More on the ass cuffs front:

Work perk:

I just came out of a massage. I average one massage a week, though last week I had two. That is a fifty minute full body Swedish massage, though sometimes I get Shiatsu, Myofascial, or even cranio-sacral. Some weeks I get more than one massage if there are last minute cancellations in our clinic – someone just comes upstairs and gets one of us.

Ok, fifty two weeks in a year – @ thirty dollars (that’s what we charge) a massage, that’s 1,560.00. The going rate for a professional massage in St. Louis is 65 per hour, so that’s 3380.00 in preventive healthcare. I am not rationalizing. I am addicted to massage. Gayla, "I can really tell you get regular massage, I just found a few adhesions in your neck, but mostly you are in fine shape."

Angela calls me a massage whore because I get them all the time, though I almost never give them. I am trained with 100 hours in Swedish massage with corresponding training in Anatomy & physiology – I did it last year on a lark – I even have a table at my home on which I have given exactly zero massages. I am not licensed to work on the general public and I think most of my friends would find it weird to get a massage from me, so there you go. I haven't given a full body massage in over six months.

I came up from my massage and there was a man walking towards me with mala beads around his wrist. Before he said anything I said, “You are here from the Buddhist association to pick up parts of the altar in the basement storage.” I knew someone was coming and the mala beads (sandalwood spheres that look like rosary beads) were a tell.

Don said, “Yes, How did you know?”

Karl, “I’m just like that.”

We got a measuring tape as Don wasn’t sure if the Tanka holders would fit in his Infinity. “It’s a new car. The back seats fold down, but I’ve never done it before and I’m not sure how it works.”

“You have to use your key to unlock the seats. It’s a security feature so your valet doesn’t get into your trunk.”

We were walking back into the center to get the seven foot long, foot and a half wide, Tanka holders (A Tanka is a sacred wall hanging- usually of an incarnation of the Buddha like Avalokatashvara or a healing Deity like Green Tara) and I thought – “who is coming” – he immediately said, “A teacher is coming to the ashram in Augusta Missouri, my son has been traveling in India and I thought it would be a nice surprise for her to have the beautiful Tankas he’s sent me.”

Karl, “I was just about to ask you who was coming”

Don, “I know, I’m just like that”

Diane later told me that of all the people she’s dealt with from the St. Louis Buddhist Association, Don was the rudest Buddhist. I thought he was fine, charming actually, but he clearly had an ego thing cooking, as many of the new agers do, and I could easily see how his Brahmin self could drop you into an untouchable caste faster than you could say, “infinity”.