But the deeper shift was interior. The parlor had not “tamed” her in the sense of breaking her will. It had tamed the untamed parts of her submission — the reflexive self-effacement, the compulsive performance of niceness, the way she had learned to make her body small on public transit and in boardrooms alike.
Arin touched her sternum, where the heat had once been. “It didn’t tame me,” she said. “It untamed the cage I called myself.” the taming massage parlor arin's story