The Hand of Jesus

Jesus is a maintenance man at my work. Not the messiah, although that Jesus was a carpenter, and would undoubtedly prove skilled at managing the position, but regarding the common Spanish name Jesus (pronounced hey-soose). Jesus is a good guy, an amiable muchacho, but it would not be a stretch to say that he’s not all there. And I don’t mean in a having lost his mind sense (a distinction belonging to a former maintenance man who, in lieu of his assignments, smoked crack cocaine and drank liters of cheap vodka in his shop), but literally, in a having lost some body parts way – most notably, quite a few fingers.

When Jesus shakes my hand, several wiggling stumps burrow into my palm, never failing to give me the heebie-jeebies. My hand swallows the entirety of his, making it feel less like we’re shaking hands and more like I’m grabbing the paw of a golden retriever.

I often wonder what happened to those digits. He’s a maintenance man, so the tendency is to assume some mishap involving an electric saw. Oddly, the fingers have been edited at uneven lengths, suggesting that each one was lost in a separate accident. It’s this theory that causes me to chuckle.

Now, there’s nothing overtly comical about a man who’s lacking fingers, but you have to wonder about someone who keeps losing them. One by one, his fingers disappear. You can understand losing one finger, but after that you would think he’d be a little more careful.

I imagine Jesus, standing over a crimson-dappled table saw, exclaiming, “Oh, for the love of Pedro… I have lopped off another one!”

And then some time passes, and before you know it Jesus is pruning, not paying close attention, and promptly laments, “Dios mio! My third finger in as many weeks! Only two left on this hand…”

By the time he lost his forth finger, the whole ordeal must have seemed old hat for him. I picture Jesus, more exasperated than anything, grumbling, “Oh, great. Just great… another one. Get out of the damn way, fingers! Damn it!” while slamming his hand – or what was left of it – onto the blood-splattered tool bench.

Jesus walks with a bit of a limp, so it is not inconceivable to assume he’s rid himself of a few toes, as well. I guess once you’ve gone through all your fingers, your toes would be the next logical place to start. A protruding nail here, a black widow spider there… an overaggressive sewer rat. You would have had a hard time playing ‘This little piggy’ with Jesus. …this little piggy had none, and this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, all the way into the meat grinder.

Or maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe Jesus got in too deep with a cartel, amassed a debt he couldn’t pay off. He doesn’t seem like the type, but do you ever really know? This hypothesis would explain why none of his missing phalanges were able to be reattached, being that they became sobering, gruesome warnings mailed to other defaulted debtors. Or maybe he had gangrene, or frostbite, or reached out in the misguided attempt to pet a snapping turtle. There is Jesus, howling in pain with a giant turtle locked onto his hand while his family stands around shaking their heads and exchanging bemused, knowing glances. That Jesus! He’s at it again! He is one pathetic hombre, isn’t he… Maybe the answer is all of the above.

Carolina suggested that he might have been born this way, which, though plausible, is not a presumption that I particularly care for. While sparing Jesus considerable pain and embarrassment, hers is a possibility that rules out intrigue. I want to envision the time Jesus went eeling and got a little too adventurous or the party at which he had one too many Coronas and wagered somebody that a blender couldn’t cut through bone – what a terrible bet that would be to lose. There’s no cachet in someone simply entering the world without fingers; it’s much more exciting for that person to have had – and subsequently lost – them in a tragic accident(s).

Whatever the explanation, imagine the consequences of losing your fingers when you’re a handyman. While no one will ever confuse me with somebody at one with manual labor, my thinking is that you needed – for starters – a functional hand for this type of work. Is says so right there in the word: how handy can you be when your mitt consists of a palm with several nubs?

I was reminded of my old barber, a pleasant, soft-spoken Pakistani man named Bob. One winter years ago, Bob abruptly disappeared from the barbershop. Questions naturally arose, and the other barbers were forced to relate the grisly tale that accounted for his absence. Apparently, after a heavy snowfall one day, his snow blower had become jammed, and, well, Bob went about his problem the wrong way. While he eventually returned to duty, his haircuts were never quite the same.

But, despite their limitations, both Bob and Jesus persevered tirelessly in their lines of work without complaint. You had to hand to them.

Rubbing me the wrong way.

For many years I dreamed about a professional massage. Oh, I’ve had a few amateur sessions – lackluster performances, really – reluctantly carried out by girlfriends whom I would badger until they eventually gave in. They’d go through the motions but you could usually tell their hearts weren’t really in it.

When I got married, I figured that a job of one’s wife was to put her hands to good use. Unfortunately, I would learn that this “use” more often than not tended to involve cooking, cleaning, and gesticulating theatrically about the size of the mess I’d left in the kitchen; noble endeavors, you could argue, but not as far as my taut trapezius was concerned. A professional masseuse was what I needed, a person not only skilled in the art of bodily delights but who wouldn’t start complaining after a mere five minutes.

For her birthday, Carolina received a gift certificate to Bella Sante, a spa on Newbury Street, and I immediately invited myself along. Swanky spas on Newbury are neither cheap nor in my comfort zone, but this was my one chance to be rubbed down by an expert and I wasn’t about to miss it. I began my preparation for the big day by diligently harassing Carolina until she agreed to request a woman for my massage. Not necessarily because this is the one circumstance in life in which it’s socially permissible for some lady to douse her hands in oil and then work them all over somebody else’s husband, but because I strenuously object to having beefy man mitts do so. Call me homophobic, but, well, there it is.

