Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
SHELBY
April 2013
“I’m really feeling the tension in my lower abdomen,” the client on my table said. I adjusted my movements to just below his navel. “Mmm, a little lower than that.” He smiled and put his hands behind his head.
“This area is the boundary for the scope of my practice. For anything further toward the pelvic region, I’d recommend seeing a physical therapist,”I said.
I looked around the room to make sure everyone was paying attention. Dimitri still had his hands behind his head just killing it playing his role as the creepy client.
“I don’t know, it sounds so weird and clinical,” Jess argued.
“That’s kind of the point,” I said. “If you try to say things in a casual or nice way, they can more easily counter your point and catch you off guard. It’s all part of their game. If you shut them down with clinical or legal language, it usually works better.”
This was the second ethics and safety class I’d given for the spa employees at Aspire. We were role playing real life scenarios so they could practice how they’d respond, feeling less awkward and more empowered. Darius and Randall were sitting in to get a better frame of reference on how to help protect their employees. Lyric, still being the operations manager for the front desk, also wanted to be there to get an idea of how to vet clients even with the first phone call. We were covering it all.
“Where you’d go from here all depends on how you’re feeling. For me, I would end the session at this point. He’s clearly a creep and I’m uncomfortable.”
“I just don’t get why these guys don’t just go to the rub and tug places. They are easy enough to find.” Darius said. He seemed so unsettled at the thought of his employees having to navigate these situations.
I sighed. “Because it’s not necessarily the “happy ending” they’re after. It’s seeing how much they can get away with. The more legitimate the establishment, and the younger, more inexperienced the therapist, the more fun the game is for them.” Ten years in the business as a woman had unfortunately given me plenty of experience with these predators.
I sent everyone out of the room while I instructed Dimitri what he was to do for the next scenario. They all filed back in minutes later to find him face down on the table.
“Candace, why don’t you take this one. Undrape him and start some effleurage on his back, then concentrate on the lumbar area.” She did as she was told.
She was working for a few minutes waiting for something to happen. I could see her puzzled expression as she raised her hands off of Dimitri’s body.
“What are you noticing?” I asked her.
“Well, it seems like his low back hurts. Or he’s ticklish.”
“What makes you say that?”
Candace looked at his muscles while she tried to continue her massage. “Because he keeps tensing. It’s kind of frustrating.”
“He’s doing that on purpose,” I told her.
“What? Why?”
“He’s moving his penis,” I said with a straight face.
Dimitri stifled a giggle.
“He’s doing what now?” Randall interrupted.
“Yes, he’s contracting his muscles, like a man Kegel. He’s trying to stimulate himself,” I said.
“For the record, I am not.” Dimitri lifted his head from the face cradle. “I’m just doing what Shelby told me to do and it feels so freaking weird.”
“God, why are men so gross?” Lyric scowled.
“How would you deal with this one?” Jess asked. “I would feel super awkward about calling this out.”
“You don’t have to admit you know what he’s doing. You could say something like, ‘I’m noticing you are tensing a lot in your low back. If it’s painful, I can adjust my pressure, but it’s counterproductive for me to work on this area if you can’t relax.’ I bet just letting them know you are aware of something going on might make them stop.”
When the class was over Darius, Randall, Lyric and I all continued to talk.
“In my day, you just took it in stride. All the flirting, the jokes, even people touching you. It was ‘all part of the job’, and you just had to get through it and get that cash.” Darius looked forlorn.
“I mean, there is a difference between being out on a salon floor and having someone creepy in your chair, versus being in a room alone with a naked man.” I was trying not to get too defensive; I knew where he was headed, and his heart was in the right place. “But yes, you’re right. No one should have to put up with any of it. What do you think about having a class with the stylists where we brainstorm, and role play solutions for them too?”
“Good idea.”
I’d made plenty of mistakes with clients throughout my career. I’d been a people pleaser and an optimist, always trying to see the best in humanity, forever giving the benefit of the doubt. I would brush off a graze of fingertips on my thigh while giving a massage, even though it lingered a bit too long to be accidental. I would write off their splayed legs as hip issues instead of an attempt to call my attention to or grant me better access to their man parts. I would tell myself that I was the one clothed and in control, and the second I felt unsafe, I could easily leave while the client on my table could not. Did I? Not once.
