I've Been Wrong Before by Evan James

Author:Evan James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2020-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

One day I went for a massage. I figured it might help with my back pain, which had flared up in Sydney a week earlier. My masseur warned me that the massage itself might be painful, and before long, with his thumbs and elbows digging into pressure points on my upper back, it was.

As the intensity of the treatment mounted, I started to giggle involuntarily. I wanted not to giggle, but by the time he got to my legs I was convulsing with laughter, facedown on the table.

“What is your job?” he said.

“Nothing,” I sputtered. “Writing.”

“How does this feel?” He grabbed the spot on my hand between left thumb and index finger, and I nearly screamed with pain.

“Bad,” I said.

“Connected to your head,” he said. “You think too much. You writer, think too much. You write with left hand? Try relax.”

I tried. Soon, however, I was laughing again, laughing so hard that tears streamed from my eyes. (I had a bruise on my thigh the next day.)

“Hurts?” he said. “Ticklish?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Saya suka ini.”

“Ah, you speak Indonesian?” he said, surprised.

“Tidak,” I said, meaning “no.”

“You write for newspaper? Or write the book?”

“Both,” I said, for simplicity’s sake, though the thought of the latter undertaking was perhaps one of the least relaxing topics of conversation on my list at that moment. My laughter, rushing out of me like the mad cackle of a screen villain transported by his own evil, kept pace with the pain, and soon the masseur started laughing, too.

“You write for newspaper,” he said, “say, ‘Come to Bali, have painful massage here.’ ”

“ ‘Don’t come to Bali,’ ” I said I would say. “ ‘Terrible place. Too much pain.’ ”

“ ‘Come to Bali, have massage you can’t enjoy,’ ” he said. Then, turning serious, he added: “First time massage with me, you can’t enjoy.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Who needs pleasure all the time?”

He instructed me to breathe deeply, and with his thumbs pressed into the back of my skull, he leaned closer. Then, in a tone of voice one might use to cheerfully check in on someone and make sure every little thing was as it should be, he asked, “Are you suffering?”

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