The Uncensored Massage: Massage and Sex in America and Elsewhere

Disclaimer & About this Book

THIS PUBLIC INTEREST book is meant to be funny, sexy, non-pc, political, satirical, anti-puritanical, and informational without being stuffy; through stories and essays, it provides an honest look at a variety of massage experiences from a male heterosexual viewpoint. The characters and names are imaginary, any resemblance to real persons being coincidental.

This book may contain language unsuitable for children or puritanical adults, and other language suitable for Martians, but not for Venusians.

Epigraphs

WHAT THE BOY HAD FELT was something pure . . . the simple desire to reach out and touch someone, to be held lovingly in someone’s arms. Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so difficult to give up hope.

—Michel Houellebecq, Elementary Particles.

Nature knows no indecencies. Man invents them.

—Mark Twain.

The Wall Street Tantric Massage and the Nude Finnish Pussycat

MANHATTAN, THE CAPITAL of the world, a city boasting of the top talents in every field, from neurosurgery to bondage, and from literature to gastronomy, is also home to some amazing pretenders and snake oil salesmen (a recent president comes to mind), including world class con men and women, some of whom pass themselves off as spiritual leaders and healers and advertise their incredible offerings to the credulous in The Whole Life Times or some such organ.

Ah, yes.  It is an age in which any two-bit twerp who recently operated a hot dog stand in a corn-pone town thinks that by holding his or her hands in the air above some pathetic sucker and saying Breathe deeply or Feel the spirit! he is transformed into a healer.  A healer, and therefore a (Cabinet) Minister of Universal Energy who must be paid with reverence and universally acceptable hard cash (they don't mind if you go easy on the reverence, but the hard cash is non-negotiable).  And everyone who comes to these healers is, by definition, sick, guilty, inferior, a retard who must be condescended to and told things like, You may keep your underwear on (and sometimes, you may keep your radiation-proof body suit on).

But one adventurous afternoon in the late Nineties, I boarded a train to Penn Station and then the subway to Wall Street and emerged into a street that was a canyon in the skyscraper section of downtown New York, and not far from the Twin Towers. I entered one of these skyscrapers, and went in for an experience that had all the hallmarks of the good old-fashioned American sucker story. And yet, it had enough novelty, mystery, open-mindedness, and excitement for me as to justify at least a portion of the hundred bucks I shelled out.

It was a Tantric Massage administered by a Russian woman and man, between 29 and 35, both looking immensely sharp, like KGB double agents, this being a time when post-Soviet Union Russians had invaded New York City and were buying up real estate, spas, and hair salons. The setting: a Wall Street office room decorated with the pictures of an Indian guru facing a Christian Cross, these antithetical artifacts surrounded by candles and a chalice, incense sticks spreading a sandalwood perfume through the room’s heated air. After undressing behind a partition, I was instructed to enter the room naked, which I did, preceded by my full-mast flagpole, watched with considerable professional interest by two pairs of eyes. As directed, I lay down on a mattress spread on the floor, taking care not to injure my erection, and was subjected to a synchronized massage by a pair of female hands on my left side and a pair of male hands on my right.  My male chauvinist, female-hungry consciousness tried to concentrate on the soft female half of the touch (and the fact that she, Yippie!, briefly brushed her finger against my pee-pee). The so-called tantric massage ended with a prostate massage—a massage of dick, balls, and perineum simultaneously—which, finally, made me ejaculate in full view, as the reverend Tantrics had desired (and why would I wish to disappoint them?). It was my most spiritual and public coming ever (a coming out?), and I wonder now if there was a secret camera recording these proceedings for history or for prying eyes—and if so, if I could buy the rights to the film.

Anyway, once I had cleaned myself up and dressed up, I was allowed to ask questions of The Master:  I could say the name of a woman, and I would be told what kind of sexual relations I could expect with her.  Having just had an emission, thanks mainly to the woman’s probing fingers, I was a little dazed; my memory cells were out in the streets partying and celebrating my good luck.

When you think about it (and I mustn't be too unkind, for I don't quite know the relative percentages of their actual knowledge and charlatanry), it was hilarious: the author of a well-known, sexually liberated book receiving sex advice from a pair of charlatans. Still, I didn't want to miss out on some fun, especially as I had paid for it, and as a writer has a certain license in these things. He can pretend and probe and go with the flow, because ultimately he'll turn every damn thing, every big shit and small, into literary material.

I said, Luba.

Oh, a Russian girl?  Well, she hasn't had much good sex in her life, so what she needs is not sensitivity, but hard fucking.  A good, strong dick.  She could potentially really go for you.

Pleased with the buried compliment, I tried another woman: Sheila.

Sheila, she is good, but she has another man that she might be interested in.

What about my sexual future?

You will reach your peak in 2-3 years.  Then you will have lots of women and pleasure.  At 51, you will start losing interest in physical sex; women will come to you more for play and fun than for your fucking, the man guru said. The man was doing all the talking.

Am I average or above average? I asked. (I didn’t bother asking if I was below average, no point wasting words.)

You are well above average.  And if you only do the exercises contracting your prostate without tensing your buttocks and legs, you'll be able to control the length of your erection tremendously.

He continued: "Sex is very important to you.  You think a lot about it.  It is okay to think about it, but don't worry about it, and it will come to you.  Women, they need to feel that you are cool and relaxed.  They can sense tension and worry.  If you are relaxed, they'll come to you."

I had to admit that these sounded like words of wisdom; besides which, in three out of four specific answers to my questions, his judgment had been uncannily accurate. To have the relaxed attitude to life. That itself was worth perhaps 500 bucks, or five times what I had paid. Though, despite his prediction, I am still interested in sex, and though considerably more experienced, cannot quite claim that I have had to fight back legions of women. Though, to speak in their defense, they were probably waiting for me to have the relaxed attitude to life, which is almost contrary to my nature (I even try to fight the weather).

IMMIGRANTS, THE LIFEBLOOD of America, and the chief reason for its vitality, creativity, and continuous reinvention of itself, had begun to revitalize New York’s massage scene in the Nineties. While Russians entered it in the early Nineties, their hallmarks being technical proficiency, nonchalance about naked human bodies, and giving a decent butt massage, the Korean masseuses (never heard of a Korean masseur) entering in the latter half were juicy Lucys, often arousing the men with every sex trick in the book until even the ultra-happily-married begged for some instant relief. And while stray Koreans like Jeannie could be extremely good, Korean masseuses were generally more expensive and expected large tips, so I only used them when my regular masseuses were unavailable.

It’s a horrid, gray and drizzly late Autumn day in Manhattan, a day in which one massage appointment after another turns bad. And then, suddenly, it turns out that these rejections were the best thing to happen to me.  For the next number I called yielded a warm Yes, I can give you an appointment right now. And 20 minutes later, I meet the most glorious