Editor’s Note: I’m upstairs at Bubbles’ House of Intrigue and Strong Wills, with Bubbles about to teach me the art of inversion…
Me: “You want to show me what? And why?”
Bubbles continues to smile, because it always pleases her when she knows more about something than her semi-captive audience. “We’re going to use the Inversion Table. Just watch.”
So I watch.
She moves the giant contraption to a more observable section of the room. For the most part, this thing looks like a door on wheels, with some interesting metal bits sticking out here and there that might be controls of some kind or just meaningless distractions to make the thing look more intimidating. Bubbles proceeds to talk me through the process.
“Okay, you step up on these things here, and then you lean against the board.” She does this, placing her delicate feet on two of the metal protrusions and laying against the death slab. “Then you lock yourself in,” which means she fiddles with some leg clamps that would look more at home on a 1930’s electrocution chair. Once secured, she starts to tilt the table back. “Then you just find your center of gravity, and use that to control the movement.”
Easy for her to say. She’s not even five feet tall. Her entire body is a center of gravity.
Nevertheless, she adjusts her position a bit, and then suddenly she is upside down. A belly is exposed, breasts are flopping everywhere, and toes are pointing at the ceiling. It’s like something on the Nature Channel where they run a crawler at the bottom of the screen that perhaps children should not be watching this. You know, like when the praying mantis eats her mate.
“See?” asks Bubbles, her vocals only slightly restricted by the fact that everything is all in the wrong place. “It’s easy!”
Not so sure about that.
Bubbles wriggles around a bit. “You have to twist from side to side to let your spine stretch out.”
Let me spine stretch out? How is that possibly a good thing?
Bubbles now makes cooing noises to indicate that stretching has been accomplished, and that there might have even been an unintentional orgasm.
THAT part gets my attention. Maybe I will try this after all.
“Now,” further explains the upended Bubbles, “you can’t stay this way for too long, because the blood rushes to your head.” (And you die?) She adjusts her body once more, and then expertly flips back upright. Her face is slightly flushed, but she appears otherwise unharmed. “Now you try it.” She reaches down to unleash her imprisoned feet.
Well, I don’t know about this. But I have just enough lingering alcohol in my system from our earlier time at the sports bar that my judgment is properly affected. I approach the death machine.
I step up on the foot pegs and lean against the board. I try to close the foot clamps, but something seems to be amiss, and Bubbles has to assist and investigate. I hadn’t realized up until this point that I have overly large feet and ankles that were not part of the master plan of the Inversion Table designers. Adjustments must be made. Happily, we eventually achieve secure-foot status.
I start to lean back.
It immediately doesn’t feel right, like I’m doing something that would cause concerned relatives to shriek in fear and call a priest. Then again, of course it shouldn’t feel right or natural. I’m forcing my body into a position that defies the standard concepts of human behavior.
I take a deep breath, try to relax, and inch my way backwards. It’s rather uneventful at first, until I reach the point where my head is lower than my legs. Then wackiness ensues. You have to keep squirming about on the board to distribute your weight in the proper manner or you won’t go all the way down. So I squirm. And I contort. And I regret ever having agreed to this dumb-ass experiment.
Eventually, I’m mostly upside down. But there’s a glitch. My head is touching the floor (kind of thinking that’s not right) and my neck is bent at an angle that would have most chiropractors praying to Jesus for guidance (and I know that’s not right). Something smells really fishy in Denmark.
Bubbles provides an assessment. “Maybe we need to adjust the foot things so your head doesn’t bang on the floor.”
Ya think?
Since I’m supremely uncomfortable, I don’t clearly hear Bubbles advise that “you really don’t want to come up too fast.” And so I come up too fast. So now I’m dizzy and I have splinters in my head. So far, this is not something that I would recommend to anybody, even people I can’t stand.
Bubbles rushes in to make mechanical adjustments. She fiddles with this and that, and suddenly my feet slide lower on the contraption. I’m really not very invested in playing this game anymore, but at the same time, I don’t want Bubbles to think lesser of me for not giving things a solid try. And I’m still tipsy.
So here we go again, with me slowly leaning back, wiggling my body around, and trying to control the gravitational pull. It’s much easier this time, so there truly is a learning curve, I’ll admit to that. The key component is to just relax. Easier said than done, but still.
With this round, I’m able to flip upside down with plenty of head clearance. This encourages Bubbles. “Now lift your arms over your head and lay them on the floor.”
I do. And an odd, partially-satisfying sensation ripples through my body. Oh?
Bubbles continues. “Now, twist from side to side.”
This I do as well. And the snaps and crackles from my spine would make you think Orville Redenbacher was whipping up a batch of popcorn. And it feels glorious beyond description. A release that I never knew existed.
I’m in love.
And Bubbles knows it. Grinning wickedly, she advises. “Okay, come back up slowly. SLOWLY!”
I comply. I feel half a foot taller and very, very happy with life.
Once released, I holler down the stairs to Terry. “Bubbles just gave me six inches!”
Stunned silence from the lower chambers.
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