Professional Associations

I got another solicitation from a professional association today, this one involving Integrative Medicine. Since they want $150 for a basic membership and don’t even have a category for massage people, I tossed it faster than most. Actually I have no use for any of these circle-jerks.

I belong to one massage-related association, mostly for the sake of practice insurance. I used to belong to the largest, until they made it clear that they wanted to pretend we were all little doctor-wannabes and feed us into the maw of the health non-care system that has already turned doctors and nurses into “service deliverers.” I don’t deliver; massage is not pizza. I am the witch in the little house at the edge of the village who pokes here and there and asks what you dreamed of last night and fetches you a hearty smack (cackling as she does so) and then you feel better. F*&% services.

Once upon a national disaster I hauled my massage table down to the hotel just south of the Pentagon where a lot of exhausted FEMA folk were dwelling, or at least retreating for showers after spending their day on the 9-11 Pentagon fireground. I had already been pummeling the bejesus out of local firefighters who were doubling up shifts putting out the fire on the building’s roof. They would come into the fire station where I had set up my table and crash forward onto it like trees in the forest. It was something to do while I wondered what the fuck was happening.

Dignitaries of the major national massage association had put down roots in the hotel and made it clear that I wasn’t welcome because I had changed my membership after 14 years. They had apparently convinced the state’s disaster relief people that they, and only they, could be trusted to provide massage therapists capable of fixing people who had been hucking hoses or just working in a high stress situation. Since the state issues my license, and we were all offering to donate our services, you have to wonder who was thinking this through, but this was no time to ask.

I exhaled some blue flames and took my table over the the police command post where they weren’t so picky, and massaged people’s shoulders around the edges of Kevlar vests till I got tired. People were appearing from everywhere with blankets and food and doggie treats for the cadaver dogs. It was the least I could do. Sort of like the Little Drummer Boy, if you can forgive a saccharine image.

I never forgave those pricks from my former “professional association.” I think it’s spelled R-A-C-K-E-T.