Is my physio a pervert?
Should he be telling me this when he's digging his fingers into my naked back?
Here’s one from 2023. It really happened and so did the accompanying avalanche of comments from my Facebook thread about it.
The more I think about it, the more I think it’s less of a red flag and more a whole string of red bunting.
I went to see a physiotherapist about my twangy shoulder. It comes and goes, a symptom of ageing joints and depleting elasticity. Usually because I’ve slept on it badly.
It was my third visit in a year and I was happy for an excuse to flop on a bed while someone ground his knuckle into my rotator cuff.
I’d seen the physio before. He worked Wenesdays and Thursdays at a place not far from our house and spent the rest of his time working with sports people. John* was young-ish, although I find it harder and harder to tell now.
I’d guess early thirties, with a short beard and big, kind eyes.
As I face-planted into the hole in the massage bench, the torn hygiene paper forming fluttery petals around my face, he began to tell me a story.
I’d been talking about #metoo (again) and the trials that women go through at the hands of bad men, how I was writing a book about it but I hadn’t got an agent yet. He waited respectfully for a gap, then interjected: “It’s not just women.”
I thought he was about to launch into a tale of sexual harassment in the workplace, a client overstepping the bounds of acceptability in the oddly close physical environs of the physio room.
Reader, he did not.
From what I can tell, he’s a really good physio. Visiting him is like being ministered to by a monk, the movements gentle and precise and matched with the occasional solemn inquiry. “And extend. Push against my hand?” The limbs placed carefully back where he found them at the end of each manipulation as though he were lining up things on an alter for some sort of ceremony.
“How are you?” he’ll ask. “Any stress at the moment?” You’d describe him as holistic, wholly grounded in the science of anatomy but also good at feelings and how stress and emotional upset can contribute to physical symptoms.
There’s something so incredibly formal about him, like an older soul in a younger body.
So he tells me his story.
John was dropping his young children off at the school gates when another mum he knew only slightly handed him a piece of paper. He assumed it was a receipt for something he’d bought for the school fete so he could claim it back from the bursar.
She smiled and went on her way.
As he walked home, he pulled the paper out of his pocket and saw it wasn’t a receipt at all. It was a note.
A note from the mum who’d given it to him, inviting him to meet her in a cafe round the corner.
