Touched: True Stories From Inside The Massage Room

By Kamillya Hunter

This powerful collection of short stories gives readers an intimate glimpse inside the massage room. Hunter holds nothing back while taking readers on an emotional rollercoaster that is humorous, thought-provoking, poignant, and keeps you wanting to turn the page. She sheds light an occurrence of wrongful termination, dangerous encounters and her truth of being a black therapist in a predominantly white industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kamillya Hunter
• Release date: Mar 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9798223607076

Book preview

My Addiction

IT’S AMAZING WHEN YOU think about how many people feel guilty for getting such a necessary service as massage. Touch is necessary. Remove all thoughts of luxury for a moment and think about the basic need for touch. From birth, infants are soothed by touch. Adults use touch as a form of nonverbal communication to express affection, comfort, anger, and many other emotions. It’s been researched at length by experts in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and more.

I never received massage prior to diving head first into school for it. It just seemed like a cool thing to do after I’d dropped out of college with no future plans. When I finally received one, a professional massage, I was introduced to an addiction I never knew existed.

My career as a licensed massage therapist began at the young age of twenty-two. For years, I bounced around, searching for the right environment for me. My journey began in a chiropractic office, which left me jaded and emotionally scarred. From there, I worked in just about every type of environment imaginable: small massage clinics, fitness centers, country clubs, luxury spas, franchises, hotels, and eventually my own private practice. It wasn’t until I transitioned out of the treatment room that I was able to reflect back upon my experiences as a massage therapist and try and make sense of them all.

It was years before I began to appreciate all the physical and emotional benefits massage could bring to both my clients and me. I was helping people heal from chronic pain, providing relief to mothers growing new babies, and allowing others to escape the stress of everyday life, even if only for one hour.  

I eventually learned that massage was much more than a job that put food on my table. Throughout my career, I met and touched thousands of people. Many only came across my table once, and I saw others too many times to count. The following clients left a permanent impression on my life, whether they realized it or not. These are the stories that helped me realize that the power of touch is never delivered in just one direction. They are in no particular order. The names have been changed to protect their privacy.

The Unicorn

I PUT IN A TWO-WEEK notice with my job at the call center immediately after I secured the massage position at the family-owned chiropractic office. I was eager to finally escape the collection agency that robbed me of the compassion I had for others. I put my notice in the moment my new employer asked, When can you start? 

At the chiropractic office, my patients only received a 15-minute session before it was the doctor’s turn to give them an adjustment. The patient’s time with the doctor was usually less than five minutes, and it was my job to relax them before he took them back. That meant poking and prodding them through layers of clothing, searching for knots and chronic pain points that had been bothering them for years. The experience was damaging to my thumbs, wrists, and most of all, my ego.

I doubted I would be able to offer any relief during such short amounts of time. It was possible I could do more to help my patients, but I needed more time and a proper setting to exercise the skills I had learned in school. The patients who did receive full 30- and 60-minute sessions were loyal to the other two massage therapists on staff, and none of them wanted to book with me, especially when they found out I was new. 

A position in a medical office wasn’t my dream job. I wanted luxury, soft music, and dimly lit rooms. I wanted my patients and myself to be greeted with the smell of lavender and other heavenly essential oil blends. The medical office offered the choice between Lysol and diluted bleach water. I wanted clients, not patients. I wanted tips, not medical charts. The chiropractic office was everything I never wanted and then some. There wasn’t even privacy. Except for the full sessions, the massages all happened right out in the open. My patients never needed to get undressed, so no one seemed to be bothered by the lack of privacy except me. 

One day, after I had been on the job for nearly two weeks, the receptionist retrieved me from the break room, informing me that a unicorn had scheduled a full hour session and volunteered to try me out. I didn’t try to hide my excitement. This was my chance to show off those techniques I had spent the past year mastering, a chance to give a real massage. I quickly raced to find an empty treatment room. There were only two rooms, and one was in use by a seasoned therapist who had been working there for six years. She was always booked solid. The other room was right next to it, and the door was wide open. I peeked inside to give it a quick inspection and to make sure the table was set, the light was on, and everything was in place. 

I headed to the lobby and was formally introduced to a large man who was three times my size, twice my age, and quite overdressed for the occasion. He wore a full suit and shoes that probably cost more than my entire month’s pay. The only thing we had in common was the color of our skin.

He smiled, shook my hand, and gave me a look that let me know he was pleased to meet a massage therapist of color. It was a look that I had come to recognize, even in my brief experience working in the field. Apparently, black massage therapists were like mythical creatures that only existed in fairy tales, only I didn’t know it at the time. I did know that black clients were rare.  It turned out we were just as few and far between as they were. I later discovered that the chance meeting between a black client