Suffer and Smile

I was completely sick and miserable at work yesterday.  I looked like The Leaning Man, twisted and malformed.  And I sweat.  Pain will make you do that, but I am not certain that I don't have some other disease to accompany my dislocated disc.  A colleague came up behind me where I sat at my desk early in the morning and putting her fingers gently on my neck, she began to massage.  When she would push on the painful area, I could feel the sweat building up in my pores.  My neck was suddenly wet.  It was terrible.  Embarrassing.  And while I sweat, some invisible motor set my nerves and muscles to vibrating.  I can't say that the tremors were definitely connected to the pain in my neck.  Some other ailment may have been working on me as well.  Still, all trembling is unwelcome.

As I walked about the factory on various business, head leaning close to my right shoulder with a slight twist, I would be greeted by the old, "How're ya doin'?"  To which I would reply, "Lousy."  Of course they would ask me why and I, the standing S-curve, would explain.

"You need some Biofreeze," one woman said.

"Topical balms aren't going to do any good.  This is deep, bone and nerve stuff."

"You need to get some Biofreeze.  You can stop at the chiropractor's office next door.  That's where I get it."

"Here, I have some in my bag," said another lady.  "Try it."

What could I do.  I was surrounded by a cult of alternative "medicine" Moonies.  I let her roll it onto my neck.

"Now don't take a shower for at least an hour," she said.  "It will burn like hell."

We were at work.  It was morning.  Where did she think I was going to shower?

But to my great surprise, within ten minutes, my neck began to feel better.  How in the world, I wondered?  How could that be?  There must be some drug in it.  It can't just be topical.

But by the afternoon, my neck was killing me again and the trembling had gotten worse.  By the end of the day, I had decided to do something I really didn't want to do.  It was six o'clock and too late to schedule a real massage, so I decided to go to Whole Foods where they had chair massages next to the checkout counter.  What sort of fool, I've always wondered, would sit in front of a store full of shoppers and have a massage.  Now I knew.

One of the women who works there smiles at me often as I stand in the checkout line, and, of course, I've wondered if she finds me interesting or is merely looking for customers.  Being a very practical man when it comes to such things, I've always opted for the later explanation.  There are two chairs at the front of the store, and when I walked in, I headed straight for them.  Two masseuses were working, a young man and The Smiler.  Both of them were busy, so I shopped for dinner and came back.  The Smiler was just finishing up, but a blonde woman stepped in front of me and signed a sheet of lined paper attached to a clipboard.  Shit, I thought.  I didn't know.  I didn't want to wait around another twenty minutes for this, and I was preparing to leave.

The Smiler ran her client's card and handed her the printout to sign.  The blonde woman looked at me and smiled.  With my head resting awkwardly on my right shoulder, I grimaced back.  The Smiler approached her and said something, then turned to me and said, "This gentleman has been waiting.  He hasn't signed in, but do you mind?"  The blonde didn't.  Hell, how could she.  It isn't that sort of crowd.

The Smiler lectured me on the proper procedure of signing in for awhile like an elementary school teacher in what seemed to me to be a stern, practical voice.  I just looked at her.  Then she began asking me questions.  Did I have heart problems, high blood pressure, bruises?  I must have replied in the wrong fashion because she began to lecture me again on why she asks those questions using the same tone she had used about the sign in procedure.  While she talked, she began cleaning the massage chair with a sterilizing spray.  "Everybody gets a clean chair," she exclaimed.  I said, "Well, that's probably a good thing" to which, again in that stern, official tone, she told me it was required by law.

I was in for a beating.

Jesus, she hated me.  The Smile, I realized, was something sick and demented.  She began squeezing my trapezeus muscles the way the mean kids in junior high school would to make you get onto your knees.  Over and over and over again.  Surely she knew how painful this was even to someone whose neck was healthy.  And then she began digging her knuckles into my occipital bone.  What the hell?  Perhaps they weren't required to go to school to do chair massages.  Perhaps anybody could do it.  There was no school in the world that would teach something like this.  But I said nothing.  I let her continue just to see what would happen.  Fortunately I had signed up for the twenty-five minute massage, the longest that was offered.  Even more fortunately, I think she cheated me.  As painful as it was, it did not seem to be twenty-five minutes.  Old Smiley.  She really had it in for me for sure.

This morning, I neck and shoulders feel like I was in a football game.  Both sides of my neck are sore now.  But it has evened things out a bit because I can turn my head much better.  I don't think I am nearly as crooked as I was.  I still have the vibrating motor inside, though, like I've been given a 10x dose of caffeine.  I still don't know if the two things are connected.

Now it is time to shower and head out to the factory.  I would rather not, but I have deadlines that must be met or it will be the worse for me.  You know how it is.  We carry on despite it all.  Everyone has something they deal with.  We carry our injuries and diseases and mental issues to the mill every day because we have no choice.  That is who we are.  That is what we do.  We suffer and smile.

We are the people.