You could be having a great day. You’re running right on time. Clients are over complimenting you at the front desk. There’s a four-inch stack of gratuities in the drawer. And then… hold the phone, kids:

An eighty-year old client staggers out into the lobby, naked from the waist down.  He wants to know why there aren’t any robes left in the dressing room and he doesn’t care who hears him.  Trouble is, it’s not what they’re hearing, it’s what they’re seeing, and that brings your blissful “I’m just skatin’ through this day” thinking to a jarring halt.

At times like these I thank God I chose esthetics over massage.  Working with nakedness and never losing one’s composure, I don’t know how my masseur and masseuse compatriots do it.  My friend Mike is a genius with a hand towel. His massage choreography is masterful, moving the towel around to protect a client’s privacy while never losing contact with the body. Pretty amazing.  It’s an art form, really, a craft.

My hat is off to the body technicians of our world who can work every square inch of muscle and never compromise a person’s feeling of being in a safe, healing place.

With that said, estheticians out there beware, you just never know.  Said client could decide to add a facial into his spa day.  Said client could regale you with stories of his heroics in the war, and just as the image of him in the lobby earlier starts to fade from your mind, said client may ask you to take a look at his buttocks.  Apparently, he’d encountered some shrapnel in WWII, which he is certain, is still living in that area.

I make it a rule, never to go below the belt in a facial.  He was perfectly ok with that.  It seems his regular “facialist” back home in England, makes it rule to always go there. “God Bless her”, he added.  Yes, sir, God bless her was all I could say.