Photo by Kevin Harkins Photography

The other day I was perusing the classified ads in Boston Magazine. There are psychics who will come to your house. There are BSWF’s looking for BSBTGP’s with an interest in S and M.

There are also ads for massage therapists. They used to be called masseurs and masseuses. The ones who advertise themselves with adjectives such as “sweet, petite and super sexy,” or who mention a “happy ending” used to be called hookers. The massage therapists in the classified ads describe their services with such phrases as “loving, nurturing, and healing relaxation,” and “the soothing blissful rhythms and graceful flow of positive vibrations.” There are more succinct words for the action suggested here, but I can’t say them on a family-friendly blog.

If you’re a legitimate massage therapist, you don’t have to send me an angry letter. Of course, I know there are legitimate massage therapists. Any guy named Bruno who works at the West End Gym, for example. For my birthday, my wife once gave me a gift certificate for a massage and a haircut at a place at the mall. I put off my trip there for about six months, but when my wife hinted that I hadn’t appreciated her gift, I decided it was time to make an appointment.

The place was clean and legitimate and fine if you are the type of person who likes to get a massage from a stranger. I decided that I might not be the type of person who likes to get a massage from a stranger. I was directed to a room where there were scented candles burning and the sounds of bamboo flutes and birdcalls and rain falling in the forest, and an amiable blonde said, “My name is Cindy. You can take off your clothes and lie on this table and cover yourself with the sheet. You can take off your underwear or leave it on if you want. I’ll be right back.”

Now I knew my wife had not been picturing this scene when she gave me the gift certificate, because she wouldn’t normally be understanding when other women tell me to take my clothes off and wait in a candle scented room.

I really don’t know what my wife was thinking when she gave me that gift certificate, but I suspect it was closer to Bruno at the West End Gym. Anyway, there I was, with the wife’s encouragement, waiting for Cindy to return and wondering what the hell I was doing there. I could see right away that it would be a shameful experience, because the first thing I had to do was to establish with Cindy that she was dealing with a girly man who would not take off his underwear, the adult equivalent of that kid in high school who smelled like a bag of dirty laundry because he didn’t want to take a nice bracing shower with the other lads after Phys Ed. Cindy would probably wonder if I was ashamed of something. Of course, there’s no problem in that department. I’m Irish, as you know, and, well, enough said.

I reminded myself that I was the customer and I shouldn’t feel bad about leaving my underwear on if I wanted to leave my underwear on. Cindy came back and started the massage, and I’m sure she did an excellent job. But I believe that anyone who went through 12 years of Catholic school is going to have a very difficult time immersing him or herself in the soothing blissful rhythms and graceful flow of the massage.

The reason is that the only people I’ve ever seen getting massages like this were in movies, usually people like Nero, Caligula, and Cleopatra. That’s right: hedonistic pagans. People who enjoy pleasure. I mean, can you imagine Jesus Christ getting a massage? Of course you can’t. A crucifixion? Yes. A massage? Forget about it. I recalled the tales that Sister Bernard St. Joseph related of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the raucous orgies and feasts and vomitoriums of Rome that preceded the vengeance of an outraged God on those evil cities and their over-massaged leaders.

For some reason, as I lay there getting the loving, nurturing, and healing caresses of Cindy, I couldn’t help but imagine the starving, wretched masses of humanity, in rags, peering at me out of the shadows, just outside the glow of the silently burning candles. “Look at you,” their eyes said, “a corrupt, overfed, lazy American, spending enough money in your self-indulgent pleasure to feed a family of eight for a year!”

Beside those poor wretches, in the corner of the room, stood the ghost of my father, with a couple of his WWII buddies. “That your kiddo?” Farmer Lambert asked. “Pretty sissified, isn’t he?”

My father shook his head and said, “For cryin’ out loud.”

Pugsy Walsh said, “Those candles stink like a French bordello.” He pulled a half-smoked stogie out of the pocket of his fatigues and I saw his rugged face as he lit it up.

“He gonna get a pedicure, too?” Farmer asked, and I heard their derisive laughter among the birdcalls of the rainforest.

It was a real credit to Cindy, that even while wallowing in a morass of guilt, I fell into a kind of trance, hypnotized by the flutes and the rushing gurgle of water, or paralyzed by the weight of twenty centuries of Christianity and the gazes of the starving multitudes and the Savior on his cross. But when Cindy eventually leaned over and said, “Mr. O’Connor” in my ear, I leapt off the table like Finnegan at his own wake. Cindy jumped backward and fell onto her little boom box. The bamboo flutes and birdcalls were silenced. “Sorry!” I said, as I lunged for my pants. I knew she wouldn’t have time to hear how I was suffering from post-traumatic Catholic education stress disorder. I dropped her a fifteen-dollar tip because I had frightened her, and as a writer, I can afford to live large. Then I booked it out of there, skipping the haircut, never to return.

You see when I want to really relax and feel the positive vibrations, I don’t need a massage, I need a good, hearty penance. Because if I walk ten miles in the rain, I have this feeling that my father is smiling somewhere, saying, “That’s my boy.” When I’m slogging away at the damned driveway in a northeast blizzard with my hands frozen to the shovel and the plough comes by and knocks it all back, then I can rest easy, because I know the balance book in heaven is right. This is what I am, not a pampered pagan, but a miserable, suffering, guilt-ridden Irish Catholic, and I’m getting exactly what I deserve, and I’m happy.