Manic Panic: A Tale Of Two Eyebrows
And Other Truthy Ponderings on My Life As a Massage Therapist
The first time I laid eyes on Lacey Laney, she was standing in the waiting room, hanging heavily on her right hip. She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, green hair falling into her face and two thick hot pink eyebrows that just screamed fuck off and don’t you dare touch me. She reminded me of a watermelon Sour Patch Kid and also more than a little of myself when I was her age. Turns out karma handed me a live one.
The one with the eyebrows is your next client, the receptionist whispered as she passed me in the hall. She’s 15. You’re cool with working on minors, right?
From the shoulders down, Lacey Lane looked like your average 15-year-old girl. She wore long jean shorts that went down to her mid-thigh, an oversized plain white T-shirt, and a blue flannel tied loosely around her waist. She had on purple socks that just graduated from their girlhood ruffle and a pair of dirty white canvas shoes with little hearts drawn all over in Sharpie.
Looking at the doodles on her shoe, I couldn’t help but remember the Stussy S (aka the Cool S) I used to doodle on everything in junior high school.
As I was getting all nostalgic over the Stussy S, when a name I hadn’t thought of in over two decades popped up in my head like an unwelcome house guest: Craig Fucking Hathaway.
Before I tell you the story of Craig Hathaway, I first have to admit to you a painful truth: I was never a popular kid. Sure, I was a cheerleader, and on the track team, but try as I might, I couldn’t earn a seat at the right lunch table because underneath it all, I just didn’t have that certain je ne sais quoi.
By je ne sais quoi, of course I mean boobs.
When was a kid, I figured that the primary source of all my popularity troubles had something to do with my body because while all the other cheerleaders were literally growing boobs right and left, my chest was just as flat as the day I was born and it seemed it would stay that way forever.
For reasons I still can’t justify, at the beginning of 8th grade, I started carrying around a black Calvin Klein mini backpack with an entire box of heavy flow tampons and one tube of Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker. Maybe I was romanticizing womanhood, or maybe I was flexin (as the kids say), or maybe I just didn’t want to be caught unprepared, which turns out I was anyway because I didn’t realize tampons were so… I don’t know… intrusive.
Anyway, back to Craig Hathaway. One day during science class, Craig Hathaway, aka the biggest dick in the entire eighth-grade class, swiped my bag from off my chair and started throwing my tampons around the room shouting, Free Tampons! Come one! Come all! Free tampons! I mean, come on guys; she doesn’t even have any tits!
Few people know this, but I was the first teen in history to utter the phrase my life is over, a phrase I repeated out loud between sobs in a stall in the girl’s restroom where I ran as soon as class was dismissed.
I spent the whole next period crying in that stall, going through a list of all the stupid things I hated. Craig Stupid Hathaway for one, and my stupid self for another, and my stupid backpack and my stupid body and the whole entire stupid school. In a stupid fit of stupid rage and stupid embarrassment, I dumped everything from my stupid bag into the stupid trash can, including the stupid Lipsmackers, which was a stupid accident that I regret to this very day.
Enter disillusionment with popularity and a slow sinking into an entirely new identity. I started hanging out with The Coke Machine Kids, a group of outcasts who were called the Coke Machine Kids because they ate their lunch outside by the coke machines under the overhang next to the trashcans. These kids smoked weed and skipped school and colored their hair with Kool-Aid and markers and sometimes, but rarely, actual hair dye, and most importantly, they didn’t give a shit about popularity — at least that’s what they showed on the outside.
Most of the time, me and the Coke Machine Kids spent our time knitting doilies for orphans, but one day we went to the mall and stole a bunch of shit from Hot Topic instead. I stashed all my booty in my Calvin Klein mini bag because it turned out getting rid of all those tampons really freed up some space. When I got back home, I dumped everything out on the bed and tallied up my score: one stick of black eyeliner, one pair of vampire teeth, one box of hair bleach, and one container of Midnight Black Manic Panic hair dye.
Now this was back in the late 90s people thought terrible things of young girls who wore makeup and dyed their hair “unnatural shades,” mostly that they were probably into The Craft, and drugs, and ritualistic lesbian sex all of which turned out to be true but not until at least the middle of high school (Relax, I’m kidding — Mostly). I couldn’t have cared less. As a matter of fact, I developed a certain appetite for pissing people off and I was feeling rather hungry.
I swiped the egg timer from the kitchen and locked myself in the bathroom and spent the next couple of hours inventing a whole new me. I bleached, and I dyed, and then moosed and blow-dried, and finally it was time for the big reveal.
I turned off the hairdryer and flipped my head up with dramatic flair, as if I were Pamela fucking Anderson. I fully expected to catch eyes in the mirror with a dazzling and sexy young woman capable of making her own decisions, thank you very much. Instead, what I saw was a god damned tragedy.
First off, my skin was so pale the black in the dye made it seem blue, and second I managed to dye my hands, my forehead and most of my left ear black in the process. In short, the whole thing was a disaster, and I should have stopped right then and there and sought help from a professional, but did I do that? Did I give up on my vision of being a wide and feral independent preteen? Oh no, my friend. That is NOT how life lessons work.
