Articles
Originally published on Wednesday, 7th May 2008
Emma Does The Masseur
Confession: I don't like massages. Actually, I don't like strangers touching me. At all. The idea of paying strangers to touch me; paying a man to touch me especially - well, that just seems vile. So until recently, the only massage I had was at a fancy spa by a woman who weighed about 5 stone. Basically, she just rubbed some smelly oil on my back while playing whale music in the background. Nice, but hardly a "massage".
But work has been stressful, and during my bi-weekly Pilates sessions (I've finally learnt how to breathe properly) my teacher, Monique, noticed my shoulders were very tight. So Melissa booked me into a session with Marcelo Ribeiro, the sports masseuse at Kinesis. Having a "sports" massage felt particularly silly, since obviously I'm not an athlete. I've never even pulled a muscle. The closest to a "sports" injury I've come is breaking my wrist in a typical "champagne/ballgown/stairs-leaping" episode. In the emergency room, when the X-rays came back showing the break, my super-sporty sister deadpanned: "There goes the Wimbledon win."
Before I could come up with an appropriate report, my father replied: "Well, at least she can still coach." Oh, how they laughed.
So, honestly, I really didn't know what to expect for a sport massage. There was the requisite awkward "so, how naked do I get?" conversation, which was fun, but once Marcello got started, it became clear that this was going to be a whole different experience to the typical scented-oils-at-a-fancy-spa massage.
For one, Marcello is not a small man. I'd bet on him in a bar fight. Ergo, when he began massaging me - I felt it. And while it wasn't painful, it was, at times, intense. Occasionally, it felt like he was actually filleting the muscle from the bone. To combat the embarrassment of a stranger rubbing my near-naked body, I spent the first half of our session asking him questions. Silence was way too uncomfortable, which is why I know that Marcelo is presently studying rolfing - which isn't half as dirty as it sounds - and has been a masseuse for the Royal Ballet as well as the English national team.
Not long later, I feel asleep. The experience was, in two words: Pure bliss. So much so that I booked my flatmate in after a particularly gruelling work week. Massages certainly feature in my future.
