Moans and Monkeys

After nearly a decade in this profession, I thought I had already experienced the most bizarre clients, but I had two new clients who proved that I should never say I have seen it all. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Clients are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get until you start working on them."

One was a particularly unsavory client who asked me to sing for him. I was so surprised by what he said that I asked him "Sing?" as if I had heard him incorrectly. He kept insisting that I sing him something while I worked on him even though I told him I could not carry a tune and did not know any songs. Since he failed in his attempt to make me sing, he then segued into asking me to tell him jokes. I told him I did not know any and again he was insistent, cajoling me over and over to either sing for him or tell him jokes as I was working on him. Since we had a 90 minute appointment, he spent a long time trying to get me to entertain him. When I asked him to sing or tell me a joke he simply said, "No I'm no good at either, that's why I want you to." at this point I was beginning to expect him to ask me to dance for him too. Near the end of the session he proposed we have a breath holding contest and wanted to make sure I was not cheating by putting his hands on my waist; I immediately removed his hands and said, "Bullshit, do NOT touch me". He took offense and said that I did not need to curse; I replied that he did not need to put his hands on me for any reason. I ended the session and asked for my payment. I think he believed that his payment entitled him to treat me as his trained monkey to entertain or play with him however he wanted. I would not be surprised if he expected every one he employed to follow his whims. I hope that other therapists will also refuse to feed this kind of egotistical manipulation because if no one fed this power hungry monster, it would die of starvation.

On the other end of the spectrum was a client who had been looking for a replacement therapist because his regular therapist moved out of state. He told me that he had been looking for a year and that information set off a red flag, making me wonder why it had taken him so long. Once I started working on him, he started moaning. Usually when clients moan, it is like applause to my ears, showing that I am getting to the right spots, but if this man's moans were applause, it would have been as if he had been giving me an enthusiastic standing ovation with yells and foot stomping for two solid hours. It was actually a bit disturbing because he sounded as if he was having sex with loud, earth shattering groans and moans that literally drowned out the nice mellow massage music playing in the background. I felt as if I was in the episode of "Friends" where Pheobe refuses to massage on Monica because of her extreme sexual sounding moans, only this man was not a friend, but a new client. In the spectrum of client behavior, this was not horrible, just annoying. It left me in a quandary as to my response should he rebook with me; what, if anything, do I say to him about his moaning? His free expression of pleasure is to be applauded, but is there such a thing as too much applause? How do you tell your audience to stifle when it is clear that they enjoy your work and want to express it?