What your massage therapist thinks about while working on you

Am I judging you while I work on you? I might be. The reality is that I honestly do think about muscles and joints and whether or not I am feeling any knots or tension. But there are times, admittedly, that my mind wanders and it's a curious thought vortex that happens in this space.

The massage therapy room is set up to do exactly that. Create a vortex where all your stresses and anxieties melt away and the only thing you focus on is the relief, the music, and the peculiar mixture of aromatherapy oils your therapist has chosen depending on his or her mood. The problem is, sometimes I get caught up in my own bubble of floatiness and I actually let go. It can feel like those lucid dreams where I am all of the sudden a superhero and the whole world has decided to finally listen to my amazing common sense about what we all really need to be happy. Then I come to and have no idea how long I've been working on your leg. Or it can feel like I've just taken a complete inventory of my fridge, got exhausted by the thought of cooking and settled on In-N-Out yet again for dinner.

Either way, the last thing I'm thinking about is how fat you are, how many pimples you have on your back, or the last time you shaved. People are people. And as hard as we try to surpress it, we are a beautifully ugly species. We come in all shapes and sizes, have funny smells, choose odd colors of nail decor, paint our faces and put sticky stuff in our hair. We also come in an array of personalities that, even though you may not say a word on my table, is utterly evident by the way you walked in, the way you breathe and the "energy" you give off in general. I don't care about any of that. Truth.

What I do care about, and the things that would make me stoop so low to break my "massage therapy code of no-judgement", are as follows: 1) Do not pick up your phone while you are on my table. Ever. Or read a book, a magazine, your iPad... nothing. Unless you have kids. Or an ailing parent. Or pet. Then I'd understand. 2) Do not sit and talk with me, proceed to get comfortable on my table, and THEN choose to disclose that you have a cold, the flu, mad cow disease, lice, crabs, or anything else you for some reason think is not transferable in this space. And 3) Never, ever, EVER touch your penis, talk about your penis, show me your penis or even think about your penis during a session. I would say vagina, too, but this just has not been an issue for me... yet.