Hello, Buck-Nekkid!

Last Thursday was our first night of actual clients in our Spa Massage class. I was a bit mothy in the stomach the hour prior, but that quickly dissipated as we hurriedly distracted ourselves by spending the first hour scurrying around like little squirrels, desperate to bury our nuts before the first snow hits.

As I mentioned, I had two aromatherapies to do. And once I blundered through introductions with the first client, I felt a little bit more comfortable. Amusingly, the massage part isn't so much what was making me nervous as it was the "being sociable" part. Because I SOOOO suck at that. But apparently I am sometimes capable of faking it. (A curt "shut the fuck up so I can massage your stupid ass" apparently works wonders.) So the massages went well.

The first woman was extremely tense--it had been her first time to a massage therapist in 8 years or so. And it was a bit nerve-wracking working with her, just because her energy was a bit high-strung and battling MY energy's attempt to relax her. *CAGE MATCH* I had to laugh though because when I went back in to break down the room, she had thrown a couple five-dollar bills on the mussed-up sheets that were on the massage table, and damned if it didn't make me feel like a dirty whore, like she had left it on my nightstand, sneaking out and not even wanting to look me in the face. But I got over it cuz, hell, it was a $10 tip. Woot woot.

In between groups of clients, the relaxation music (which we filter in through a cd player that goes to the lobby and all the rooms) suddenly got a bit strange, enough so that a couple of us (including my instructor) stopped mid-sentence to ask what the hell was in the cd player. It sounded like weird horror-movie orchestral bells that were swelling to signify some ensuing Freddy Krueger attack, and I couldn't help but laugh when W___ very cheerily told us all that he thought it might be fitting since it seemed "kinda Halloweenish." Needless to say, a shared vision of the music jangling while we leaned in to wrap our hands around our client's suddenly pale necks (in order to massage them, of course) made our instructor quickly nix that idea.

When our second set of clients came in, a very tiny ultra-conservative older woman shuffled in with her husband and, catching my eye, managed to look mildly terrified for a second, and I swear to god, I could almost palpably see the words above her head reading "Oh my god, please let me get one of the more normal-looking MTs." Needless to say, I almost wet myself when she got J___, our very imposing and very tattooed (but extremely mild-mannered and relatively gentle) fellow.

Served her right. Hee hee.

I, on the other hand, got a very nice and cheerful middle-aged woman who bubbled her way through the introductions. And I quickly discovered that she was not one for modesty. I didn't notice her nekkdiness at first, and I suppose it's nothing that unusual (though typically at massage school, clients normally only strip down to their skivvies). But when I had to ask her to move her arms down to her sides (so that I could do her neck and shoulders) and she proceeded to flip the sheets to get her arms underneath, causing them to balloon upwards and revealing EVERY SQUARE INCH OF HER BODY, I found myself having to squirm so as not to blurt out Hello buck-nekkid!

But hey, she was ridiculously nice and spent ten minutes inquiring about what other services we provide and telling me how relaxing my massage was that I couldn't really complain too much.

All in all, I was pleased with the evening (though wicked tired upon my return home).

Thank god for proper draping, though.