I laid face down on the table, my cheeks resting on the inner edges of the donut pillow, and I waited for the massage therapist to come back inside. My damp hair was piled on top of my head, and my cold skin warmed eagerly against the heated table. I could still hear the rain over the drone of gentle spa sounds. It was my first massage in nearly two years, and I sank into the experience like a bag of bricks.
“Ready?” she asked from outside the door. Was I ever.
She ran her hands over my covered legs, stopping at my left hip.
“Can you move this hip about 2 inches to the left?”
I wiggled toward her voice, feeling bent.
“Does that feel wonky?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well now you’re straight.”
She would have me move my entire body an inch down from my ears, too, adjusting this and that, contorting me out of everything I had contorted myself into.
I had my first massage when I was 16. I kept my bra on, unsure of what I was supposed to do. My masseuse was a gay man, full of buoyancy and delight that I was entering the world of self-care.
“Do you mind if I chat a bit?”
“No,” I said. I can’t remember if I was being polite, or if I just hadn’t reached the point in my life where I sought relief in silence. As soon as he began to work on my shoulders, he laughed.
“OK, so tell me,” he said conspiratorily, “it’s gotta be Capricorn or Virgo with these shoulders.”
Capricorn, I admitted, astounded and rapt. I wouldn’t know I was a Virgo moon until years later. I am sure he would have loved that. I would have too.
Every time I get a massage, I think of my body as a map to who I am. They start with the shoulders, wrenched forward, with my jaw and my collarbone in a race to each other. She’s on a laptop, they’ll think, but doing what?
They move to my arms, different stories on different limbs.
If they start on the left, they’ll be greeted first by bird feet that land mid arm, cresting the shoulder, and into my hairline. This girl loves birds, they’ll think.
They’ll see a large scribble tattoo on my inner arm, with no clear correlation to anything. Just an odd shape, for an odd girl. Just past the elbow they’ll find words inscribed in flowing script, “every strange new thing,” and they won’t know it was pulled from a horoscope that wasn’t even mine. Then they’ll see the wrinkles on my inner forearm. If they know, they’ll know immediately—the distinct lines of carrying a baby, skin stretched against the weight.
Opposite the wrinkles, on the tanned skin of time outside, they’ll see a coyote and try not to pause to see what’s in its mouth: a cowboy boot. And they’ll make their way to chipped, short nails, painted a deep red for the season ahead—the first time they’ve been painted in years.
But if they start on the right, they’ll start with a scar. What kind of scar runs all the way down the back of the ear and down the neck? Tight and smooth, it could only be surgical. They will find I flinch differently on this side. They’ll make their way along into the jaws of a sabertooth tiger, mouth forever open in want on my upper inner arm. Further down, they’ll find the bobcat sauntering across my forearm. They’ll lean in, imperceptible to me, to see the bolo tie around his neck. This girl loves cats.
On their journey across my body they will find many scars, straight and jagged, long and punctured. They will find muscles tight from sleeping on one side, and maybe they will know why. They will remember the wrinkles on my arm, and they will consider the tattoos, and they will make some assumptions that are probably right—every night I am a crescent moon to a star that I made.
They will travel along my map, finding directions I left myself long ago written beneath a shoulder blade. I still follow that course, though the words slip my mind. They will follow a fork in the road to the left, and wonder where they ended up when they see the rifle and antlers stamped across my thigh. It will land as incongruous when they think of the boot, the coyote. If they travel right, they will find a pig with wings, a symbol of the impossible though that’s not what it means to me. That’s not why it’s on my body.
They will find further along a bird in a bush with a knife in its beak—a grackle if they can tell. And further still, on the back of my calf, they will find the impression of a cat’s face, grin earnest, eyes closed. When they run their hands over his face, I will remember the way he pressed it there. Maybe they will remember a friend of their own.
These roads they travel are dense and dimpled, until they are narrow and lithe. When they come to the feet, they will see two stories merge: one old and heeled, bones jutting with whispers of sidewalks and stilettos; the other calloused and thick, speaking of barefoot on dirt.
They will return to the shoulders with their map and look to my face as I look deeper within. They will see the furrow of my brow, and follow it like runway lights to the laugh lines, the crow’s feet, the sun kisses, and the way the right ear does not match the left, and they will remember the scar. They will remember the cats and the birds, the gun and the scribble. They will remember the crescent and the star and the pig with its wings.
They will remember the curve of my spine two inches to the right, and they’ll say, “all done,” when there’s so much left to know.
As monsoon sweeps through these late autumn afternoons, rain falls in sheets like troops of ghosts making their pilgrimage over the mountains. Through their thin veil, you see the landscape better. Their sheets bring hills and cliffsides into relief, ushering the shape of things into a new clarity. I am forever learning the shape of the earth as I press my hands into the soil, as I let my eyes fall on one crag and canyon after the other, not asking what they mean apart, but appreciating what they mean together.
No one ever asks about the scar or the pig, but they do ask about the boot. They ask about the bolo tie. They ask about the sister tattoos ambling down my forearms toward my hands, the coyote and the bobcat. And I tell them the truth: that they represent nature’s reclamation from man.
But it’s a brief truth.
When that story has room to stretch, the two tattoos represent the two sides of myself. The coyote: playful, curious, and connected, ever rising to the challenge. The bobcat: solitary, serious, and secretive, with eyes narrowed on the hunt. Both wearing the trappings of those who tried to stamp them out. They are forever pawing their way toward my fingers, pointing me in the direction of who I am.
“Is that a lynx on your arm?” She asked while she rang me up.
“A bobcat,” I offer.
“Ah, never seen one.”
I smiled, wrapped my map in a jacket, and headed back into the rain.
“every night I am a crescent moon to a star that I made” this was so beautiful. I haven’t had kids— i didnt know that we get wrinkles on our arms from where they rest. Also the play on words in “old and ‘heeled’”.
Beautiful writing as always.
Lovely!
Two disconnected thoughts.
Here in Missoula, it's all about the Griz. Archrivals are the Bobcats of Montana State, over in Bozeman. I too am a bobcat.
The very first time I met my wife, I was at a protest, painting people's faces. She appeared at the head of the line, and I painted my best work of the day. Best art of my life, probably. Big Dipper up her neck and on her cheek, Polaris opposite temple. Acrylic paint fades quickly away, but I'll see this in my mind's eye 'til the end.