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GIRL ON FARMER<br />
Treat Yourself.<br />
“Treating yourself” is a real whitey, middle-class<br />
thing to do. Maybe everyone does it, but all I’ve<br />
ever been is white and middle class, so I know<br />
these people say things like, “Oh, just treat<br />
yourself!” when you are prepared to spend money<br />
you don’t have or indulge in something that might<br />
not be good for you. I live a pretty privileged life<br />
on the big-picture scale, considering that a third<br />
of the global population doesn’t have access to a<br />
working toilet. So, the whole “treat yourself” is a<br />
guilt alleviator when we should just do what we<br />
want anyway and not justify it as a treat.<br />
See, I feel so guilty about treating myself that<br />
I had to get all Debbie Downer on you. And my<br />
self-treat hardly counts, because it was a gift card<br />
that someone gave me for being wonderful. The<br />
card was for a spa, and it was worth $75, which to<br />
me indicates being very wonderful. With it, I got<br />
myself a nice massage.<br />
The spa card wasn’t for a real, retreat-style, fancyass<br />
spa, like the one I went to many years ago,<br />
where workers step aside when you walk through<br />
the hallway and you are served iced cucumber water<br />
and walk around in a fluffy robe like a pharaoh. It is<br />
at the same time both incredibly uncomfortable and<br />
indulgently delicious.<br />
Anyway, this was not like that. It was a massage<br />
place in a strip mall. No one was pouring me<br />
anything and I wasn’t asked to put on a robe made<br />
of angel feathers. They led me to the little room<br />
where I was asked to “undress to my comfort level.”<br />
My comfort level is naked, but I didn’t really get the<br />
protocol and I wondered if you were supposed to be<br />
lying around butt naked in the strip mall massage<br />
place. I also had my period and decided that it would<br />
be a little gross to be all sprawled out and have my<br />
tampon string hanging there like a fishing line. So I<br />
kept my underwear on.<br />
It was very calm and relaxing in the little room. There<br />
was a dim light and waterfall sounds. I was looking<br />
forward to being all peaceful and quiet and maybe<br />
even falling asleep on the table. Then the massage<br />
lady, Sherri, came in and I quickly found out that this<br />
was a therapy session—for her. She asked me all<br />
kinds of questions about my massage preference, my<br />
38 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
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