Preface:
The following is an e-mail i sent to the corporate office thanking them for giving us massages during employee appreciation week...
for the record... i and the rest of the people at this office signed up for a lady named Sylvia...
I hope you enjoy...
THE EMAIL.................
Hello All,
Since I am out of the corporate loop, it is unclear to me whom to directly thank for my first professional massage. Thusly, all employees at corporate are receiving this email.
I would like to share my experience with you and hopefully it will serve as a warm thank you.
I was pleasantly reminded by Brother Justin my scheduled 10:30 appointment had arrived and I should proceed to "Get yo massage, brother!" And with haste I searched for the location of "Sylvia." After circling the CoE and DHS side of Rosslyn to no avail, I stumbled upon the designated locale. The large conference room was the chosen setting. Right away, I was met by a "Bill." Mind racing I tried to justify his presence in a room that was prescribed as a place where massages would be given by "Sylvia." Maybe he greets and introduces you to The Great Sylvia or perhaps he was a host and I was to await my turn, akin to that of a 5-star restaurant. Or maybe he was more like a waiter and took your order of preferred style of massage. As these and other scenarios fluttered my mind, he explained that I would have to "loosen my tie and unbutton 3 to 4 places from the top." Feeling has if I had to prove that I was indeed secure with myself, and since I had passed the point of no return, I obliged and did as instructed.
So, now I gazed upon a "seating contraption" that in all honesty I would have not ventured to sit in if there was a "deal or no deal." Then I heard, "André I would like for you to straddle the chair and try to become very loose." Once again, I told myself I am very secure and this is normal. As I climbed... (ok fine... ) "straddled" the chair I observed a Walkman and quickly I thought of a way to redeem my manhood. "Hey can I go get my Ipod?" I asked hoping that some of my favorite Rap songs would balance out this equation and indeed I would be "manly." But it wasn't to be, "Bill" convinced me that the music on the Walkman was perfect for this setting and I should give the "old geezer music" a chance. (FYI - "geezer music" was his words) And so it began, I had surrendered, I had relaxed, I let the soothing sounds of anonymous melodies wash over my ears and zoned out.
Initially it was wonderful, "Bill" kept it up "high" and we were cool. Then, he went lower and lower and the urge to leap out of the chair and blame it on a Charmaine - "Sign your timesheet" email was all too real to me. But again, I resisted. Another test came, when "Bill" posed, "I would like to use some oil around your neck to end our session." He reaffirmed that it was "greaseless and odorless" in case I was concerned about leaving evidence. No dear "Bill", I wasn't concern about the effects of your oil, just the notion of you using it and the fact you asked if you could do so. It was something strange about him requesting permission to rub my neck with oil. I would have much rather had him instruct me that such action would occur, leading me to feel that indeed this was normal versus "something extra."
Once again, as you can guess I surrendered and agreed.
Dear friends, I'll tell you, the next fifteen minutes I had resolved all the issues I face today and was two minutes from establishing an air-tight plan for peace on earth. To say it felt good would be an understatement. Every 3 minutes, I knew Ashton Kutcher was going to pop up yell, "You've been punked." Thankfully, that wasn't the case. When my fifteen minutes came to an end, I rose and promptly thanked "Bill" and admitted my apprehension for undertaking this exercise upon finding out he wasn't "Slyvia."
I left the room, shirt unbuttoned, tie loosened, legs wobbly and light headed, but security still intact.
And for that experience I say,
Thank you,
André