I write to you from a parallel dimension. I just left The Massage Place, where Stephanie Sullivan, Jedi Masseuse, changed my beliefs about the universe.

It felt awkward to undress in a small back room to be fondled by a stranger. Wait a minute -- that part was fantastic. The awkward thing was letting go. What if she laughed at my lower body, which resembles that of a chicken?

Fortunately, this masseuse was not a cheeky bum looker. Stephanie was a professional, strong like Mother Earth, like someone whose license plate reads, "Healing Hands."

A vanilla candle lit the room while Enya chanted in the background. It was like an ad for AA: "Even if you live in a cubicle under fluorescent lighting, there is hope..."

Stephanie lathered up with Theracream, which contains secret herbs and spices to which you have access when you are Mother Earth. She started on the trapezoids and worked me into an altered state.

No, seriously. I found myself flying over Africa, dancing with discarnate heads, doing recreational long division. Scientists say these "hypnagogic images" are trivial, but I'm telling you, man, it was a vision quest.

For the record, my animal spirit was Garfield. Not the funny-page Garfield, but the creepy theater version. So it goes.

There is such thing as bad massage. I once visited a "cutting-edge" masseur, Frank, who stabbed me with his bony little elbows (that was the cutting edge part). Frank believes that illness comes from muscles attaching to the bone or some such thing. I couldn't hear him over my yelping.

Stephanie, by contrast, made me feel more like a candy cane, the way my grandma described her near-death experience: glowing light, tender breezes, Enya. How can I describe it? Imagine tensing every muscle in your body and then finally letting go. Or imagine listening to an entire album by Meatloaf and then turning it off. It was that kind of peace.


Word of caution: Outside of ab work, massage is the No. 1 cause of accidental flatulence. At the gym, you can dismiss it with a disapproving glance, but here on the massage table you have no choice but to smile and explain that, where you come from, it's a compliment.

At one point, an officious region of my body felt inspired to make a cameo appearance. Where I come from, that is also a compliment, but I respected this woman as a professional and needed to act fast.

Think of Rosie O'Donnell. No, Martha Stewart. No -- GRANDMA! ...

Through Zenlike self-mastery, I found more constructive ways to express my gratitude, namely, drool. An hour later Stephanie shook my arm and told me it was over. I spilled out of the room like Robert Downey Junior on prom night. Stephanie handed me water, which I held with a dopey smile.

"Drink it," she said. "It purges the toxins."

Done with my wa-wa, I tipped Mother Earth a ridiculous amount of money and felt that I still could do more -- rub her back or take her to breakfast.

I'm not sure whether you can be arrested for driving under the influence of massage, but I was in a state where if I happened to veer off the road and die in a fiery blaze, it would have been okay like a candy cane.

My car drove home because evidently that's where I lived. I had the gall to draw a bath, which was like mixing hallucinogens. I was one good meal away from wandering through the street giving away my life savings.

The point is that if everyone got massages, we might not have problems like the Middle East. It would become the Snuggly Inner East. People would hold the door for each other and take cell phone calls outside and stay married. Everyone would use their turn signals!

I will continue my research on this important subject, hoping the editors will pick up the tab. And when I run out of funding, you will find me in a gutter face-down for massage, Enya chanting in the background. A passer-by will go to hand me a dollar, but his wife will grab his coat and say, "No, honey -- he'll just use it to get another massage."

And I will curse her under my breath as I fall back asleep hugging my creepy little Garfield.

I just ate pumpkin pie. Specifically, a pumpkin pie. How did we get dessert out of something so ugly, slimy, and foul-tasting? Welcome to the wonderful world of sugar.

I am a sugaholic. It started in childhood when my mom served donuts for breakfast. It was her way to skip cooking and be cheered in the process. I always wondered why people eat donuts for breakfast but not, say, cheesecake or cotton candy. When my mom did cook, it was Coco Puffs, part of a nutritious breakfast when served with other, healthy food.

At school I maintained my buzz with Fun Dips. Remember those? Packets of colored sugar you eat with a candy spoon? It was the next best thing to a syringe full of syrup. I also bought jawbreakers from a third-grader who had spotted the budding junkie market. He bought 'em by the case and sold 'em one by one. We called him Mr. Fix.

By my teens, Mom stopped doing the kitchen altogether. She passed through the kitchen on her way to more important rooms but never lingered. This allowed me to eat sweets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I justified it all by skipping desert.

And that is how I live, forever towing a desert tray. I fear that I'll wind up in a diabetic coma and the doctor, having no choice, will end my life by shouting, "Hey! Kool-Aid!"

Don't get me wrong. I've struggled to right this thing. I eat "normal food" as often as my wife makes me. When I finish, though, there is but one thing on my mind: chocolate. If I don't get it, there will be a scene. And I will star in it. In case you're one of those people, no, I cannot just eat fruit. It only angers my need for chocolate.

I am growing wider by the moment, unfit to hold my waste line. I try to balance the problem with exercise, but have you ever worked out with fudge on your breath? Your brain says, "Wait a minute, which way are we going here?" Gravity increases by 500%. If it weren't for the carrot cake dangling before my treadmill, I'd give up altogether.

