The Tutor
“Fingertips are one of the most sensitive areas in our bodies,” the massage tutor explained and pulled one dark, thick hair from her head, placed it on a page in the middle of a thin, open telephone book on the table. She turned a page to cover the hair and moved her fingertips slowly over the area where she had placed it. To me, her voice was like warm milk.
"I'm feeling the hair beneath the page," the tutor said and turned another page, then another and another, feeling and turning, feeling and turning. I lost count of the pages, layered like the microscopic skin cells we had learned about earlier in the course. The tutor stopped, passed the book to the student next to her and instructed each of us to do the same.
“Soon,” she promised, “you'll be able to feel a hair through twenty pages or more.”
Sometimes I wasn’t sure why I had started this course. It was hard learning new stuff after so many years. My evenings were spent hunched over a computer studying or taking breaks to delete pictures of myself with the husband who had recently asked for a divorce.
He was right. I did get really fat.
Then I would feel rage and remember his words telling me when I laid down all the fat went away.
I've probably got so many deep, dark unknowns hiding inside me. Will I ever go to sleep peacefully? Will I ever stop crying? Will I ever forgive him for all the little things?
****
I lay prone, unclothed, covered only with a towel, my face cradled in the headrest: I was the guinea pig for the demonstration on deep tissue massage.
”Memories are held in our deeper muscle tissues.” I could hear the tutor’s voice from above. “Your client may cry. Even experience nausea. Do no harm. Cause no pain."
I felt the tutor’s hands move confidently over my back, manipulating my muscles, rubbing against the fibers. I was surprised when the tutor found the exact spot that had been killing me by bedtime every day.
"The muscle may or may not let you in," the therapist said. “Wind in slowly, clockwise for ten seconds. The slower you go, the more deeply the muscle will let you in.”
Fast. Fast. It all had to be fast. His first kisses were eager, hungry, desperate, like a nursing infant's. I felt so needed, desired.
“Hold for ten seconds.” The tutor applied gentle pressure and I yielded to her fingertips.
Why did he become demanding? His ways only, always. My world, getting smaller.
“Wind out,” the tutor said, “anti-clockwise for ten seconds.”
Give it up. It's past. It's finished.
I felt almost lightheaded the rest of the day, not hungry, but more thirsty than usual.
No studying for me. No going through pictures. I'm going to bed early.
*****
When I woke the next morning, it was still dark.
Too soon to be up.
I stretched my hands high into the air and wiggled my strengthened fingers. I let my fingertips run over each arm, aware of the muscles I was using to touch others.
I'm different. Did I even have a dream?
I lay still, expectant, as dawn arrived slowly, luxuriously.
Finally, I lifted my fingers to rub sleep from my eyes.
Each tiny grain a shard of glass.