Jamie Contractor

The first time I got a massage in a building that clearly did not have any trained massage therapists present was in Phuket, Thailand. At the time, I was trying to avoid my Australian boyfriend I had travelled there with after my working holiday visa had finished; we were staying in a gaudy all inclusive type resort because he couldn’t handle the more basic guest houses or hostels I preferred. It was never going to work out.

My favorite way to kill time and contribute to the local economy when backpacking is to get massages. In Southeast Asia, they are cheaper than a single drink while out at the bar back home and usually, are always great (ask for Tiger Balm, instead of oil, if you ever go, and you will float out of there).

I had seen that the building next us was offering massages so I decided to walk over to get some space from the guy, if only for an hour. There was a group of about eight Thai girls in skimpy outfits catcalling to people on the street to come in. First warning sign. I approached and as I said I wanted a massage, the girls started laughing at me and, as I later assumed, discussed which one would have to entertain the dumb American girl.

The chosen one led me to the back of the building and up a flight of rusty stairs into a darkened room with the shades drawn in the middle of the day. I took my shoes off at the door and stepped further in, noticing that the mats on the floor for each person were separated by white sheets hanging from the ceiling, allowing each massage area to be private. It is typical to have a Thai massage on a padded cushion on the floor because the therapist is stretching your body in addition to the actual massage. However, the rooms are always open and you can see everyone else’s experience around you. Second warning sign.

I’m led to the farthest section away from the door, up against the opposing wall, underneath the blocked off windows. The paint was chipping off in huge portions and the whole room smelled musty. I took my crossbody bag off and placed it on the floor, slightly outside where the curtain closes shut. “Oh no, put this here, with you. They will steal if they see,” I am told.

You leave your clothes on for Thai massage because of the stretching so I just laid down, my bag in sight. For the next hour, this young Thai girl grazed her hands over me, pushing her fingers in places she thought she was supposed to, stretching my limbs like they were pieces of licorice. But it was when she was laying on top of me, attempting to stretch not my opposite leg across me, but the same leg, into some weird, contorted position that I thought, “Holy shit, you are so dumb Jamie, she has never done this before, you are just laying in a bed of disgusting sex tourist semen while she plays pretend!!!”

I opened my eyes and caught hers, and we shared an unspoken conversation as she was banging on my thigh with her fists, that went something like this: “I’m sorry, I know this is bad, this is not why someone is usually here. But I have to finish so let’s just get through this”. To which my silent reply was, “I’m so sorry, I should have know, I am so embarrassed”. I kept my eyes tightly shut for the duration, mortified. As she quickly walked me out, some of the curtains were drawn as soft noises escaped from behind them. I left tenser then when I had arrived.

The second time I was unable to read my surroundings before it was too late was in Bangkok after a night of partying on Koh San Road. I was hammered off of Chang beer poured from beer towers at the Irish bar we had been at all night. I had wandered off from my group looking for this street vendor serving Tom Khai Gai out of giant steaming, porcelain pots on the side of the road a few streets off from where I was staying. As I sat in the plastic chairs on the curb, my hand swaying trying to get the soup into my mouth, I noticed a massage parlor across the street. It was also typical of me to get massages while I was absolutely shit faced. It was safer to pay someone to touch me than to drunkenly invite a random back to my room.

The experience is hazy, clouded by the unregulated beer, but the whole building was practically pitch black as I was thrown into a private room. This time, the noises from the other customers were anything but soft, and I listened to them semi-turned on, semi-disgusted, as I myself was being caressed: from outside the walls came deep, throaty mooooans, high pitched squeaaaaals, ooohh and ahhhhhhs and a cacophony of other sounds I chose not to make out.

The quality of the massage must have been good enough for me to fall asleep because the next thing I know, I’m woken up being shaken and yelled at by the masseuse to pay and get the fuck out. “At least I didn’t have to look anybody in the eye,” I thought as I stumbled back to my guest house.

The third and final time happened years later, on a different continent, in a different country, this time in Spain. I had thought my days of sex ring massages were a thing of the past, that I’d smartened up and was now a savvy world traveler.

I was walking back to my hostel after tanning and drinking sangria all day on Barceloneta Beach (drinking and walking around cities is another favored backpacking pastime of mine). I had passed a massage parlor on the way to the beach advertising twenty Euro massages near Casa Batllo, which was three blocks from my hostel.

My touch-me-while-drunk radar was on, and sure enough, I found it and walked in. There was a thin Spanish man sitting at a plain, plastic desk in the front. Florescent lightening and bare white walls made my eyes squint after coming in from the sunny streets. It didn’t reflect the tranquility of a massage studio in any sense but my thought process was, “I’m in the middle of a European city, Barcelona, this is not Asia, this will be legit. It will probably be shitty, but it’s twenty Euro, who cares”.

The therapist came out and led me to the room, which at least had an older model massage table. Yet instead of towels or blankets laid down on top, the entire table was covered in thin, one ply toilet paper. What in the actual fuck? What are you cleaning up that you don’t even bother to put down towels??? I know, I should have just turned around and walked out, but I’m always down to see how things play out. I just have to know, even when it’s to my detriment, which, it always is.

I start laying face down, my head squeezed through the circular attachment, staring at the unswept floor. The “oh fuck, this is happening again” moment came immediately when I could feel the therapist’s nails. And I don’t mean somewhat long natural nails, but thick, acrylic fashion nails that she was digging into my back, very uncomfortably, for both of us.

The nail in the coffin came when it was time for her to walk to the other side of the table to get the other side of my back. Had I not been drinking, I probably would’ve noticed that the massage table was pushed against the wall so that only one side was open and accessible to walk around. So, the only thing to do to continue this charade was to push and pull the table from against the wall while I was laying on it…the scraping sounds from the friction of the floor were as loud as the voice in my head screaming, “bahahahhaha, you are such a fucking idiot, there has never been a massage in this room, EVER!”

The only comfort I find in my poor decision making is that for at least an hour, these three women were not subjected to whatever else they would’ve been forced to do. Though each experience left me extremely on edge from witnessing real life, miserable looking sex workers, I graciously handed my money to them for the worst massages I’d ever received, prayed they actually got to keep it, and hoped that they too preferred our time spent together over the alternative.