Vacation. Finally. Just you, the spouse, and kids. Five days of mai-tais and afternoons by the pool. Agree with everything your spouse proposes, including the resort, chosen specifically because it’s a bit off the beaten path. Remoteness and hard to get to being features, not flaws.

Endure not one, but two flights (the second on a plane more closely related to a school bus than the 737 you took from Minneapolis). Spend 45 minutes being bounced around the inside of a Land Cruiser while Mollie and Eddie Jr. bicker in the backseat.

“Why don’t you get a massage?” your spouse suggests when you arrive. “You seem a little…tense.”

After lunch, follow the boardwalk as it wends through the treetops. Arrive sweating, short of breath at a remote, shaded bungalow. Make a mental note to check in with your PCP when you get back to St. Paul.

Your masseuse is a petite woman with olive skin and jet-black hair. Sign inwardly with relief. You’ve seen Seinfeld; still, remind yourself: You’re no George Costanza, even if you have less hair than you did at twenty and the start of your father’s bowling-ball gut.

“¿Habla Español?” she wants to know.

Panic-sprint through your high-school Spanish, then decide no, you do not.

After you disrobe, lay on the massage table. Let all of your worries dissolve. Luxuriate in the hot towel pressed over your eyes. Now this is living.

Listen to your masseuse shuffle around the table. Exotic scents bloom in the toweled darkness. Chamomile. Honeysuckle. Sandalwood. Ask yourself: Do I even know what sandalwood smells like? Decide it doesn’t matter.

Like a lover, she touches you in the most intimate places: between your eyes, your ears, your scalp. Try not to startle. Realize you haven’t been touched with this much attention in years. Since the kids, really.

When she works your feet, taking knuckles to your toes, something escapes you. A moan. A groan? The sound is audible in the small bungalow. Because your masseuse is a professional, she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t comment. Still, lying face down, your face heats. You want to crawl through the small hole in the table. You can’t relax the rest of your massage, reliving your shame, what you’ve done to violate this sacred space.

The massage is over. Dart your eyes. Misuse your high-school Spanish, forgetting prepositions, conjunctions. Leave a 40-percent tip. Stagger from the bungalow in a daze. Return to your spouse, reading a fat paperback by the pool. When they ask you how your massage went, the first thing out of your mouth is a confession.

“You did what?” they ask, eyebrows crinkling inward.

Recount the whole mortifying experience in a half-whisper, terrified of being overheard.

“Was it a moan? Or a groan?” your spouse clarifies. “Because there’s a big difference.”

Spend your vacation’s final days being especially courteous to the staff. Leave lavish tips, fight the urge to ask your bartenders and restaurant servers if they are friends with the masseuse. Return home. Resume your 9-to-5 life at your unfulfilling job. When Meredith and your officemates ask how your trip was, give one-word answers. Do not elaborate.

You have never wondered before, but ask yourself seriously: Do I have a foot fetish? Remember, as a child, the delicate arch of your mother’s foot as she tapped it absentmindedly on the floor. Remember the basement recliner, the way your friend Chris Parris’ toes would curl during your marathon games of Dungeon & Dragons. Like millions—nay, billions—before you, go to the Internet for answers. Wind up more confused than ever.

Convince yourself the sound you made was involuntary. Consider polling your friends, then sour on the idea before working up the nerve. Create a fake dating profile. Under Interests, list FEET. Find your DMs flooded with requests. Message “ToeTallyYours,” whose profile pic features a pair of shapely women’s legs, crossed at the knee, a flip-flop dangling provocatively from one toe. Flirt, casually, set up a place and time to meet. Suggest a dimly lit burger joint in the next town over. Spend an hour, sweat ringing your armpits, waiting for ToeTallyYours to appear. She doesn’t. But, as you get up to leave, notice an obese man in a stained white tee and ponytail, who has been sitting alone as long as you have. Resist the urge to flash a look under the booth. In the end, cave. His plump toes remind you of your mother’s pigs in a blanket, a favorite at the key parties she and your father used to throw. Swear off vacations and massages altogether. Mollie, Eddie Jr., your spouse will be disappointed. They want to know why they have to visit St. Bart’s, or Martinique, or wherever it is they’re going. Tell them you have too much work, that there’s too much to do around the house. Besides, who will watch Teddy?

The night before they leave, your spouse asks if you’re sure you don’t want to come. Tell them you’re sure. They will say they don’t understand: Why can’t you just board Teddy at a pet resort?

But you, you know why.