Аманда Палмер - The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

Uh-huh .

Two hours later we showed up at an antique office building, slightly early for our appointment, and rapped lightly on the propped-open door before entering. I dried my eyes and tried to look like not too much of a mess.

The massage therapist, who was pretty and tattooed, was eating a salad out of a takeout container. We had barely said hello when she took a deep breath, looked me deep in the eye, and said, I have to talk to you .

Okay… I said, taken aback. With Neil? Without Neil?

He can wait out here. It’ll just take a second . She pointed to a chair in the hallway outside her office and Neil sat down to wait.

She led me past her massage table into her back office, where a small recording-studio setup—complete with a digital piano and a microphone—took up one corner of the room.

Oh my god , I thought. She’s going to play music for me. Oh NO… wait… maybe she’s going to ask me to record backing vocals in exchange for my massage? I don’t know if I can handle this right now .

We sat down.

So… hi , she said. How are you?

I was still trying to hold back tears. I took off my sunglasses.

Honestly? I’m pretty raw , I said. I’m sorry. It’s… my birthday. And it’s been a really rough week .

She handed me a tissue.

Happy birthday , she said. Listen, I couldn’t work on you without talking to you first; it felt unethical. I know who you are. I know who Neil is. And when I got his email a few hours ago saying that it was your birthday and you two wanted to come in for massages, I thought my friends were playing a practical joke on me .

She wasn’t smiling. She took a deep breath.

I’m a songwriter, and I was following that whole thing with your volunteer musicians. And I have to tell you… I’ve written some… really, really horrible fucking things about you on the Internet. Like really horrible. Whole long blogs about what a bitch you are and how much I despise you and everything you do. They were so horrible that a few weeks after I posted them, I deleted them because I felt so bad. And if you could read what I’d written, you’d just be… I don’t know .

I sat there, stunned. This was not a good birthday.

I’m not proud of what I did, or what I wrote , she said. I’m really not. But I couldn’t have you just come in and lie on my table, without you knowing. And if you want to go ahead and cancel, I totally, totally understand .

I looked at her.

I looked up at the ceiling, thinking:

Is the universe shitting me?

I said:

I’m really, really glad you told me. Honestly… I don’t want anything more in this world than to get on your table .

Okay , she said. Let’s do this .

So there I lay, for an hour, letting the tears leak out of my eyes and onto her massage table, while she wordlessly ran her hands gently all over my body. She rubbed my arms, my hands, my back, my feet, my face in a ritual of total forgiveness, at least in my imagination. And I wasn’t even sure who was forgiving whom.

I felt her elbows dig into my hips. I felt her knuckles separating my ribs. I breathed deeper. I felt her fingers dig into my neck, trying to release all the stuck, metallic tension.

I closed my eyes.

Every tweet telling me I was fucking worthless, every blog comment telling me to shove my vain head up my own ass, every piece of blog criticism I’d read that labeled me as a self-serving, greedy, superficial attention whore danced in my mind as her hands swept over my body, slowly and reassuringly. Almost lovingly.

She was like a saint, this woman, come to absolve me. Forgive me. Forgive herself. Forgive everybody. I didn’t know what she’d written about me. I’m sure it was horrible. I didn’t care. I’d read enough. I’d had enough.

Not a single word passed between us for the entire session. I didn’t care that she could see me silently crying, soaking the towel under my head.

After an hour, she leaned over and said quietly,

We’re finished .

Then she opened her hand, laid it on my heart, and whispered into my ear,

Happy birthday .

Then she left the room.

I got up and blew my nose. I felt exhausted. But light, like something substantial had been lifted out of my insides. I put my underwear on. Then my shirt. Then my pants. She came back into the room, said nothing, and handed me a cup of water.

I drank it, and we stood there, looking at each other for a minute.

She broke the silence.

You’re really good , she said, looking me right in the eye, at receiving .

And I looked back into her eyes, deeply, for the first time, and saw a lot of sadness in there.

She looked tired. Hurt.

And you , I said, are really good at giving .

That broke her.

She grimaced and her eyes filled with tears.

We stood there, just looking at each other.

So… I said, you’re a musician? I saw the piano .

Yeah, I’m a singer-songwriter. Can I give you my CD? Consider it a birthday gift .

I took the gift.

After the Birthday Massage Of Absolution, Neil flew home from Seattle, and I rented a car and drove off to spend the night and share some wine, Thai food, and friend-commiseration time with Jason Webley on his houseboat.

I woke up the next day ready to drive three hours to Portland for a six p.m. collectivist-style house party at someone’s home on the outskirts of town. I had a few hours to kill before I embarked, so I went to a café in Seattle to work and check my email. As I was ordering my coffee, I got a text from Eric, my manager, asking me to call him.