She walked me through the routine. I was told that when a client comes in I should tell him to put his clothes on the hook on the back of the door and shower. When he was done he’d come back to the room and leave the door cracked just a little bit so you’d know he’d returned.
Although I had never had a massage myself, I saw them being done on TV and figured, “I can handle this. No big deal.”
We greeted the first guy sitting in the waiting room. After he showered, he was lying on his stomach with his butt covered by one of the towels. She proceeded to show me how to give a massage. They could buy a half hour or an hour massage. A half was $25 and an hour $50. There was a menu in the lobby. It said tips were accepted.
Everything was going along smoothly. “Not bad,” I thought. I didn’t have to sit in a sauna with those macho foremen telling me my clothes were too short. It was nice, cool, and clean. And the boss was friendly, as were the other girls those first four or five days.
After that, Bob said, “Today you’re going to start working one-onone with the clients. You don’t need to have someone supervise you anymore.”
Already confident in what I was doing, I said, “Well, okay.”
The first two or three guys came in and it went just fine. It was just like all the massages I had done with the other lady. No big deal. Business as usual. The first guy gave me a twenty-dollar tip, which was excellent. But after I massaged the fourth client’s back, he turned over with the hugest boner I’d ever seen in my life, and I’m thinking, “Whoa… hold on Skippy.”
“Sir, I think you need to calm down.”
He started laughing.
“You need to calm down,” I repeated.
“I don’t think you get it.”
“No, that’s not something I take care of.”
He said, “No, you really don’t get it, do you? This is a massage parlor. The least you can do is give me a local.”
“A local what?”
“A local is a hand job.”
“A what?”
“I give you extra money to jerk me off.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No. Why do you think this place is so busy all the time?’”
Naively, I replied, “I figured they just needed a massage.”
It started to dawn on me that they needed their tension relieved, but not in the shoulders. “Oh my God,” I thought to myself. And then it hit me that my husband was pimping me out. I recognized this client as one of the guys in the waiting room when I walked in the first day. Frank and Bob had set me up; they had planned all of this.
I was beyond angry. “You can jerk yourself off. I’m not doing that to you.”
Finishing out my shift, I told Bob and his wife, “I understand the whole deal with this place now. And if you want me to stay here I will. But all I’ll be doing is giving massages.”
They said, “Well, we’ll see how it goes. That’s fine.”
They probably figured I was shell-shocked and I’d come around and give hand jobs and blow jobs or do it “all” like the other girls. But I did give a good massage and had regular clients who just wanted that, so I figured I could continue there.
When I got home I was really hurt and just looked at Frank and said, “What in God’s name did you get me into? Do you know what kind of place that is?”
“Yeah, I know what it is.”
“Why would you want your wife to work in a place like that?”
“I didn’t figure you would mind. It’s just a hand job.”
“You think I wouldn’t mind?! Most men don’t even want their wives looking at another man, much less touching their private parts.”
He looked at me blankly and repeated, “I didn’t think you would mind.”
“Well I do. You must not think very much of me if you’re willing to peddle me out like that.”
I went and slept on the couch. I didn’t know which way to turn or what to do. I had no family; I had no friends. All I had was a husband, and he was trying to pimp me out for a quick buck.
10. Alone Again
That was the