The things that keep us up at night

I’m in the privileged position of being able to talk or write fairly easily about the vast majority of my sexual experiences. If I wanted to, I could bash out 500 words right now on the first time I had anal, or the night I ended up in bed with my childhood crush at my sister’s wedding, or the ten most interesting places I’ve done it. That’s because, for the most part, my sex life has been happy and straightforward (if not always uncomplicated). I’ve never been assaulted or abused; after a few false starts, I haven’t suffered from any significant performance issues (insert joke here); and while I might shy away from putting a label on it (hetero-flexible? Bi-curious? Straight-but-y’know-interested-in-cock?), I don’t generally struggle to understand or express my sexuality.

In other words, I’m very very lucky. I hope I would be aware of my good fortune anyway, but eight-plus years of reading (and occasionally writing) sex blogs has been both educational and humbling in that respect. Inspiring too: I’ve been sitting on something for a few days now, feeling too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it; it was only this evening, when I thought back to some of the pieces I’ve read, and the traumas, dilemmas and confessions that other bloggers have candidly committed to print, that I gathered up the courage to dig into what happened the other night.

I should probably get the bare bones of it out of the way up front: on Friday evening I paid the equivalent of about £35 for a hand-job from a masseuse, who, it turns out, moonlights as a sex worker. It was the first time I’ve paid for sex, and I suspect it’ll be the last, though of course it’s dangerous to deal in absolutes. There are several reasons why it’s been nagging away at me since it happened, but one of the biggest is that I don’t really know how to feel about the whole affair; five years ago, I would’ve been horrified with myself…but then five years ago, I would have identified polysexuality with Mormonism, and regarded transsexuals with something approaching revulsion. Five years ago…well, let’s just say that I was pretty dumb back then, and that I’m grateful for the education I’ve had in the intervening period.

Anyway, yes, Friday. For a while now, I’ve had back problems; nothing major, but enough that the combination of nine hours a day hunched over a computer screen, and a refusal to give up high-intensity sports, has resulted in sporadic bouts of joint and muscle pain. Massage helps with that. Massage helps with lots of things, actually: knots in my neck, tightness in my calves…clutter in my head too, from time-to-time. It also feels really good – I can’t remember whether I’ve mentioned this before, but stroking my back is pretty much the quickest way to render me insensible. A couple of months ago, I found a spa here that seemed reputable. It was in a courtyard in the city centre, right next to a big business hotel, and it had a proper website, which listed its treatments and prices. On my first visit, I was asked which muscles I had problems with, and the hour-long sports massage I received was professional, thorough, and, I discovered over the next few days, incredibly helpful.

So helpful, in fact, that I recommended the spa to a friend who came to visit me here. I mentioned it to colleagues. I even wrote about it, in a December blog entry. And of course I booked a second appointment, this time for a full body massage, which, again, I left feeling much better than I had as I walked down from my office. Before I left though, I spoke to the woman on the front desk, who asked me whether I’d enjoyed the massage. We chatted for a bit – she’s very attractive, and I was pretty obviously angling for her number – and at the end of the conversation, she told me that next time I came in, she’d make sure that she was available to deliver the treatment personally.

That was a week or two before Christmas. When I returned after the holidays, I called the spa and booked a massage for the end of my first week back at work. I arrived, and was shown into the treatment room by my new friend Magda, who left me to shower and get ready. I should be clear about one thing: at that point, I suspected nothing. Nada. I’ve been offered sex for money before, but only on street corners in Soho, and hotel corridors in Hong Kong. Seedy back alleys and their equivalents, basically. This place did not fall into that category. However, when I look back, of course there were signs: whereas the other masseuse had waited for me to knock on the door when I was ready, Magda simply breezed in after a few minutes, just as I was picking up the towel to wrap round my naked body; then, after 15 minutes of pounding and pummelling my feet and legs, she snapped me out of the haze I was falling into by telling me that I had a ‘really great body’. With hindsight…

But then a good massage does funny things to your brain. I end up in a bit of a druggy fog, my thoughts and reactions dulled by dopamine. On Friday, four days removed from my last orgasm and half an hour or so into the massage, my brain didn’t really respond when Magda’s hand reached between my legs and started fondling my cock – instead it remained on stand-by while my body grunted and pushed back towards her. Five minutes later, she asked me to roll onto my back, and as I did so she eased the towel down onto the floor.

If I feel guilty, it’s because that’s the point at which I could’ve said no. By then, I knew what was happening, and certainly could have asked her to replace the towel, or simply got up and walked out; instead, I lay there, and let her rub oil into my inner thighs, then move up to stand with her breasts over my face while she massaged my chest and stomach. By the time she actually took the final step and wrapped her hand around my dick, I was rock-hard and aching for her to really touch me. I’d also woken up enough to think that maybe, just maybe, she was doing this because she liked me; that this wasn’t a service so much as a very aggressive form of courtship. I know: the things we allow ourselves to believe.

I won’t go into too much detail about the rest of it. Except to say this: I might have been naive, or self-deluded, or otherwise determined to avoid confronting the obvious, but when she kissed me, I got properly caught up in the moment…because it really was that – a moment. Just like you might experience on a first date, or with the person you’ve fancied for months: passionate, intense…the sort of thing you’re glad you’re already lying down for, essentially. After that, she stepped back and I just surrendered to what felt like the inevitable. Not that it took long for that to arrive: I was incredibly turned-on and she was very good, so a couple of minutes later I closed my eyes and came all over…well, all over everything.

The immediate aftermath was…not great. She left the room five minutes after my orgasm, and at that point I started to feel really low. I didn’t cry in the shower, but I was very close to doing so: mostly though, I was just dazed and confused. I hadn’t prepared myself emotionally for that kind of experience, even if my physical response had been fairly unambiguous. After towelling off, I was torn between dressing really quickly and getting the hell out of Dodge; and taking my time, delaying the point at which I’d have to go out into the foyer and confront what had happened.

I’m glad I did confront it though. I’m not sure this story has a happy ending (yes, yes), but actually going up to Magda and looking her in the eye really helped. It reminded me that she was still just a regular person, and that I shouldn’t treat her – or myself – differently as a result of what had happened. We spoke for a while, not least because I was curious about how the whole arrangement worked; she told me that they offer a discreet ‘VIP service’ for guests they like and trust…flattery I allowed myself to succumb to, and use as insulation against whatever dark thoughts might be just round the corner. She told me to come again soon; I lied, and said that I would. The money conversation was awkward, but mercifully brief. And that was that. I walked out into the frosty night, and didn’t stop till I reached alcohol.

So how do I feel about it now? I really don’t know. Perhaps the best way of putting it is that I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. From what I could glean, Magda wasn’t being exploited in any way, nor was it the sort of arrangement that involved an obviously high level of physical risk or coercion. I have a much more enlightened attitude to sex workers now than I did a few years ago, and I recognise that consensually trading a hand-job for money probably carries with it no more ethical baggage than selling various other goods or services. Still, I’m not comfortable. I chewed it over in my head all weekend, and couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d done something wrong; that I’d lied to myself in some way, by getting into that situation and allowing it all to happen without first creating a conscious decision-point. I don’t know whether writing about it here will help, and I may very well take this post down at some point – I certainly wouldn’t want my Mum to read it, though I suppose that applies to most things on this site. However, life has gone on as normal, and I certainly don’t feel like a different, or lesser person. Nor do I think any less of Magda than I did when I assumed she was just a regular masseuse. Perhaps it’s just another sexual experience to process and learn from: less straightforward and unambiguously positive than most, for sure, but only really harmful if I allow it to be.

What do *you* think?