The fun started when we stepped in. I was feeling a little on edge, this being my first expedition to a predictably steeped-in-estrogen spa, engendering a feeling not unlike the proverbial bull in a china shop. I was hoping to cling to Carolina for support throughout the ordeal, she being the alpha female you need when navigating unfamiliar terrain. While I like to think of myself as the pants-wearer in our family, it’s totally Carolina. She’s the one who makes all my merchandise returns, wrangles with the Verizon people, deals with our landlord, and, should I mention that the coffee is getting low, has a pound of Starbucks waiting by sundown. Basically, she does most of the crummy jobs I prefer get accomplished without my involvement.

Unfortunately, my plan was shot when we were immediately separated, my wife shown to the women’s locker room while I was escorted by an extremely effeminate male to the men’s room. It was not unlike the first day of kindergarten and I was being pried away from my mom.

“There’s a robe, shorts, and slippers in your locker,” he sort of murmured, then commanded, “Take everything off and then meet me back out in the lobby.”

“Okay… but wait… so I take everything off now?”

“Yeah!”

“And then… meet you in the lobby… out there?”

“Yeah!”

I’m not saying the gentleman was turned on by the idea of me in the nude or anything, but he definitely seemed gung-ho about this whole disrobing business. And yet, I all but begged him not to leave me. Managing myself in a spa is not a condition I am in any way practiced in.

Of course, of course there were no shorts to be found in my locker, or in any of the others that I desperately ransacked, leaving me without a fairly important component of my ensemble. Oh, man... So what did spa etiquette dictate in this little quandary? Was I supposed to sift through the dirty laundry bin and retrieve a soiled pair? Forget about them altogether? Scream for help?

Think, damn it. Think…

Realizing I was taking too long to emerge from the locker room, I simply left my cargo shorts on, donned the robe, and nervously made my way out into the lobby. The attendants at the front desk all had a good laugh and I was sent back into the locker room to remove my cargos.

“But there were no other shorts in there,” I protested.

“Then wear your own,” the womanly guy said.

But I was wearing my own. “But not these ones?” I asked, noticing my voice had become high and flighty.

They all chuckled again, and I felt my face grow hot. I was reminded of Arnold Swarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop when the kids are enamored with the ferret and he says, all stressed out, “We are having fun now.” What exactly was so funny? I had the distinct impression I was missing something intended to be obvious, but what? Did they think I’d brought another pair of shorts just for the occasion?

“You can wear your boxers in you want,” womanly guy told me with a good-natured twinkle in his eye.

If I wanted? What were my alternatives? What I wanted was to tell him that I don’t wear boxers, but that would undoubtedly send the front desk into bellows of laughter and force me to make a beeline for the exit. I wasn’t trying to cause trouble, I just wanted to know what to do. Now they had me pegged as an imbecile.

“It’s nice in here,” I blurted out, as if that would somehow fix things.

Removing the cargo shorts, I wrapped the robe – a silky, kimono-type thing – around me with a triple-knot and timidly proceeded back into the lobby where fully dressed people were milling about. It’s funny the things you think about while parading around among clothed strangers while wearing a small silky robe and not much else. The probability of surviving a leap from the nearest window comes to mind.

Thankfully I was able to rejoin Carolina in the lounge, where a group made up entirely of women quietly sipped organic beverages and listened to New Age music while stealing curious peeks at the big man in the small robe. I kept trying to make conversation with Carolina but apparently banter is frowned upon, as my efforts were repeatedly brushed off.

“But I’m bored and scared,” I whined. “I want to talk.”

She laughed and went back to her magazine; I quietly sulked, feeling beads of sweat trickle down from my armpits and a cool breeze whisk up my kimono. I wondered, not for the first time, if I’d made a terrible, terrible mistake.

After a while our masseur and masseuse emerged – a big bald man and an attractive blonde, respectively. For a brief moment I was terrified that there’d been an oversight, some clerical error, and the strapping bald man would say, “Okay, Marc!” and I, being too non-confrontational to do anything about it, would grudgingly acquiesce to his meaty demands.

So I was immensely relieved when the woman called my name and led me to a small, dimly lit room and instructed me to take off my robe and then climb under the sheet on the massage table while the masseuse, named Maria, waited outside. The dimensions of the small room, long table, and big me coupled with the poor lighting were all but logistically unfeasible, and at one point I lost my balance, bumped into the table and crashed into the door. Idiot. I can’t imagine what Maria must have thought when that thunderous commotion occurred.

Lying facedown on the table, I was finally beginning to relax and enjoy the massage when I smelled something funky. At first I thought it was the massage oil but soon realized it was Maria’s feet.

The objectionable odor, which wafted up through the hole in the headrest, entered directly into my nostrils. In Maria’s defense it was at least 95 degrees on Saturday, but still, the last thing you want piped into your stationary face during a massage is someone’s inescapable foot stench.

Can't... breathe...

When I wasn’t suffocated by smelly feet – or having mine tickled by Maria (I really had to gnash on my lip to keep from giggling and jerking my foot away when she did the foot-tickling) – the massage was pretty good. Nothing transcendent, but top-notch, the kind of thing you could get used to very quickly did it not set you back rent money.

Afterward, back in the locker room, I decided to take a quick shower when I came face-to-face with a brawny black guy who had also just finished with his massage – which was conducted, I had noticed, by a masseur.

“Which way are you going?” he asked, blocking the only shower stall.

“Uh…”

“Did you want to go in the shower?”

Together? I thought nervously. Is this type of behavior standard for post-spa treatments? Instead I urged, “You go ahead.”

A while later, back outside and seated on the patio at Charlie’s, I ignored Maria’s advice to drink lots of water so to flush toxins out of my body and instead uploaded even more by way of the ginger mojito, musing to Carolina between sips, “We should do this more often.”