Now, a Digital Approach Toward a Healthier Body

The gentleman is the model of comportment: dress shirt, dress slacks, fine leather shoes, and an elegant manner of speaking to match. That is, until he sits down and gets the rotating “fingers” jammed into his back.

“Ohhhh, man,” he coos, eyes rolling back in his head. “Oh, oh, nobody does this for me, what this feels like.”

Then he gets the “fingers” stuck into the back of his neck.

That’s when he starts speaking randomly and upward, as if in a trance and as if to the sky, even though he is seated on a chair in the center of the Buenaventura Mall with dozens of people walking by.

“Ohhh,” he groans in pleasure and in pain. “I mean, you can ask somebody to do this for you--OHHHHH!--but they never get it right.”

The man controlling the twirling “fingers,” Greg Veach, jams another pair into the back of a woman nearby. She has a more specific sentiment than the euphoric gentleman.

Squirming in giddy pleasure, she turns to a friend: “With this, who needs a man?”

Veach has heard it hundreds of times before. He’s the purveyor of a contraption called Kneading Fingers, a simple plastic box from which protrude two snakelike, gloved “fingers”--a haunting, electrified Addams Family body part. The mechanical “fingers” move in a circular motion to mimic the strong, sometimes painful human thumbs that are applied in Shiatsu massage.

“I don’t sell much to teens or young people,” Veach says. “Young couples around 40 are the most frequent customers. I’ve had them sit down, take the fingers, and look at each other and say, ‘Hey, what do I need you for?’ ”

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Veach is a Visalia entrepreneur who joined 24 purveyors in renting booth space at the Buenaventura Mall recently for the center’s annual Health Fair. And yet his booth is one of only eight--nearly one-third of the Health Fair--that has anything to do with health.

No cholesterol booth. No glaucoma screening. No blood-pressure checks. Not even an appearance by Mr. Juiceman or one of his cut-rate competitors.

Instead, there’s a gleaming black BMW from Newport Imports up for raffle to anyone willing to complete an entry form asking for annual income, home and work phone numbers, and level of interest in home loans.

Instead, there are displays by Harbor Chrysler RV Center of Ventura; Ventura Raceway, with fairground videos of roaring stock cars; Audio Experts of Ventura boasting a red pickup truck that could fill Nevada with throbbing stereo; and Banker’s Life & Casualty, for those wishing, perhaps, to wager against health.

Veach doesn’t mind. Kneading Fingers is packing them in. The brief pleasure seems to go a long way.

Indeed, Veach’s only “health” competitors, if you can call them that, are Community Memorial Hospital of Ventura, distributing brochures about iron deficiency and a new clinic; two chiropractic displays, one by Dr. Randall Drake and another by Dr. Richard Walsh and colleagues, all of Ventura, offering free alignment checks; Jazzercise, mounting aerobic demonstrations; Ventura Kenpo Karate, selling classes; the state Department of Health Services, issuing radon counsel; Body Trends of Ventura displaying treadmills; Spas West, with an array of hot tubs; E’OLA products, a Utah firm preaching to the unconverted about herbal remedies; and Integrative Motion Systems, a Ventura firm selling anti-gravity chairs.

Of these, only spas and anti-gravity chairs seem to pull them in. But then they are, like Kneading Fingers, about relief rather than sweat or threat. And this is no Health Fair for the Ironmen among us.

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Juanita Velasquez of Santa Paula “floats” in the anti-gravity chair, a recliner mounted to a motorized base that mimics the pitch-and-yaw of a ship at sea. Over headphones she hears a New Age version of “When You Wish Upon a Star”; through wired sunglasses, she sees pulsating blue and red lights that slow her brain.

Her husband, Richard, a retired mason with back problems, is shopping nearby for a spa. But there’s no discussing spas with Mrs. Velasquez, who, upon rising from her chair after only five minutes, is somewhat impaired from pleasure.

“Oh, um, it’s in-des-cri . . . indescribable,” she says. “It’s better than bed. I think I slept, but I’m not sure. I feel . . . g-r-e-a-t.”

But the chair starts at $4,400. And Mr. Velasquez, seeking the most relief for the money, has water jets in mind.

They could, of course, take a few “fingers” in the back instead. A guy named Veach will promise them a great life for a mere $169.