The Key Master

So. Yes, growing up in my house was…well, strange.  Not all hippie-pot-smoking-parents-in-the-hot tub strange, but strange nonetheless. 

This exchange was very typical of a normal evening at my house:

Scene: I am watching ER in the family room

Mom: Watson, WATSON!  What are you doing?

Me:  Watching ER, what do you want?

Her:  Do you have a camera I can borrow?

Me:  Why?

Her:  Do you remember David David?

ME:  (distractedly watching George Clooney as the fabulous Dr. Doug Ross) David David who?

Her:  David David who WHO?

Me:  Wha……WHAT are you talking about Mother?

Her:  (exasperated that I cannot keep up) David David the young man who almost died from electric shock but came back from the light and now goes by David David, that’s who!

Me:  Ohhhhh-kayyyy…well, what do you want a camera for anyways?

Her:  Well, they say at night a vision of the Mother Mary appears on the wall of his dining room and I want to take a picture.

Me:  Ohhhhh-kayyyy…well, I’m sorry. I don’t have a camera.

Her:  You’ll be sorry! I mean, who doesn’t want a picture of a vision of Mother Mary!!!!

And that, ladies and gents, is a true story.  And it’s good context for the story about the healer, because stuff like this happens to me All.The.Time.

So, my mom calls me last week and says she has a ‘great new healer that I just HAVE to go to," and I was all, "okay, I could really use some healing about now."  She says he’s from Korea and is called the Key Master, which immediately makes me giggle and think of that John Cusack movie where he plays Lloyd Dobler and there’s a key master at the party to keep the crazy kids from driving drunk.

So off I go, and thankfully my poor husband has a pretty adventurous side and not only agreed to go with me, he said he’d have a healing too!

He drops me off at this nondescript office building on a busy street, to go find parking, and I take my shoes off and walk up some stairs.  There’s a youngish Korean man there, who introduces himself but has such a strong accent I can’t really understand him (but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t call himself the Key Master).  I suddenly feel really weird being there alone with him, because it’s a Saturday night and there’s no one around.  I mumble something about telling ‘my husband who’s waiting downstairs’ that it will take about 30 minutes, but when I get down the stairs BeBop is nowhere to be found.  But I say it anyway, thinking if he IS a crazed ax murderer, believing my husband is down the stairs might dissuade him.

So, he brings me in this small room with a massage table on it, and thankfully I get to keep all of my clothes on!  I lie on my back at first and close my eyes.  He starts making these really weird sounds — like "mmmmMMMMMMM" and "shooo shooo shooo."  It’s like he’s clearing his throat and wearing a respirator or something.  It’s really weird, people — and if I say weird, you know it’s really weird!

He proceeds to lay his hands gently on me (at first), the whole time making these bizarre mmmmMMMMMM and shoooo shooo sounds.  At one point, he covers my eyes with his hands and does the shoooo shoooo-ing right in my ear. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream.  At this point, I’m thinking one of two options is likely to occur:  1)  I am hacked into small pieces and placed in various dumpsters around the city or 2) I am sold into white slavery.

Lucky for me, neither of those options came to pass. 

He continued doing the ‘healing,’ moving around my body, touching my neck, back, shoulders, legs, and feet. It was sort of like a massage but he pressed really hard instead of a nice soothing motion. Like REALLY hard.  At some points, I started to tear up it hurt so bad.  He pressed this one point on my foot and my eyes flew open and I almost propelled myself off the bed into the air.

Then, halfway through he had me turn over so I was face down, looking through a head cradle (like they have on massage tables).  This is where things started to get freaky.  (This?  THIS is where things started to get freaky, you’re asking??), but yes, it did get weirder when he climbed on the table with me and kind of straddled me.  I guess he assumed this position to get better traction for the hideously painful pressing he did all over my neck and upper back.

About this time I happened to open my eyes and look down, and I could see his feet.  He was wearing socks, but socks that were like mittens!  I’ve never SEEN such a thing!  It was like each toe had its very own place, just like fingers in a glove.  Have you ever? 

Finally, he finished up the ‘healing’ with some more breathing and some burps.  Yes, you read that right.  Actually, they were more like belches and I’m thinking, how rude.  What did he eat before this appointment?  But then, he explained that’s his way of releasing toxins he picked up from ME.  I guess that makes ME the rude one.

Anyway, it was so hard to understand what he was saying I had to guess a lot, he talked about moving energy around and releasing the aforementioned toxins.  And then?  And then I didn’t feel much different, just relaxed when it was over.  This could have been from the healing, or the fact that I was not in various garbage bags scattered all over town nor was I on my way to serve as someone’s overseas sex slave.

But I do have to say, the next day my whole back and neck felt much better — not as tight as they usually are.  And after BeBop’s healing (which included the same cacophony of sounds) he also felt much better and fought off a flu he was getting.

So who the heck knows?  I do believe some people have a gift and can channel positive energy for healing purposes.  But I also know there are a lot of charlatans out there.  I’ve probably met a fair number of them.  I just try to keep an open mind and go into things with a sense of fun and adventure.

As a postscript, my Mom called me the following day and said, "Uhhmmmm…I may have forgotten to tell you that the healing is actually quite painful."

"A-hem, yes, you DID IN FACT leave out THAT LITTLE TIDBIT of information and I AM COVERED WITH BRUISES AND IT HURT LIKE A MOTHER FU–"

"–Okay, okay…well, you should go back to the Key Master and see if he can help you get pregnant."

She didn’t mean it like THAT, geesh.