present, I traveled the world in ninety minutes. I never dozed, it was too demanding of my pleasure centers to let go that way. But I did drift subconsciously—to my heart-home, to friends, to strangers, even to fruit—trading breath with the meaning of life.
At one point I was speaking to a politician who was a head of lettuce. He didn’t have much to contribute.
The absolute pleasure of being kneaded and stroked by a stranger’s hands simply cannot be matched. Unless—perhaps the hands of a lover. That, though, would produce wholly different somatic reactions.
Joy. Utter joy.
The sounds of the space—for you only have the two senses, sound and touch—were heightened tenfold; a repeated splash of water rinsing the hot rocks, the soft grinding of two hard things together, the oil audibly glistened in the cloistered room.
Viscous, wet and warm, smears slick lubricants that get traced by stones feeling something like hot chocolate poured over and down your body. It takes a moment to realize the tension is heat, not liquid.
The space is small and dark and so, so very soft. Music and candlelight set a mood undeniably tuned to unfold the body and mind. The therapist’s beauty and easy countenance rub away any hesitancy. She is utterly composed and professional.
I expected tears considering the weighty emotions I’ve been harboring, but the session produces only peace and occasionally unprovoked laughter.
When it ends, it does not do so abruptly. The hands leave, the stones cool, the oil settles into skin like a secret. I am still myself, but rearranged—pliable, unguarded, briefly absolved of the effort of being held together.
An hour of steam and shower cycles complete the day’s self-care leaving my skin golden and glowing with the texture of silk. The steam has choked out the contaminants and allowed me a short spirit journey from the heat and cold plunges.
I step back into the world slower than I entered it, aware that for a little while, my body was allowed to speak without interruption. Even now, it thanks me
—for thinking of it at all.
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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