Too Big for Massage or Too Dark?

 

The question comes up. A caller on the phone, looking for a massage. I had no openings. Let this massage therapist say for the record that I really had no openings.

         

We talked for a while, a male voice on the phone, pretty husky voice. A Carolina accent.

         

Sometimes you wonder, the caller said. You wonder if when I call and there’s no openings, if someone calls later who sounds white and there are plenty of openings. I’ve heard it happens.

         

I’m not like that, I said. But I have heard it from another client, a large, deep-voiced African-American actor. It just might happen. He told me he had a hard time finding someone who would do a good massage on him, you know, the kind of massage that makes you want to come back.

         

Oh yeah, I’ve had those, too, he said. Massages so bad they feel like an oil slick. Terrible. You wonder if the massage is bad because they don’t want to see you again.

         

That’s not me, nor my practice. But I do wonder. Are men, particularly ethnic-sounding or looking men, on an avoid list because of the difficulty of the massage - or therapists’ unfamiliarity with them?

         

Hope not. Massage therapists are free, of course, to choose their clients. It is a skill. But a professional therapist cannot discourage a client for a discriminatory reason – sex, race or religion. Even if those things might imply that a person might be harder to work on.

         

Yeah, my caller said. One time a lady told me to change my voice because it was probably scaring some massage therapists. I just sound like I sound, he said. That’s me.