Because I was damn near grown and capable of getting myself out of scrapes, not unlike the one I was in, I decided I needed to re-bleach thinking it would turn out a dirty blonde. At one point in the process, I looked at my head in the mirror because my scalp was so hot it felt like it was sizzling and I swear to god I small smoke coming from my hair.
To this day, I do not know if imagined the smoke, but I can tell you that when I rinsed out the bleach, I pulled out orange hair in large dead clumps. Eventually, I swallowed my pride and told my mom what happened and she made an appointment at the hairdresser for 4 o’clock the next day and then grounded me for two weeks for all the trouble.
Anyway, that’s the story of Craig Hathaway, and I was just at the point of thinking that Lacey Laney and I probably had a lot in common when and that we should probably hang out when Kirby walked up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder.
Sorry, my last massage ran late. You ready to grab em, he asked, nodding toward the pair.
Sure, let’s do it, I said as we started into the waiting room.
Kirby went directly to the mother, who greeted him warmly with a handshake and a smile and the two walked on down the hallway chatting on and on about the weather or some such as if they were old friends.
In the meantime, Lacey Laney didn’t move an inch, but just lowered her eyebrows and stared me down.
Play it cool, I thought to myself as I walked up to with the cool swagger of a Coke Machine kid and the smile of a used car salesman. Hi , I’ll be your therapist today. You ready to come on back?
She looked me up and down and three times sideways, and then rolled her eyes. Yeah. I guess. Whatever, she said as she brushed past me and walked away down the hall.
Cool. Okay. Well, we’ll be in the first room on the right, I called after her.
The receptionist raised her eyebrows and let out a little laugh. Good luck in there, my friend. Looks like you might need it.
When you get down to the bones of it, it’s hard to avoid seeing yourself reflected in the body of another, especially when that other is the spitting image of you as a kid or at the very least someone you would have hung out with at lunch. In the therapy biz, we call this projecting, and it is highly unadvisable.
I don’t want to take off my underwear, Lacey Laney said with a huff as soon as I shut the door to our room.
Personally, I thought this was rather forward and awful presumptuous, but it was her first massage so instead of making a joke I just smiled softly and said, Ok, then don’t. If you’re into it, you can leave your pants on, and I’ll just work on the neck and back today so you can get a feel for how this whole massage thing works.
Well… Ok… I guess, she said.
Any other questions?
No. I mean, I guess not. I just get under these sheets, right?
That’s right. Go ahead and get on the table, and I’ll be back in just a minute!
I left the room looking as cool and collected as I could muster, but as soon as I shut the door I darted to the restroom to get my shit together because I was having an anxiety attack on two familiar but opposing fronts.
Turns out I must have accidentally tossed some sizable amount of self-confidence in the trash can with my Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker that day, because for reasons I could not otherwise explain, I wanted, nay, I needed this girl to like me to spite of the fact I was a 38-year-old woman and she was a confused and rather salty little girl who clearly had no idea how to do her eyebrows.
I was also experiencing a newer anxiety, the likes of which I had been feeling more and more often as the years went on, something of a maternal flair up similar to rheumatoid arthritis, wherein my instincts to mother and protect this young girl grew big and red and uncomfortably hot.
I splashed some water on my face and then looked at myself straight in my blue-grey eyes. I looked tired. More tired than I should look at 10am. Where did this wrinkle on my forehead come from? Why is the skin on my neck so thin suddenly? What about this girl shook me so deeply and most importantly, what on god’s green earth happened to that Calvin Klein backpack, anyway?
When I came back into the room, I found Lacey Laney face down on the table with the covers pulled up and over her head, as if she was refusing to get up to for school. I smiled as I adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and straightened out its crinkled edges.
Face cradle ok?
Yeah, I guess
Bolster ok?
Whatever, it’s fine.
As I made my way around the table compressing her body over the blanket, I felt the stiff fibers of her jean shorts covering her hips and the thick cotton of her socks covering most of her calves, all of which I expected per our conversation before she got on the table but when I lowered the blanket, I discovered she was still wearing her bra and her bra was right in the middle of where I needed to work.
In retrospect, it really shouldn’t have surprised me. In most circles a bra is clearly a form of underwear and she told me she wanted to leave her underwear on, but in my little world of naked backs and scented oils and long gliding strokes along the spine the bra goes with the shirt because that’s the way god indented it. I began to panic because she had left me with very little to do in the hour and a world of expectations.
Do you mind if I unclasp this I said, as I pressed my hand gently on the back of the bra strap? Her fingers fluttered as she took a big breath and her heartbeat quickened. Umm. Ok, yeah sure.
I unhooked the clasp and draped the straps loosely to either side, and pumped two pumps of oil into my hands.
Lacey Laney had no scars or sun damage or precancerous moles or awkward tufts of hair the likes of which you find on an adult back. No. Hers was milky white and fresh, like a clean sheet of paper.
I have only worked on a handful of adolescents and most of those where athletic boys in the middle of some tournament or extensive training, so I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but young folks have a specific quality and texture to their muscles that I can only describe as puppy like. Soft. Fatty. Flexible.
