The Dreaded Couple’s Massage Part II

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Today is our last full day here so we decide that we will spend it doing very little. It’s just as well that we’ve decided to do very little as it’s Sunday and other than churches everything is closed. Issy wanders down onto the beach where she tells me she listened to a New Zealand couple try to explain snow and skiing to some very confused looking members of the hotel staff. We spend the morning swimming and lying on the beach.

It seems that I have somehow been inveigled into another couple’s massage. I think I must have been asleep when I allegedly agreed to this. It only took me a few days to recover from the last session, so maybe it can’t have been all that bad, although I begin to wonder whether this might be the same logic that mothers apply when agreeing to have a second child. At least I now know the drill, and I remember to wear my best pair of clean undies.

I again agree to have "firm" massage pressure, but quickly begin to question the wisdom of this decision. I struggle to catch my breath as my lungs have the air forced out of them by the unholy force that is being applied to my back. I’m sure that the pressure wasn’t nearly this "firm" last time; this is a whole different ball game. A soft seductive female voice asks me whether the pressure is OK, and I just know I’m going to respond that it’s fine, even though I can feel my ribs cracking. I then realise that I haven’t actually seen my torturer; I can only see their feet through the hole in the table. I decide that this is all a trick. They’ve painted the toenails of a front row forward from the Samoan rugby team and snuck him in here, and the soft seductive female voice is only a recording. The masseuse’s feet disappear from view and the pressure on my back increases. This can only mean one thing; he’s mounted the table and is now pacing up and down my spine. Next I feel the soles of my feet being beaten with what feels like an iron bar. I remember reading something about this; it's called bastinado and it’s a form of sadistic medieval torture. Just when I think the pain can’t get any worse someone grabs my two small toes and I feel them start to dislocate as my tormentor uses them to try to yank me off the end of the table. The ordeal finishes and Issy tells me how much she enjoyed it. She even manages to say it with a straight face.

One of the staff at dinner asks us when we’re leaving, and when we tell them that it’s our last night they start to round up a team to sing us a farewell song. I hope that they don’t also do the same hair-raising haka that we watched them do a few nights ago for a couple who were leaving. Issy assures me that this is reserved for Kiwis. I wonder what they do for Aussies. It might be worse. We decide that it might be safer if we don’t stick around to find out, so we wait until no one’s looking and sneak out a side door.

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