Let me spare you the long set-up. On a recent getaway to Mexico, we did a couples chocolate massage. I don’t know why. We were on vacation, and it seemed like it could be fun.
Perfect setting, perfect day, perfect partner. Everything perfect! Until it happened.
Besides, it had the word “aphrodisiac” in the name. Who can resist “The Warm Chocolate Melt Aphrodisiac Rubdown For Couples?”
AKA: If this don’t work, you must be dead.
For what they were charging, I thought Willy Wonka might make a personal appearance. Always wanted to meet him.
“Does this come with a guarantee?” I asked.
It didn’t. But I’m a guy whose body shape is roughly thirty years past its prime. If making me a walking chocolate bar makes me yummy, let’s rock.
Here’s the way it works. You take off all your clothes, get slathered in chocolate, get in the shower – together – wash it off, get slathered in chocolate again, get in the shower again, wash it off again, then get in a hot tub. In the hot tub, you eat chocolate-covered strawberries and drink champagne.
We’re all in for this.
With naked bodies on separate tables (not really how I imagined the couples chocolate massage would start) the rubdowns begin.
It’s kind of fun. The first part is called a chocolate scrub, so the chocolate has a grit of some sort. They tell you it’s sea salt, but we’re at the beach, and sand is much more plentiful. Just sayin’.
The smell of chocolate permeates the room, and who doesn’t love that? Hey, and the towels you lay on and that cover you are chocolate colored. Whee!
It’s pretty standard stuff: lay facedown, and they smear the legs, arms, back and butt in chocolate. Flip over and repeat for the tummy, chest and face. Then, it’s off to the shower.
Rubdown part two is where it all falls apart.
It’s good in the beginning. Warm chocolate syrup is being massaged onto your body. Maybe it’s a chocolate oil. Regardless, it has been heated and it feels really nice. But if you’ve had a massage, you know that when the masseuse finishes one part of the body, that part is covered with a towel or sheet.
In this case, the towel is placed over a portion of your body that is coated in chocolate syrup. Syrup that is starting to cool down and soak in, heavy and sticky on the towel.
By the time your entire back side is covered, you don’t want to turn over because she’s going to lift that gooey towel off your back, hold it up while you flip over, then lay that thing down on the only part of your body that is clean, and oh god, she just did it!
Now, she will lift up each portion of that chocolate-drenched towel, ladle on more chocolate, rub it in, then put that towel back over it.
No mas! I want to quit. I want my money back. On second thought, keep the money, just let me out!
It gets worse.
You know how a massage ends on your head? They massage your neck, your face, your ears, and finally, your scalp? Yeah, it’s all done with chocolate.
She is massaging my scalp with chocolate syrup.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have this now-cool 40-pound chocolate-soaked towel laying on me like a nasty wet blanket on a naked baby.
Finally, the masseuse whispers in my ear the sweetest words I have ever heard: “You can now go to the shower.”
I meet my wife there and we’re both putting a happy face on the experience. We say things like, “that was interesting” and “well, we’ve done that.”
The shower is probably where the aphrodisiac part is supposed to kick in. There is a lot of touching each other. After all, there’s chocolate in places you cannot reach and certainly cannot see.
A half-hour of shower-sharing and finally free of the chocolate that had covered our entire torsos, we head to the hot tub. It is filled with bubbles, and there are flower petals all around. As promised, chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne await. Mood music is playing.
It is scalding. Way too hot to sit in. We can’t find the controls and there’s certainly no one around to ask. This is, after all, our alone time.
We sit on the edge of the tub with only our legs in, clink our glasses together and knock back the champagne like it was tequila. Then, it’s off to the locker rooms to get dressed.
Time to find some real tequila and forget this ever happened.