THE E-ZINE OF NEWTOWN WRITERS, CHICAGO
Home       Latest Issue       Past Issues       About Us       Submissions

Back Story

By Andrew Reynolds

The Nukkles is the perfect size to fit in my book bag, just in case. A singular noun even though its name sounds plural, my Nukkles is a piece of blue plastic molded into a peculiar shape. Imagine a bowling ball that has four finger holes instead of three. Those finger holes in a bowling ball are there for your grip, of course, and you hold on to the cylindrical walls formed by the holes inside the ball. Now imagine cutting away all of the bowling ball except for the connecting piece that joins the four holes to each other along with enough of the cylindrical walls to feel like it's possible to get a grip on the thing. Also, it says "Nukkles Nukkles Nukkles Nukkles" in chipping gold paint on the top and it has "US PAT. No. 5836901" molded into the plastic at the bottom.

I haven't done a particularly eloquent job of describing the Nukkles, but my efforts are not appreciably worse than those of the Law Offices of Robert J. Schrapp, who prepared the patent application that was eventually assigned number 5836901: "Hand held massaging device having contact elements with finger hold cavities."

I bought my Nukkles from the Walgreens at the corner of Kedzie and Montrose in Chicago. It was sitting in a Plexiglas display bin with its nukkly colleagues, the red Nukkles, the green, the purple. Plastic things look so festive when they are all jumbled together in a pile like that and I often find myself considering displays of sippy cups or Koosh balls. I'm sure this is what drew me to the pile of Nukkles, but the cardboard tag declaring, "World's Greatest Backrub! Warning! Dangerously Pleasurable! Try me!" attached to each one is what made me linger there. I did try one. I don't know that it was dangerous but it was pleasurable. I bought a Nukkles.

Here, at my desk, I have a Foot Rubz, a stiff rubber ball covered in plastic nubs. I have a small wooden foot roller that is the size of a can of hair mousse and a large wooden foot roller that is the size of a rolling pin. If I turn my neck to the right I can see the fluorescent green plastic reflexology foot mat I bought from a Korean grocery. In the linen closet I have a pair of Boingers which look like racquetball balls attached to flexible metal strips attached to wooden handles. Also in the linen closet is an electronic neck massager with two rotating spheres under a Lycra sheath. And in the living room, under the couch, is a massager that is the size of my desk lamp and which, like my desk lamp, has a crooked neck and, unlike my desk lamp, has a wide, flat surface for massaging. This is not a particularly ergonomic design for a massaging surface and I can only assume that the intent is to ensure that no one would mistake this particular massager, manufactured by the Sunbeam Corporation, with other, more suggestively shaped massagers manufactured by concerns of ill repute.

I own these doodads because I am a tense person. Everything on my body that can be clenched is clenched. At night I chew on the insides of my cheeks. When I was a child I would stand with my back to the washing machine, which was the perfect height, and lean back, rubbing my spine against the curved metal. My joints would pop as I slid back and forth and when I stood up I felt relief. There is a railing at one of the El platforms in the Loop and when I'm not being watched or am in extreme discomfort, I'll lean back against that and feel the pain melt away for a moment.

My friend Boogie, who goes by the name "Laurisha" when she picks up extra money working at the reception desk for a chiropractor, has pointed to old, arteriosclerotic men in the street. "That's you in thirty years," Boogie says.

She's probably right. Looking at photos taken thirty years ago, I can see the same me I see today. A little boy with the same pudgy flesh below the same hunched shoulders below the same wire-rimmed glasses. The somber expression was there too, as though I were holding a poker hand rather than my KISS lunchbox.

Still, Boogie tries. She photocopies diagrams about posture. She corrects my alignment, elevating my chin, pushing back my shoulders, talking me through the process of stacking each vertebrae and then telling me that I must surely be six feet tall when I stand like this.

I'm 5'9, no matter how much I concentrate on standing upright. When I was close to being 20 years old, my dad was, in fact, six feet tall. Now I'm close to being 40 and my dad is one of those old men who slouches. I'm taller than he is today. Sometimes, if I'm sitting in a chair and my dad is in a friendly mood, he will stand behind me and press his thumbs into the stiff muscles that connect my neck to my shoulders. My dad has the same skill that I have, the ability to intuit where the sore places are on someone else and what sort of pressure would relieve them. It works on animals as well. My dad will knead the hips of a dog, rubbing the meaty area where the leg joins the torso until the dog farts in contented glee, in turn giving my dad great satisfaction.

They never farted for me but, when I worked in restaurants, I would come up behind my managers as they sat in chairs and I would rub my thumbs into their necks and backs and get preferential scheduling. But I do this even for people who have no authority to grant me a favor. Rubbing someone like this is pleasurable, the kind of pleasure that comes from picking out a gift that is both wholly unexpected and completely welcome, the satisfaction of giving. And the cheerful giver knows that the giving is reward enough. But in my heart of hearts I do not think that I am a cheerful person. I am a tense person.

People, my friends, my shrink, tell me that it's not a good idea to keep tension inside, that I should let it out. But I don't know how to do that. They, the friends, the shrink, find this exasperating. These are feelings, I have been assured, and they are part of the human experience. "Why do you think that is, that you are unable to express these emotions?" my shrink asks, over and over.

I don't remember learning to hold tension inside my body but I remember learning about sneezes. When I was in elementary school my sneezes were amazing. When I sneezed, great plumes of snot spewed out of my nostrils, streamers of mucous the dimensions of extension cords. I sneezed salty goo all over my face, my shirt, my pants, furniture, anything within a three-foot radius. I have never seen anyone else sneeze with such volume, such ferocious output as my elementary school self. It was disgusting. There was unanimous agreement on this from parents, teachers, and peers, and I do understand their point. I needed to do something about this snot. I needed to get the situation under control.

Here's what I did. I began to pinch my nostrils, holding the sneezes inside. My ears would pop but that was the end of that. No more snot everywhere. No more shame. By the fifth grade, I had the situation under control.

I was a child a long time ago, the 1970s, but not so long ago that there was no Kleenex. I don't know why no one gave me a pocket package of tissues.

I spent my adolescent years pinching my nose when sneezing. We had moved to a new town at the beginning of sixth grade and these new people in this new town unanimously agreed; holding my nose and restraining my sneezes was a bad idea. But, of course, they also said that about my habit of popping my knuckles, of twisting my spine to make it crack, rotating my ankles so that they sounded like footsteps on gravel. I had no intention of giving up any of these.

Finally I held my nose in a doctor's office. I may as well have licked the inside of the clinic's wastebasket the way that doctor reacted. I was a self-inflicted injury waiting to happen; she couldn't believe I hadn't caused myself serious harm already.

I don't hold my nose anymore, but my body behaves as though I do. When I sneeze the sound is muffled, my ears pop, it all stays inside. I've been assured that I should not stifle my sneezes but I no longer have any control. My body has taken over the sneezing situation. I can't let my sneezes out; they won't come out.

My dad carries napkins filched from the dispenser at McDonald's to accommodate his sneezes. We don't share that trait the way we share tension. I'm not sure why he is tense. If he has ever felt angry or sad or joyful he certainly was discreet about it. Perhaps his discretion comes as easily to him as it does to me.

It's such slow, boring, difficult work thinking about the underlying causes of my tension. It's even less rewarding to think about my posture. Really, I'd rather buy something. Like the Nukkles, say.

The Nukkles is not the world's greatest backrub; it's not even as good as that El platform. But I still own the Nukkles, just like I still own all those other massaging implements, most of which have followed me across three states and five apartments. I still want what I've always wanted from them. I want them to bring me comfort and relief. I want this tension under control.