Up until the fall I was twenty I maintained the kinds of jobs you could show up stoned and still make MOD. In high school I worked at a movie theater, waited tables at a cafe, worked at a bowling alley, and my all time favorite, parking lot security at Alpine Valley Music Theater.
Alpine Valley was a trip. A different crazy crowd for every different concert. I was once carried off by a giant harry biker after an Aeorsmith concert. His biker bitch with her bottle blond hair and more tits than her leather vest could hold, came after him with her shoe and he put me down. At five foot four, I only came up to his sternum.
The limited self-defense class they give in training didn’t cover that.
Then as an ‘adult’ I had worked at Subway and the golf course between going to school and then taking out calls as a practicing massage therapist. Taking massage appointments here and there was okay but traveling that much in such a rural area was getting to be a hassle.
I was ready to take the next step into being a fully functioning adult, so I went down to Libertyville Illinois, and got my first grown up job at a Hair Design and Day Spa. One section was a hair salon with waxing rooms off the side, the middle was a huge nail salon and behind that was a separate spa area with low lighting and lulling tones in its own waiting area.
There is a distinct difference between spa people and salon people. Salon people talk all day. They work in a trendy hub of up beat creativity and lively music. Massage Therapists, on the other hand, may go over eight hours mostly in a dark room with relaxation music only taking a break to switch out the sleeping person they’re rubbing down.
We LMT’s tend to be tranquil and if moody we internalize that shit until we com-bust in a chakra cleansing good cry.
Up until working at this place I had been around the hippiest of hippy massage therapists and spiritual bodyworkers. Myself and one other woman, who worked by appointment only, were the only two therapists at the spa.
She was older, wiser and looked the part, I was eager to learn from her. Alas, she was far too above me and didn’t want a puppy trailing after her. The first time I met her, she looked down her thin nose at me barely shaking my hand. I never saw her again. I worked there for over eight months.
I made $500 a week working from ten to seven, five days a week. I could have made as much if not more and worked fewer hours had I gotten commissions on each appointment but I didn’t know that at the time. I was ecstatic to be getting paid that much even if I had to work forty hours a week. The only down fall was the drive. For three months it took me over an hour to get to and from there because of ice and snow.
Honestly, it was a pretty cushy gig and I would have killed to have that set up again by the end of my career.
I could go hours if not days between appointments, so I hung out in the shared employee lounge at the back of the salon. There I got my first taste of what it was like to work with internationally high strung women.
Out of around thirty women I was one of five from America. We had five women from Russia, four from Poland, two from Germany, and the rest from a smattering of other countries.
I would sit and read, the unnoticeable little American girl everyone talked around. Sometimes they would rant in their native tongues, sometimes in English but anyone of them could out diva a runway drag queen on any given day. The longer I sat there, the quiet observer, the more women broke away to come sit and talk to me. I became the impartial confessional and a sound board for everything.
Husband troubles? I heard about it.
One Russian woman’s husband hit on the other Russian woman at a dinner party. I heard about it, from both sides.
I heard the lively stories of waxing male strippers and porn stars from nutt sack to asshole. I heard about the house wives with the bare bottoms and bleached assholes.
A voluptuous Egyptian girl showed me the first nipple and clit piercings I had ever seen in person. She even had a chain that connected them through her belly button ring. She was perpetually orgasmic and really into orgies.
A half Australian half British girl that wore only heavy eye make up but no foundation, always had flavored condoms because she only sucked cock with a condom on and apparently she liked to suck cock.
The Russian women loved vodka, talking shit about each other and hating the Polish women.
The Polish women hated the Russian women and the thought of getting fat. They were always on a weird diet and exchanging Pilates DVDs.
An older Indian woman told me I needed to stick my finger in my boyfriends asshole and tickle his prostate if I wanted him to love me for life. He never would try that. He said he’d love me forever anyways.
An older German woman always referred to killing the rabbit if someone wasn’t pregnant because in the 1970’s they would inject a rabbit with your urine and if the rabbit lived you were pregnant and if it died you were not. Finally, after a life time of hearing Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion’s lyrics “you can’t catch me cause the rabbit done died”, I knew what the fuck Steven Tyler was singing about.
One of my favorite ladies was an Argentinian woman who once advised me in a heavy accent, “The worse you feel, the more make-up you should wear.” Since then I’ve always gauge illness in Rue Paul increments of pre-show prep, dress rehearsal and if I’m really feeling shitty, full out performance time.
Every day I spent with those ladies was a learning experience, and then every night I would go home speaking broken English.
The manager was a stiff lipped no-nonsense woman named Carol. She was one of the foremothers who burned her bra but I’m pretty sure she took a flame thrower to hers then to a whole bunch of other shit, just to watch it burn.
She made it clear that she only respected intelligence and she didn’t think any of her Salon ladies fell in that category. Saying she was brash is an understatement.
She openly ridiculed employees if she didn’t think they were presenting themselves properly and I had seen her make children cry more than once. She wasn’t above letting her customers know her establishment was not a place to bring their kids. If she could have gotten away with having them leash their young out front on the sidewalk I think she would have.
She was a misogynist with a vagina and the scariest woman I’ve ever met.
In a sick way I actually kind of liked Carol. I always came in on time, I was never involved in drama and I always looked nice and put together. My clients were always happy. In other words I was never on her radar. The Russian, German and Polish women always gave back to Carol as good as they got. Those women told me more than once, to let anyone treat you like shit is to have no pride.
My strong back bone solidified under there guidance. I probably picked up more than a little arrogance from them also.
Over the years of working in the spa industry I’ve worked for and with some bat shit crazy women, but I’ve never taken shit from any of them. A verbal throat punch is now just my natural reaction to back-handed bitchery. I’m shocked I’ve never been fired.
My first foray into the spa/salon industry was extreme, but I like to think it prepared me for life and the loose canons I’ve dealt with over the years.
mytwentieswtf 