San Diego- "I Like Ike" (Turner?)

After my stolen car was recovered, I started working more hours as a massage therapist for an upscale, personal training center (see West Coast follies). Their client base dealt with several athletes from the Chargers and Padres, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary when they called with a client that insisted I speak through his agent. Upon hearing the name I thought, “Why would anyone use that as an alias?”

The only other possibility- he was who he said he was.
I stumbled over the words, “THE Ike Turner?!”
My 20-something, “squeaky clean” manager (later referred to as Squeaks) sat on the phone a minute before asking, “Who’s that?”

Who’s that?! Had he not ever heard of Tina Turner’s abusive husband? Ike was more notorious for wife beats than song beats and I told Squeaks to go rent, “What’s love got to do with it.”

I left a message on the agent’s phone, “Um, if this is THE Ike Turner, I’m not interested.” By the time I got called back a couple hours later, I decided that I wasn’t comfortable doing the massage either way since no one knew the client. His agent apologized for the delay and assured me that yes, it was the famous Ike Turner and no, he wasn’t so bad, but had just gotten some negative press over the years.

“I won’t be able to help you,” I repeated, but the agent insisted and then went on to name all the positive aspects, like Ike’s girlfriend would be there (yeah, big help) and reminded me that he was an old man at this point.

Did that really matter? I could care less how old he was. I wouldn’t want to massage an old Nazi either. Just because he was defenseless now, didn’t mean he wasn’t responsible for past behavior. No one could tell me what, Ike “deep-rooted issues with women” Turner, was thinking while I massaged him (“That’s right- you BETTER rub Ike’s leg!”) Take your back pain Ike (like Tina took all those punches) and roll on down the river.

A couple weeks later I was playing Trivial Pursuit with some friends and the orange question (general knowledge) read, “Who admitted to punching and kicking Tina, but not beating her?” Of course I had to bring it into work and show Squeaks that this man’s wife beating was so well documented that it had been incorporated into a pop culture board-game.

If that hadn’t shown him, I guess the NY Post headline the day after Ike died would- “Ike Turner beats Tina to death.”