Self-published illustrated humor essay • 2024I Got a Weight Loss Massage So You Don’t Have To
What’s this? A heavily discounted massage that promises guaranteed weight loss and rejuvenation all at once? Aces!
Words and Images by Delaney Gibbons
The guidebooks don’t tell you just how many windows there are in New York City. You can walk twenty blocks and know exactly what you look like the entire time – as though you’ve been gifted your own life-sized, self-reflective flip book, handmade by a first grader. Since my broke-college-student diet consists mostly of whatever I can get from the fourth floor vending machine, the windows tell a particularly ghoulish tale: dark circles beneath dead eyes. The sorriest, saggiest ass on 14th Street.
The promise of an easy (rejuvenating!) quick-fix is staring at me from the computer screen, dripping hope like a tub of lemon water ice in Manhattan summer heat. Maybe I should have more questions about what a “body spa session” actually entails. Or, just maybe, fairy godmothers are real and their name is Groupon. My ego is bruised enough that I can’t seem to manage a rational counter-argument against clicking Buy. I’ll forgo this month’s Skittles rations.
I’ve never been to a day spa before, but this one in midtown looks just like the kinds I’ve seen in stock photos, so it must be right. All ocean blue, seafoam green, and white sand beach. There’s even a fountain trickling somewhere – or an audio recording of one.
Someone takes my voucher and ushers me into a small, dimly lit room with a massage table. A few minutes later, a short older woman with leathery tanned skin and kind eyes comes in and puts an odd-looking piece of paper on the technician counter. I recognize about four different accents in her halted English, and we silently agree to trudge forward with charades.
She motions to the massage table, then to me, and then makes a little shimmy move as though she’s removing her clothes. I gather that she’s telling me to undress, but she abruptly leaves the room before I can get confirmation.
I think this complete stranger wants me to get naked. At least at a doctor’s office you get a scratchy paper robe to put on, but I don’t see one here. Hell, I’ve gone this far. I paid the money. They took my voucher. I want my damn massage that will somehow slim me down and also make me look exuberant. I strip and hop up on the table.
A few minutes later, the woman raps on the door as she walks right in, already speaking. “All set?” she asks, and immediately starts laughing.
A total stranger is staring at my naked body and laughing. Isn’t this the part in life where I’m supposed to die or wake up? Either would be preferable.
Still chuckling to herself, the woman picks up the piece of paper she’d placed on the counter earlier. She unfolds it and holds it up to her crotch. Seeing the demonstration, I can now tell that it is paper underwear and I should be wearing it. Then she walks to the bed and lifts the covers, motioning for me to get under them. I don’t bother saying that these tutorials would have been much more helpful if given to me at the start. She leaves again. I put on the paper panties and climb under the thin sheet on the bed. When she comes back in, she allows herself another breathy “Ha,” and adds, “Good girl.”
~~
Even after my three years of high school French and one year living with a native Spanish-speaking roommate, I’m still embarrassingly unilingual. This woman and I are struggling. The massage is strenuous and it doesn’t help that every time she needs me to contort a certain way, she doesn’t know how to communicate it to me, so she lifts and tugs at my limbs until they end up where she needs them to be. The treatment involves scrubs, lotions, deep-tissue massaging, more contorting – and all of this done in a very small room with questionable air flow. I’m sweating like crazy, which is supposed to be a good thing that will make me lose “inches,” but it’s certainly not making limb-lifting any easier.
Honestly, this massage is more exhausting than rejuvenating. She must be exhausted. It’s late in the afternoon, how many times has she done this today? How many more me’s are there to go before she can go home? Where is home? I want to tell her, It’s okay. You can be done.
~~
About an hour has passed and I am simmering at a low boil. The massage part seems to be over. The woman is out of the room and the lights are almost all the way dimmed. Before leaving, she covered me in about 25 heavy blankets. The heat is turned up and I am meant to sweat. I don’t think I have any sweat left, though. It’s got to be just pure Diet Coke coming out of me at this point.
~~
Oh, the goddamn heat. My dehydration is more than just a loitering lip smack now. Anxiety is peaking. How long have I been in this room? A day? Where did the woman go and why doesn’t she love me? Won’t she bring me water? A puppy? Do I hear Michael Bublé? I think I’m dying. This can’t be healthy. Someone is walking by. Oh, let that be her. What is her language and who is this tireless woman? I’m definitely dying.
~~
~~
“Ready?”
I actually don’t have a clue what she says. It could have been any string of syllables and to me it sounds like “You are forgiven now, child. Go in peace.”
The woman peels the layers off of me and I slowly turn away from the light and back to the land of the living.
With only eyebrow movements and hand gestures, she conveys to me that I’ve completely sweat through every single layer of blanket, and that this is not common. But she has a soft smile while doing so, which makes me feel proud for losing more bodily fluids than any chump who’s gone before me.
She stands me up next to the table, closer to an overhead light and directly in front of a large, unforgiving mirror. I look like a snowman in April, deranged and dripping. She gathers a pen, a clipboard, a soft tape measure, and reading glasses on a rope that she places around her neck. I am too thirsty and bewildered to care that the paper panties are anything but at this point. The woman starts taking measurements of my thighs, my hips, my arms, my waist. I briefly think about how I don’t recall taking “before” measurements. But maybe we did, in my past life before this massage started.
With the tape measure somewhere around my midsection, she says “vingt-huit” softly, then turns to mark it on the clipboard.
“Twenty-eight?” I ask, delirious.
Her eyes light up and she looks at me with what feels like genuine fondness. My mind takes this moment and erects a monument to it.
“Si!” She slides the tape measure to another part of my body, but I’m so dehydrated and blissed out from her acknowledgement that I can’t focus. When she asks “trente et un?” I just smile big and stupidly and say, “Yes!”
Her face fades, but not completely. She finishes up my measurements in silence.
~~
As I make my way home from the spa, I don’t notice my reflection in any windows. I stop at a bodega for water and three Gatorades. I think fondly of high school French and strong small women. I feel rejuvenated.
A previous version of this essay was published in April 2024 via my newsletter, and in May 2024 on Medium.