I would politely answer personal questions because I didn’t want to be rude. I could feel myself getting caught up in their grooming game, and still, did nothing to put a stop to it. The way I’d been conditioned within the confines of my personal life did nothing to empower me in my professional one. If anything, it made me more subservient, and far more susceptible to this predatory behavior. I told myself it had never gone so far as to have been considered assault, but I’d often felt disgusted and violated, nonetheless. It was unacceptable and it needed to stop.
After Ari died, I took every ethics class I could find, arming myself with knowledge, and I became determined to pass along everything I’d learned. I wanted to protect our employees so that no one would have to go through the things that I had.
Later in the day when I had my first client, a facial, my mind began to wander from themuck of the morning’s subject matter to much more pleasant thoughts. I’d wandered with these particular thoughts a lot lately, getting my butter flutters every time.
Jake.
It was easy to think of him in this room where we first flirted, but now our experiences together had expanded to things I never could have imagined in my wildest fantasies. Most of the time I still had a hard time believing it was real.
I finished up at work, these days I was always eager to get home to my cozy new house. I walked through the door at around 8:30 p.m. and immediately began my nighttime rituals. I changed out of my Aspire clothes and put on soft silky pajama bottoms and a camisole. I washed my face and took my time with my skincare routine which, like for most estheticians, was extensive and indulgent. I moved my body through a slow-flow yoga routine and made myself a cup of hibiscus tea.
I made my way to the sun porch to read for a while. One of the first things I did when I moved in was insulate the walls and replace all the windows with high efficiency, well-sealed ones. It was important for me to be able to use this room comfortably all year and Wisconsin winters can be brutal and unforgiving.
I came to the end of a chapter around 10:30 p.m. and started to gather my things to go up to bed. I grabbed my phone just as a call was coming in. It was Jake.
My pulse quickened and I smiled as I answered. “Hi there.” No need for the inquisitive hello.
“Hey. I know it’s late, but I am driving and I’m having a little bit of a hard time staying focused. I thought I’d try talking to someone. And I liked the thought of that someone being you.”
“Aww, I like that too. Where are you?”
“I’m driving through Nebraska…wait, maybe Kansas? Seriously all these states blur together after a while. I’m on my way to a job.”
“Alone? Huh. I would have thought everyone traveled together.”
“Everyone else does, but not me. I like to drive by myself whenever I can. It’s a good way for me to clear my head and think about how I might frame an interview depending on the job. Once in a while, if I have time, I’ll drive over a thousand miles by myself instead of flying.”
“Not all at once, right?” I suddenly worried about his safety.
He laughed. “Not usually, no. I can easily do stretches of eight or nine hours and then my assistant Brenda will find me a hotel along the way and set up a reservation. I like driving across the country like this. Meeting people in gas stations, motels, restaurants. It keeps me connected and gives me inspiration for the show.”
His admission made him exponentially more attractive to me. He could so easily fly in and out of places, do his job, and be off to the next thing, but no. He likes to exist in the heart of things. Finding wonder and purpose in people and small moments.
“How was your day?” Jake asked.
I told him about the class I had given thinking he might find it interesting.
“God, I hate that you’ve got to work so hard to diffuse these creeps. I could tell that there were more issues than what we talked about when we filmed the show, but shit. That sucks.”
“We role play so they feel less awkward about putting a stop to it in real life situations.” I took a pause. “I’d let things go too much in the past. Let these guys get away with more than I should have.”
“Did anyone ever cross the line?”
“The line is whatever you make it as a massage therapist. Someone telling you you’re pretty can be a line,” I said.
“I meant?—”
“I know, and no. I was never assaulted. But my line now is miles from where it was when I first started. Now I take absolutely no shit.”I felt a little surge of pride at my newfound agency when I heard the words come out of my mouth.
“Good for you. What changed?”
