A quicky...AKA shopping mall acrobatics and the art of Chinese massage

Today I snuck in for a quicky...a quick 20 minute back massage at one of those funny and slightly dodgy places that have popped up everywhere-perhaps as ubiquitous as the ever so popular Mani Pedi establishments. Much to my chagrin, after carefully explaining that I only wanted 20 minutes not 30 minutes, a man of the male variety whipped back a curtain and asked me to lie down on a massage table (thank GOD I said NO to the oil...). Wow-here we go. A stranger, and a man no less, massaging me. Totally weirded out I went with the flow. My Masseur, lets call him Nick, was Chinese. My Mandarin isn't flash but we managed to communicate nonetheless. It wasn't long until Nick was up on the table behind me. Wow-let's just flow with this I told myself. A few minutes later he managed to intertwine our legs and twisted my back until it cracked in 5 places. We then chilled for a bit and reverted to your regular kind of soft tissue manipulation one might expect from a 20 minute massage in a shopping mall. This, however, was not to last. Nick managed to get me to sit up on the table, he shimmied my hips forward, interlocked my hands on top of my head, got his own body up on the table as well, and flipped me back over his knees so I was hanging like an inverted rag-doll for all of the world to see. It was freaky. As two Cirque du Soleil performers become one as they contort themselves into ungodly positions, so too did Nick and I-complete with the faint smell of Chinese cigarettes emanating from his pores. I was like a mythical Chinese Crane floating in the sky. An utterley unexpected, uncomfortable and mildly hilarious experience to shake up my Monday, and low and behold my back pain has ceased. If you're interested in anything like this I can be reached on my cell phone or via email, and I'll happily give you Nick's details so you too can fly back-to-front-upside-down on Nick's

knees and release all the pain and tension in all of those little Vertabrae of yours.