5 Things You Learn As A Massage Parlor Prostitute

4 People Confuse "Massage Parlors" For Legitimate Massage Parlors

You can't legally advertise sex services in Canada. So Amy's parlor was in an office building, and it only advertised massage. The signs didn't even use outlines of women or garish neon, and the inside didn't look particularly sexual. Dimmers controlled the light, and Amy had to adjust them to set the mood. The music, as she puts it, was "a cheesy massage calm-soothing-water CD" -- a spa soundtrack, with nary a porn riff in earshot. Still, most people who entered understood what the place was truly for. Most people.

Here's the way it's supposed to work: The client pays a straight fee for a "massage" -- this money goes to the parlor, not the masseuse. The client strips, showers, gets on the table and under a towel, and Amy gives him a preliminary rub-down (not a real massage, since they aren't trained for that). Then she asks what else he wants, he tells her explicitly, and it's understood he will give her a "tip" for said services, which she keeps. The towel comes off, and she takes it from there. But the guy sometimes just doesn't respond. And it goes something like this:

Amy: "All right, enough of that. What else can I do for you?"

Guy: "Maybe a little more on my shoulders. Those have been pretty taut for a while."

Amy: "Oh, have they been going a bit ... stiff? Any other parts that way? I can do anything you want, you know."

Guy: "Well the shoulders, mainly. And the back. But the shoulders, too."

Amy: "How's that towel feeling? You need me to get that off for you?"

Guy: "What? No. I need my shoulders done. And there's no towel on my shoulders."

"So I'm just trying to pretty much say, 'What do you want?'" explains Amy, "without directly saying, 'LOOKIN' FOR A GOOD TIME, SAILOR?' and the guy didn't catch on. We went through the massage and small talk, and I made no money from that."

One time, a woman came in. "Boy, that was awkward," says Amy. This customer wasn't looking for a lesbian massage (sorry, fellas), and if she had been, Amy's not sure what she would have done. Instead, the client simply lay there with her towel on, picking up no weird vibes at all. "And again, thinking it was legit, she didn't think to tip. Or I got like $2. It was just a woman that came in thinking, 'Oh my, this place is a steal!'"

But remember that Amy, despite her experience in rubbing people as foreplay, has no expertise at all in real massage. The woman "likely had one of the most meh massages of her life."