Pins ‘n’ Needles

Next we hook up electricity, okay?” she said. What?! Electricity? I was ready to make like a pincushion, but I was not prepared for currents running through me. She set a boxy console on the edge of the table and proceeded to deftly clip wires to the needles. I heard her softly say, “Electricity coming.” Momentarily, I realized that the muscles in my back seemed to be lightly pulsing. Gradually the pulsing got stronger, until my right foot started to flick as if keeping a beat. I thought of how electrical fires start in walls of old houses, and hoped something similar wouldn’t happen to me. I was left alone in the room, listening to my foot crinkle the paper underneath as it twitched. Mysteriously, my lower back started to get comfortably warm.

When the doctor returned twenty minutes later, I realized that I had been napping. After disconnecting the wires and deftly removing the needles, she quickly rubbed mentholated oil into my back. Next, I heard the sound of a box full of something (that turned out to be thick, glass orbs). This sound was followed by some squirting, and the grating of a lighter. Then I heard the whoosh of a flame. Kind of like getting a barbecue started, I thought. Next came the—presumably flaming—glass orb’s mouth being clapped onto my back. As the flame extinguished, my skin seemed to get pulled into the bowl. It felt like a strong pinch and a twist. After doing this about a dozen more times, the doctor exited the room, leaving me feeling a bit like a turtle with a shell made of thick glass orbs.

If this was all there was to the cupping massage, it wasn’t so bad, I thought to myself. And it was just as I was settling into this unjustified sense of confidence that the doctor returned. She removed the orbs, leaving only two of the smaller orbs. The doctor then used the small orbs to vigorously massage across my lower back. Up and down and across they went, feeling like they were ripping some skin as they went—which they weren’t. For those who correlate the effectiveness of a massage with palm perspiration, this is the massage style for you. Just when it started to feel like I couldn’t suppress a yelp, it ended. Now I understood why it was important for any business appointments to be scheduled earlier in the day, before receiving this type of massage.

Despite the tenderness on my back when I walked out of that office for the first time, my back felt looser than it had in a long while.