I recently had a massage from Mason. Full disclosure: Mason has been a personal friend for some years. He went to college with one of my oldest friends, Eddy, in the early 2000s, and that's how I met him. He's also an excellent musician, and has played in a number of cool bands over the years, has great taste in music and film, but is not at all a snob about it. I've always known him to be a gentle, extremely mild-mannered guy, with a subtle, genuine, and rare humor, and this is why I thought it might be weird to get a massage from him, because I knew him, and I liked him as a person. Shouldn't one's massage therapist be a blank slate, or a strange almost alien-like healer? This was my conception, having only had two massages in life: one a Thai-style in Warsaw, Poland, where I was painfully and rigorously stretched and had trouble walking afterward; and the other, a probably standard, somewhat relaxing, but largely unmoving experience somewhere else in Portland many years ago. Since I am generally broke, having spent many of the last years alternatively a starving grad student, or musician, or food service employee, and now an underemployed grad school graduate with looming student loan repayments, massage is not something I budget for. But this is so unfortunate, because massage for me, and especially from Mason, is something that I need quite a lot more than any of you, reading this yelp review, deciding where to spend all of your disposable income. Not only do I work very long hours at a food service job, standing the whole time, I also have a mild case of cerebral palsy which affects the entire right side of my body. Combined with a history of anxiety and depression, my body is, needless to say, an utter mess of tightness, a ball of insane crooked wiring. I decided to shelf my apprehensions about crossing the friend/professional barrier, and get a massage from Mason.
It was an ideal time, as I had just worked 5 straight days in food service, and I was about to have 5 days off. Mason was able to quickly pinpoint spots that were most intensely affected by my shitty lifestyle, while intelligently and calmly explaining what he was doing and why. He was also able to select music, the soundtrack to a late 60s Peter Fonda film, that was ambient and relaxing without being at all cheesy or distracting: a truly insane accomplishment. During the 90 minute session, I felt parts of my body I had never felt before, including the point at which a tendon meets some part of my hip, a place near my shoulder where I apparently am nearly constantly slouched forward and flexing unconsciously (well now I'm conscious of it), and most importantly, parts of my palsied right hand which had undergone surgery in the early 1990s. I was able to talk with Mason about my disability freely, what I knew and didn't know about its nature. I left the massage in a trance-like giggle state, texting my girlfriend weird things like "I feel like a jello man," and "I want to buy more pillows." I ate gelato, which I felt slightly guilty about, but I resisted an urge to smoke. This means that the massage actually reduced my stress level! I had smoked at least one cigarette every night for the previous ten nights. But not this night.
Not to put too fine a point on it, and I realize that since Mason is my personal friend, this might seem a bit sensationalized, but the massage I had from him was probably transformational. Perhaps this is why I like Mason, and didn't know the exact reason why, other than his warm and intelligent humor, gentle nature, and nonjudgmental and relaxed presence, until I let him do his job for me. Now I think of Mason like a body mechanic, with a quiet, wizard-like confidence. Check it out. read more
