My last day in Almaty I walked about 10 miles prior to catching an evening flight. The weather was warm, I was sweaty, had checked out of the hostel, and still had a few hours to kill. Fortunately, I know a good place to kill a few hours for not a lot of money. I reasoned that this would be a courtesy to the other passengers on the plane — not to have to smell me.

So I went to Arasan. After a couple of times through the baths and contrast showers, I went for a massage and wash. I thought, I should at least try a Russian massage. I had been getting Chinese massages — I likeChinese massage, I am comfortable with Chinese massage, but let’s see a society bringing hundreds of years of suffering and oppresion to the massage game.

It turns out that they bring pain and oppression. I had never have a 175 pound (sorry, 80 kilo) guy put all of his weight on my back before. Turns out this was a move best done by a small Chinese (or Thai) woman. Turns out I have some existential angst about not knowing whether I will ever be able to walk again. I also learned that, when suffering from existential angst, my butt tenses up. The 80 kilo guy in a four point on my back, from what I could tell knew one word of English. When my butt tensed, he would slap my ass a couple of times and order, “Relax.” He’d then jump down and bounce a couple of times. like a boxer after he moved into his opponent delivered a few blows and backs out to catch his breath. Of course, the difference was that his opponent was my ass which had more in common with second base than a sparring partner.

It reminded me of when we were kids and the first “Rocky” movie came out. At that time, Dad had a ham hanging in the basement to cure. He had done this before and we had never paid any attention to except for the occasional sniff of porky goodness. But after “Rocky” came out this ham provided the perfect opportunity to reenact the meat locker scene. Jump in punch-punch-punch, jump back and dance and breath. Just like my ass, the ham didn’t stand a chance.