Just got back from getting a massage and I have to say it wasn't the best one I've gotten.  

We went to the Kabuki Springs which we've gone to a few times and has rocked both of our worlds when we went.  The previous times we went, however,  we got the full spa treatment, the kind that includes a bath and all sorts of fun stuff.  This time it was just a massage.

Usually when I've gotten a massage, I've gotten a special room for it.  At the kabuki, the rooms I've been in where beautiful.  But at Kabuki, the regular old massages weren't done in those special rooms, but in a much bigger room, one in which all the massages were done and one in which each "booth" was divided just by huge drapings.  So instead of getting this nice, private room with incense and all that, I got this small little section in which I could hear my neighbor whispering to his masseuse.  It made the place look like a massage chop shop-- bring 'em in and bring 'em out.  At one point, some guy got his back pounded on and I could hear the "thwap Thwap thwap" coming from nearby.

Even worse, mine was at the end and there was this glass partition between my booth and the hallway outside.  When I got in there, there were two women standing in the hallway and I could pretty much see them.  First, hello distraction.  Second, you kinda have to get naked before  getting a massage and I was so not getting naked when standing in front of glass.  I didn't get naked until my masseuse reassured me several times that you could not see in from the hallway.

As I was sitting there, I realized a few other things for which I was disappointed. My masseuse was some white guy with a receding hairline who looked older than me.  I don't like the idea of getting a massage from some guy who looks like a consultant.  I want my massages to be done by the usual type of person I get them from, some hippy chick with a weird name who does massages to earn some extra money to go to Burning Man and have some fake weird name that they've given themselves despite the fact they grew up in West Chester New York.

See, the thing is for whatever reason massages are seen as something kind of exotic.  All eastern and shit.  That's why I like getting massages from some buddhist wanna be named "India" and not some guy named Bob.

Which is also why I don't like the kind of massage I got, a Swedish massage.  There's nothing wrong with a swedish per se, but I usually go for something like shiatsu or reiki or some other weird sounding massage.  It sounds like the kind of thing they do in far-away places with far-away belief systems.  There's nothing exotic about Sweden.