wenus massage

i went for a massage yesterday. i had noticed a new place had opened right next to the spa i go to. it seemed a little more relaxed, with staff in khakis and polos, rather than uniforms. the normal place is like a zen house of meditation, each curtain separated room has a massage table on a platform that nearly fills the room. the lights are low, the music subdued and the incense candles flickering. the new place seems to be younger, hipper and has more energy.

not that energy is what you are looking for in a massage. but strength is. since sleeping on a plane coming back from amsterdam a few weeks ago, my back has been killing me. add to this the request to my assistant, that she would force me to run at least 20 mins a day. i made her promise it would be every day no excuses. but running every day was taking its toll, my body was feeling the need to have some of the muscles cleansed with pressure.

it started as a pretty standard massage, aroma therapy, china-chinese girl, so not much english and little conversation. i have long since lost the words for “massage harder” from my limited mandarin vocabulary, i can say “hen how” and “xie xie ni”, but mostly it is quiet time to relax and think; uninterrupted by the outside world. in the middle of the massage i was interrupted, not by the outside world but by an inside thought, “oh my god, this is a wenus massage”.

some of you might be thinking about chandler bing right now aren’t you. chandler had a job in the statistical analysis and data configuration group and created two reports "wenus" (weekly estimated net usage systems) and the "anus" (annual net usage statistics)). although i have been thinking about data a lot lately, and have been called mr. reports on more than one occasion, it was not chandler that i was thinking of.

there is an entry in the urban dictionary that agrees with my kids that the wenus is the skin on the end of your elbow. this is not exactly the OED, but it is a source for culturally relevant words which can help you keep up with your children. thank god for the internet.

now that we have the definition we are safe to go to a restaurant and loudly say “oh my god, E get your wenus off the table” then wait for the straights around you to react. it’s classic, i know i have done it. isn’t it great having teenagers and younger kids, the ages work so perfectly to give you things like this to do on boring sunday afternoons? oh come on, they do it back too, “dad, your wenus looks really dried out”… yeah, the lady next to us loved that one.

but i digress, in the middle of the massage, rather than continue to use her hands that were getting sore trying to work the knotted muscles in my back, she used her wenus. she pushed her wenus into those sore muscles and got all those knots out. it was great, her wenus was just what i needed.

the last few minutes of massage here tend to be focused on the head. i always wonder if they like the fact that i have the aggressive haircut or not, it seems easier to me, but maybe they like having the hair. i normally skip the head massage, but i was really relaxed and let it go. by the end of it i was fast asleep.

i left, had yet another double espresso and a sangria (balance, that’s what it’s all about) and then went home and fell asleep on the couch. so much for the rest of my day, and the things i needed to get done; i was done.

i was sooooooo relaxed, who knew that all it would take was a wenus massage.