SUNDAY, 19 MARCH, 2000, PHILADELPHIA

Ohhhhh, pain! <JEWISHMOTHER> No one knows how I’ve suffered! </JEWISHMOTHER> This whole dreadul week has been simply wretchèd. Threw my back out somewhere along the lines of Monday (how à propos), and the Evil Chi has festered and infected my entire corporeal self, moving and settling like gout from lower back to neck to over here to over there. I’ve been making lane changes by turning my whole body, the neck being resistent to all manœuvres as such. Take little breaks at home and work where I have no other recourse but to lie on the ground and sorta silently weep and plead quietly to my own personal pain gods, Edith and Archie, to cordially fuck off and find some new home to haunt. A month or two ago I went to this girl Jill’s party. I liked her immediately. And hey, Jill is a masseuse, of which I erstwhile knew none in Philadelphia. Filed that bit o’ info into my tiny hard drive and this week, found myself scrabbling around town, asking everyone for her number. After a maddening bout of phone tag, I finally had an appointment for yesterday afternoon (all via voicemail). First time I have gone to a professional. Isn’t that stupid? I mean, everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve know at least 4 professional Chi-Movers, and have never once giving any of them my patronage. Ah well — as youth escapes me, I see this trend will change. So I went to Jill’s. Indian sitar music. “Take off your clothes and hop under the sheet.” This is all so Berkeley, I thought. Then she started poking and squishing Satan, Beelzebubby and Loki from all my nooks … and even some crannies! “You are Rodin; I am your clay,” I told her as she pressed a spot along my spine and my toes curled up by reflex. (Fleh-fleh-fleh-fleh-flex.) “That’s the right idea,” she concurred. There was an entire physical narrative going on for that wonderful hour as chunks of brick and concrete slowly thawed to sloppy oatmeal and began to sluggishly circulate throughout my poor, broken (yet still somehow maddeningly attractive) body. At one point, I thought I was dead. Opened my eyes and saw the ceiling a meter away from my face. “Whoops, out of body experience,” I thought. “Better try to get back in there, awful as it seems.” Oh, to find a good masseuse — one who instinctively knows precisely wither the oogies and dæmons are scurrying, and who deftly squelches them with ruthlessness and a total lack of mercy, and yet a compassion for the client that would make Mother Theresa seem a mercenary bitch. I’m sure 14 of my 17 readers have already had professional work done like this before by someone whom they can trust implicitely, and thus my childish, naïve recounting of this awesome experience is redundant, but it was my first, and I honestly didn’t think it possible. I feel I can go on living now whereas last week it was all about OD’ing on friends’ prescription muscle relaxers and hoping they would kill me. And so. Today’s li’l diary is nothing more than a glorified advert — soz ‘bout that. To the Philly Pholk: contact me for Jill’s number; I highly recommend. For the rest of the world, find yourself a damn good masseuse and become a client. It’s the best thing you can do for your body short of a good snogging session. And now back to our program.