‘You know what, it’s late,’ Richelle says. ‘But let’s get a cute selfie of us together before we call it a night. It’s been too long!’
I pose for the selfie. Richelle takes about seventy – not exaggerating. We need to get the right lighting, right pose, rightboob-squish, right look in each other’s eyes like we’re sharing a laugh even though nothing either of us said was funny.
Tank’s no counsellor, but he once said that me and Richelle were still using each other. He was probably right. The selfies help her look famous and influential, and they help me look like I could have a girlfriend.
Win-win, right?
Once I get back to the twin hotel room I’m sharing with Tank, I head into the dunny to take a monster shit. As I finish wiping my arse, my whole back seizes up, bad enough for me to shout, ‘FUCKEN HELL!’
‘I’m not coming in there to look at your turd, bro,’ Tank calls. ‘I don’t care how big it is, I’ve done bigger.’
‘It’s me back, dickhead,’ I seethe. My whole lower back is locked in place. ‘I done somethin’ to me back. Get your hands off your knob and help me up.’
Tank helps me hobble to bed, where I collapse. He calls Mosey and asks for the club physio. Mosey says the physio’s two hours away, but in the meantime, he’s sending the physio prac student to help me.
Tank leaves the room for me to get my treatment. The physio prac student is a big bulky Aboriginal bloke named Brick. You can tell he works out but has also never said no to a Whopper with cheese. He looks flustered, hair messy like he quickly pulled on his Eagles polo but was in the middle of something more vigorous. I wonder what.
If he’s pissed about having his night in Melbourne interrupted, he doesn’t show it. Brick is hell polite. He brings in a plastic tub containing Deep Heat and RockTape and spiky balls. He presses his thumbs down my back and I confirm each vertebrae is increasingly painful as he descends, until he reaches my waistband.
‘I’m going to go under your shorts, is that okay?’ he asks.
I’m wearing a clean pair of footy shorts and tell him it’s fine. The pain is so bad.
Brick pulls my shorts back, says ‘Oh’ quietly, cos I’m freeballing, then continues to press his thumbs down into my glutes.
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘It’s worse there than the lower back.’
Brick trails as low as it’s possible to go without molesting me, then skips across my glutes and starts massaging my hamstrings, which are tight as a drum, all the way down to my knee. He tries the same pattern on the right side, and there’s no pain.
‘Did I do my left hammy again?’ I ask dully, staring at the lights of Melbourne’s CBD through the hotel room window. Might be a long time before I get back to this city.
‘I don’t think so,’ Brick says. ‘Seems like piriformis syndrome.’
‘So you’ve seen this before?’ I ask.
‘I’m only a prac student,’ Brick says. ‘I’ve never treated it. I had it myself, as a patient. Piriformis syndrome is a bitch, but I know how to release the pain.’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘Do it.’
Brick calls the physio, Donald, for approval, then comes back.
‘Orright, no homo, but the pressure release point is deep in the glute, mate,’ he warns. ‘Lot of guys can be put off by being massaged there, but trust me, the relief is unreal.’
‘All g. Go ahead.’
Brick squirts massage oil into his hands and grinds his thumb deep into a knot about an inch from my anus. It starts crunching. Holy crap, it feels incredible.
‘That okay?’ Brick checks.
‘Really – fucken – good,’ I manage. I’m glad Tank left the room. He’d never stop giving me shit for this.
Brick grinds my arse for a while, then applies the same pressure downwards. Right when he’s pummelling my hammy,my leg suddenly spasms and clicks like a guitar string snapping back into place.
‘Holy shit,’ I say. ‘What did you do?’
‘Try standing,’ Brick says.
He helps me off my stomach and holds out his hands for me to stand up. I do. Easily. My back is still tight, but the pain is gone; it’s no longer locked up.