I knew what changed, but I couldn’t explain it to Jake without getting into things I couldn’t discuss with him.
My pause must have been long enough that he felt the need to redirect.
“I’m sorry, I’m prying. My interviewer comes out all the time, even when I don’t mean it to.”
“I can see that,” my tone was soft. “It does make you a sparkling conversationalist.”
“Shelby, everything about you sparkles.”
I smiled and tilted my cheek against the phone. A rush of tingles wound through my belly.
“Speaking of interviewing, I think I hurt my therapist’s feelings yesterday,” Jake said.
“What?” I began to process the fact that Jake was in therapy, and as curious as I was about that, I’d never, ever ask. I would expect the same courtesy of him, after all.
“Yeah, we were talking, and she said, ‘I want us to unpick that.’ I was like ‘What the heck does that mean-unpick’ and she tried to explain ‘You know, get to the heart of things, dissect things’ and I was like ‘You mean unpack?’ She’s Scottish. I guess they say unpick.”
“Unpick. Is that even a word?” I laughed. “It makes me think of picking a scab. Well, I guess that could be applicable to therapy. Like ‘don’t unpick that too soon, it will bleed.’”
Jake laughed. “Yeah, and I’ve always wondered about unpack too. Like you’re supposed to be picturing the trauma box or unearthing something underneath. But unpacking? Unpacking what? Groceries? A weekend bag? A steamer trunk? A moving van?”
I think you’re getting punchy,” I chided. “I hope you’re getting to your hotel soon.”
“No, I’m okay. Do you know what I’m saying, though? If you’re trying to hold on to the analogy of unpack then the task of unpacking will be dependent on the thing you’ve buried and the amount and complexity of the shit you’ve piled on top of it.”
His words began to resonate in a way that surprised me. I sat up and gave myself space to consider him, wondering in which ways he might be broken. Considering all that we might have in common. Certainly, our trauma would be coming from very different places—I wasn’t sure if his was all to do with his brother’s death—but we were both wading through and working through our respective emotional baggage just the same.
“I prefer the analogy of unraveling,” I said. “Like the pieces of ourselves we hide or memories or things we don’t want to face are balls of yarn we have wound up tight and tucked away. So then in therapy it’s time to deal with them. Unravel.”
“Hmmm,” Jake mused. “What would be an example of the pieces of ourselves we hide? You don’t have to get personal. I am just curious.”
“I don’t know…parts of our personality we don’t want to show. Or that someone else doesn’t like. Things we want to say but know we can’t. We hide them because it makes it easier.”
“It makes what easier?” Jake asked.
“Everything.” I didn’t want to have to explain in more detail, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask. It was strange how much I appreciated this, though. It was comforting to talk to him about these things, even if it was only around the margins. “And then when you pull out the ball of yarn to unravel it, often it needs to be untangled as well.”
“I like your analogies much more. I will tell my therapist we are using them from now on and I won’t be in danger of being rude and laughing in her face.”
I sat with my head tilted against the back of the couch. I liked these conversations. Jake was truly a natural interviewer and I liked delving deeper—as long as it didn’t get too personal. I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
“Hey, I’m coming up to my exit. I’m going to have to let you go in a minute.”
“Okay. If you need to do this again, I’m here.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that. I really like talking to you.” He hesitated. “So, uh, I’m planning a trip to Portland in a few weeks to see my mom. I was wondering if you’d want to meet me there?’
I was taken aback. “Ummm…”
“Not to meet her or anything. No, my time with her would be separate. I’d just like to share my hometown with you. It’s a really cool city.”
“I would like that. Text me the dates and I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“I want to arrange your flights so can I put you in touch with Brenda? I have more miles than I know what to do with, and I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Sure, that would be nice.”
“I can’t wait to see you.” Jake said.
“Me too.”
“Goodnight, Shelby.”
“Goodnight, Jake.”
I sank into the couch and sighed knowing the next day, after hot yoga, my therapist and I were going to pull out and unravel another ball of yarn. I was going to have to press pause on my happy, distracting thoughts of Jake, and once again swim in memories that were no fun at all.