I placed a mirror in the fridge to scare myself straight. And it worked. There really is something to operant conditioning. Now, without even thinking, I close my eyes every time I open the fridge and feel my way to the pudding snacks.

Sometimes I hear the sweets taunting me from inside:

"Jaaaaason...Cream fiiiiillliiiing, Jason..."

I tried to quit cold turkey (oh, but if the problem were merely cold turkey). I traded my sweets for dried fruit, organic jelly, and other foods that pain me to mention. A week later I was sitting Indian-style on the linoleum, philosophizing: What is sugar anyway? Doesn't everything, even broccoli, turn to sugar in the end?

Armed with this logic, I entered the store with different rules. If a package read "Healthy Donuts," it was okay to bring home. They didn't even have to explain. So were any foods that were fat-reduced, vitamin-fortified, or new-and-improved. Before long I was back to pumpkin pie on the basis that pumpkins grow out of the ground, long live creative thinking.

"You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!"

"All right! Health food!"

Desperate, I chose to indulge my obsession and eat as many sweets as I could -- more than I could. I needed to find the bottom. Sixty-five Hershey Kisses later, I found the bottom of my toilet, heaving like Linda Blair. After I flushed, there was but one thing on my mind: chocolate. So it goes.

My internist says that I'm headed for diabetes.

"It's only a matter of time," he said, checking his watch as if he meant hours.

"I want a second opinion," I said.

"Okay," he replied, "but I charge double for that."

Evidently, the cravings are all in my head, but hello, isn't that where I live? My shrink said that she will add this issue to my scroll and that we would get to it shortly before time travel.

I can't care anymore. I would rather be a happy day-glo marker than some scratchy ballpoint. If God wanted me to be thin, sugar wouldn't taste so good. It's nature to obsess. Right now some scientist is recording it formally in his lab: The rats choose chocolate nine times out of ten, but they always feel guilty about it later.

The internist says my stomach will rot, the shrink says my mind will rot, and my mom still calls me sweetie. I can't hear any of them over my chewing. Besides, they don't understand the blood-bending bliss of eating your 64th Hershey Kiss, sick but not sick enough. Never sick enough.

I come from a long line of cheapskates. Our family crest looks like the flag of Japan, only with a big, anxious rear end.

The curse, legend has it, started with a sorceress who appeared as a beggar at the door of my great, great grandfather...

"Dear steward, have ye any spare change for a weary drifter?"

"Spare change?" he said. "You mean money I don't need anymore?"

We've all been pinching halfpence ever since.

My shrink says that stinginess derives ultimately from a fear of death. I think that's what he said: I could hardly hear him over the fact that he was costing TWO DOLLARS A MINUTE.

The curse has spared no one in our bloodline, but it has churned out some pretty good lines...

"Slow down before you fall and crack your skull. You know how much that would cost?"

"Two dollars a transaction?! We're being robbed by the bank!"

"No, I distinctly said that you can halve your allowance. That's why we ask for things in writing."

As a boy, I spent a lot of time with grandpa, whose blood was closer to the curse. One day I mentioned how I liked convertible cars.

"Convertibles are for idiotic idiots," he said. "You can stick your head out the window any time."

I was afraid to walk in one day and find grandma doing a headstand...

"Grandma?"

"It's okay, sweetie. I'm getting a facelift."

Sometimes grandma got fed up with old Ebenezer. They'd be sitting in the den while the parakeet chirped in its cage -- "Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep" -- and grandma would say, "He's talking about you, you know." Then grandpa would fan toward her the air around his butt. So it goes.

So, no, I didn't come from money so much as double coupons. I really can't blame my parents. They struggled financially ever since that day when my dad, in a fit of passion, uttered those fateful words: "Yes! Yes! Oops."


My folks made certain sacrifices such as shopping at Goodwill. They saved money, and I went to school dressed like J.J. from "Good Times" (DY-no-MITE!). You just can't get away with plaid pants in the third grade.

My dad would pull into gas stations and stare at the prices till the attendant came over.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"No. Just lookin'."

To this day I catch myself doing super-stingy things like reading newspapers through the dispenser. At the movie theater, I get so bent about the price of Milk Duds that I want to smash the encasement and scatter chocolate through the streets. "Take back what is yours! Rise!"

But life is like a box of chocolates: expensive. If they raise the cost of stamps one more time, I'm going postal. No wonder they sell postage by the ounce: It's like crack.

"Whatchyou want, man? Whatchyou want? I got hearts, I got flags, I got the Lucille Ball Commemorative."

The curse has kept me indoors at times. My mom asked about it recently.

"It's just gas," I said.

"Gas?! Is it really that bad?"

"Over three bucks a gallon."

Even my wealthy relatives shop at the dollar store, which just makes them poor with more zeroes at the end.

To break the jinx, I have no choice but to become so rich that I stop looking at price tags altogether, so rich that when people visit my home, they say, "Is that one house?", so rich that I lose touch with reality and feed the seagulls $100 bills.

And the next time a drifter stops at my door, I will empty my pockets on the spot. "Take it! Take it all! Would you like a sandwich? A backrub? My first-born son?"

If that seems dramatic, remember my grandfather who is even at this moment griping in his coffin:

"Can you believe the cost of this thing? They should've just wrapped me in a blanket. And I thought the cost of living was high..."