Lived Through This
The Massage That Made Me Betray My Country
Getting that deep tissue work brought me to a very dark place indeed
It was winter in Saint Petersburg, so everything was dark. On a dark day, I went down a dark alley into a dark building, through a dark hallway, and settled in a dark room, where a 7-foot-tall man started laying out his instruments.
If there’d been a Russian casting call for a gigantic Nazi-looking motherfucker with meat for face, this man would have snagged the part before he’d even ducked into the room.
I took off my shirt. I laid down on the table.
He took up his first instrument from the bedside table. He placed it in his palm, so the spike jutted out from between his ring and middle finger.
“Do you speak German?” he asked in German.
“No, do you speak English?” I said in Russian.
“No,” he said in English.
He nodded. I flipped onto my stomach. He dug in.
Ten thousand miles away, in an office in L.A., my little brother sat and told one of his professors about me. His professor pondered his description over an unlit pipe and said, “He’s been traveling for 10 years, you said?”