Lacey Laney’s muscles, on the other hand, felt stringy. Taught. Loaded with stress tension, the likes of which I often see in hypertensive women three times her age. Why that may have been was a great unknowable mystery to me. All I knew was that her body was guarding something — a secret she kept coiled tightly around her bones.
As I was finishing up with her back a part of that secret must have given way because I felt a tremble start in her stomach, ascend to her chest, and break into tiny hot teardrops that fell like rain on the tops of my feet.
Lacey Laney started crying.
I would like to preface this with the fact that emotional releases happen. They happen to people on good days, and they happen to people on bad days and on days in-between. Sometimes they are predictable and sometimes they come out of nowhere, but they are not a big deal, and I would even say I consider them something of a compliment.
This was not my typical massage, though. I couldn’t be certain that I was not upsetting her. Maybe I overstepped my boundaries with the bra thing? Maybe I was hurting her with pressure?
Hey, is everything ok? I asked, my hands slowly quieting.
She didn’t say a word, but her body breathed in deeply.
I waited in stillness for her to verbalize an answer, but none ever came.
Ok Lacey, I need you to answer me, ok? If I am upsetting you, please tell me and I’ll stop. If you’re just feeling emotional, that is completely normal. It is your body and your choice. You’re the boss around here. What would you like me to do?
Now you might ask yourself if I am in the business of indoctrinating innocent children with liberal war cries about consent and feminist principles of body positivity and ownership?
And my answer to you would be you bet your ass I am.
As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a safer place than a massage table in a professional setting to practice boundary building and cultivating a sense of bodily autonomy.
She coughed and adjusted herself on the table, and then after what felt like several minutes, she finally coughed and said, I’m fine, you may continue. I just feel a little cold. Can you turn the table warmer up?
I sure can, I said with a smile in my voice as I reached down for the temperature control and brought the table up to comfier range.
It should be noted that everyone (and I mean everyone) looks as innocent as a newborn babe when you flip them over after an hour’s massage. Lacey Laney was no different. She looked like an angel. A rock star angel with defiant pink eyebrows.
As I gazed upon her upside-down face, I watched her eyes dart wildly under her eyelids as she drifted somewhere between consciousness and not. I noted the constellation of freckles on her nose. The peach fuzz of hair around her ears and forehead. She was, underneath it all, still just such a baby. It was hard to believe that I had ever been so young.
I lost many things in the great Manic Panic incident of 1998. Things that were buried under the rubble of lifetimes versions of myself I thought gone forever.
Of course I got my period, and it was not near as Sex In The City cool as I thought it would be, then there were the boys and all the fool-hearted ways I fell in love, and then came the drugs and the parties and the brief stints in jail until at some point I was spit out the other end and then I was 25 and 35 and living a reasonably good life, the likes of which most Coke Machine Kids never lived long enough to see.
For a long time, I felt like if I could just do it again, things would have gone down differently.
I wouldn’t be as naïve or insecure. I would be braver. Stronger. Wiser even. I would have said something witty and clever to Craig Stupid Hathaway before I shoved one of those tampons straight up his ass.
But that’s not how life works.
I had to cry in my assigned stall and lose the orange chunks of hair I had to lose in order to become the woman I was at that moment; the woman holding space for a little girl like Lacey Laney, who was standing on the edge of her own personal journey, clumsily toddling into its first big steps. I realized I didn’t simply grow up, I survived my childhood, and that is no small thing.
Now? Now it was time for Lacey to do the same.
I cradled her skull in the palms of hand and held the pulsing head of 15 in all its chaos for a full 63.25 seconds. I noted how innocent it looked on the outside, cloaked as it was in a soft childlike skin so different from how it felt on the inside, all squiggly with so much static. I looked at her face, and with all the scraps of love I still had left in my heart, I wished her the best of luck because that was really all I could do. Well that and finish the massage.
I left that room feeling a special sort of way, mostly like I had saved a ton on therapy bills with all the heavy emotional lifting I accomplished back there, but also like Lacey Laney and I had really bonded and connected.
If she felt anything like I did, I thought she may very well come out of that room and hug me. Maybe we both would cry and that I would say something inappropriate like just make sure he wears a condom, and she would laugh and say I totally knew you were going to say that. Followed by, You know, you’ve changed my life, right?
I didn’t want to gloat about the life-changing massage I had just given Lacey Laney, so I stood quietly by Kirby as we waited for Lacey and her mother to come out of their rooms.
When the doors opened, I felt a moment of excitement and anxiety as if I were one of the desperate women on the Bachelor anxiously awaiting my promise and my rose. They both walked towards us, the mother over to Kirby with a great big smile on her face as if he had given her the sun and the moon followed by Lacey Laney who looked up at me only briefly before she averted her eyes down to the ground and walked straight past me and out the door without so much as a thanks or goodbye.
Why you little… I said under my breath as Kirby came up from behind put his arm around my shoulders.
What are you going to do he laughed. That’s a fuckin’ teenager for you!
