My 30 minutes with a Singaporean Bubba

Say the word ‘massage’ and most people conjure up images of darkened rooms filled with the smell of aromatherapy oils as they drift in and out of consciousness due to the magic hands of Lars or Helga, the Swedish God/Goddess who can take you to the brink of ecstasy by simply kneading the erogenous zones in your back, neck, and shoulders. I too have had illusionary thoughts of myself in a similar situation, hence the reason I found myself lying face down quietly whimpering while being slapped about by a Singaporean assassin, telling myself that this would not be happening if I had not just spent six hours on a plane, if I wasn’t so tired, if I hadn’t been fooled by all the images of people being pampered and transformed through massage – what a crock!

I don’t know what came over me as I walked past the sign that read, “Back & Neck Massage – 30 minutes for $25”. I was obviously blinded by the almighty dollar sign, which is the only way that I can explain not taking in my surroundings and noticing that I was walking into some sort of Changi prison cell, and not a massage parlor. I still could’ve backed out when I entered the claustrophobic chamber, only demarcated by what I will loosely call a shower curtain, the type of curtain that you daren’t wash because you know that the stains and mildew are the only things holding it together. I could’ve backed out at this point, but I didn’t. As I continued I found myself laying my bare torso onto a towel that had seen more than its fair share of skin suits since its last wash – I fought hard to push thoughts of just how many bodies it had seen far to the back of my mind. At least Klaus (not his real name but sounds like it could be the name of a torturer) was kind enough to put down a clean (semi) towel around the place where I had to put my face. This was to later prove a blessing, as I was not know at the beginning just how hard I would be pushing my face into that towel during the next 30 minutes!

This is where the tiredness of my mind played a cruel and nasty trick on my body. Because my feet, legs, and back were no longer bearing any weight, my mind relayed a message to my body saying, “It’s OK, you can relax now.” And of course I did. In my state of relaxation I didn’t even notice that there was no “Sounds of the Rain forest” CD playing, nor was there any nice smelling oils floating about for me to breathe in. What I had was the smell of Chinese cooking (4 week old oil and rice) and the sound of some children’s TV show coming from a TV above my head – this is when it really hit me that I was not at a day spa at Versace, I was in the middle of Chinatown in Singapore. Enter Klaus!

From various massages that I have had in the past, ranging from day spas to pre-chiropractic adjustment to in-room deep tissue visits, I knew that all massages generally start off with the laying of hands and application of gentle pressure to stimulate blood flow and encourage muscle relaxation. My friend Klaus was obviously sick the days that this section of his course was given because he was extremely slap happy from the get go. After slapping on some oil he went straight into his attempt to insert his fingers 2 knuckles deep between my shoulder blade and my spine. I thought that if I let out a bit of a groan and some deep expirations, that he might understand that I wanted him to lighten up a bit. It seemed, however, that the more I groaned and the deeper that I exhaled, the harder he pushed. This created a very unfortunate situation where the louder I groaned, the harder he pushed, which made me groan harder, which made him push harder, which made me groan harder – well I think you get the picture. Adding to the ambiance of this whole experience was the periodic phlegm induced throat coughs that were occurring. At various stages I was expecting to hear a glob of lung juice hit the floor. At one point he even burped! How relaxing is that!

I decided the only course of action I could take was to lie there and silently take it, while trying to pretend I was relaxing, quietly hoping that he would try to rip me off and only massage me for 15 minutes and then say, “OK mista, time up”. As I walked back to my hotel I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Did I just get a massage or spend 30 minutes in a prison shower block?” Either way, it was an experience that I won’t forget in a hurry!