by Ben Foster
I glanced through the music library.
‘Norah Jones?’
‘If that’s what does it for you.’
The music was soothing and seemed to appear from beneath the water in the pool, adding a new layer of sensuality. It was midday but felt like midnight in a night club. When I had worked in the gym where I first met Rufus, the massage room was sporty with wood floors and steel lockers. The spa was more like a temple where the body was the object of worship and everything was designed to arouse and pamper the senses.
I had learned how to give hot stone massage, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to put theory into practise. I told Caroline to hold her breath to a count of ten and empty her mind of everything except the warmth seeping into her skin. The stones in the pool were of various sizes, flat, smooth and heated to a temperature where you could barely touch them. I laid a towel on her back, dried the first stone and placed it on her lumber region.
‘Breathe slowly and deeply. Hold an image of the sun in your mind. Imagine its healing rays spreading over your back.’
Most massages originated in the East, India and China. Stone massage comes from native American Indians, who warmed stones in the fire before placing them on and around injuries.
Once I was sure she could stand the heat, I removed the towel. I positioned stones in a T-shape on her shoulders and along her spine. Her skin was creamy and flawless. In the pale light, in the steamy air, her white bottom rose from the small of her back and I had an urge to give it a good hard slap. It was a reaction that would never before have crossed my mind, but that afternoon with Vivienne Raynott had opened doors inside me that may have been better left closed.
As the stones cooled, I scolded my fingers replacing them with hot stones. I did this several times. When the heat had penetrated the first layer of skin on her neck, shoulders and back, I returned the stones to the pool and warmed patchouli oil in my palms. I began by massaging her spinal muscles, an area prone to strains with the jolting movements of tennis. I continued the therapy by adding three stones to each of her legs, one in the middle of each thigh, one in the middle of her calf and one behind the kneecap. When the heat had radiated down her legs, I used a stone as a massage tool, rubbing it over the length of warmed skin, one leg after the other. I repeated the action ten times.
Norah Jones was singing I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight. I spoke softly in Caroline’s ear.
‘Keep your eyes closed. Turn over slowly.’
I held her shoulders as she did so and placed the towel in a strip across the area of her hips and trimmed pubis. I positioned hot stones on her bellybutton, heart and sternum, the long necktie-shaped bone that runs down the centre of the chest and connects to the ribs to form the ribcage.
When her skin was pink with heat, I removed the stones and added more oil to my palms. In a circular motion, I massaged her abdomen and chest. As my hands passed over her ribs, her breasts became firm and her nipples hardened from the rush of blood. I massaged her neck, her face and worked my fingertips over the top of her skull with its hidden information on personality, character and health.
I moved to the opposite end of the table. Caroline’s feet were long and slender with perfectly buffed toenails painted in translucent polish. She tensed, then relaxed as I dug my thumbs into the acupressure points.
‘Mmm, so good,’ she murmured.
I rolled the towel up to uncover the full length of her legs. I used long sweeping strokes with firm pressure to stimulate the calf muscles, over and around the knees, hamstrings and hips. As I repeated the movement, Caroline opened her legs so that I could reach the tops of her thighs. Her hips swayed, just slightly, but in a way that my fingertips couldn’t help but slip over the lips of her sex. My back was wet. I had an erection. I wasn’t sure if she was tormenting me or I was tormenting her.
‘Ben, you’re giving me goose bumps.’
‘Me, too,’ I replied.
‘Then you’d better fuck me.’
I suppose I was expecting this to happen. There wouldn’t have been locks on the door, or a Golden Rule, if there were no rules to break or secrets to conceal. I lowered the table as far as it would go. I slipped from my clothes and slipped without foreplay into Caroline.
‘Come inside me,’ she whispered.
It was quick, easy, natural, two human animals doing what they were designed to do. I felt no guilt. No remorse. No shame. Too much had happened for me to look back and think about who I used to be. This was my job. If prostitution is the oldest profession, ‘rubbing,’ as Hypocrites put it, was the second oldest, and the two have always been inextricably entwined.
She was all smiles as we dressed.
‘I want more. You’re a great fuck,’ she said. ‘Do you give private massage?’
‘I do.’
‘Give me your number.’
She went to take a shower and returned with her hair wrapped in a towel. She gave me £30.
‘That’s all I have on me.’
‘I don’t expect anything.’
‘If you don’t expect anything, you’ll never get anything. Remember that.’
I wrote down my mobile number and she placed the slip of paper in the robe. She turned to go, then turned back again.
‘I almost forgot. Vivienne sends her love,’ she said, and made her way down the corridor, flip flops drumming as she went.
Two seconds later, Denny poked his head into the reception area. He wore an enormous grin.
‘How did it go? All tickety-boo?’ he asked.
‘It was fine.’
‘She’s quite a woman, that one. Very full of herself. She likes to get her own way, I can tell.’ He paused. ‘Then, don’t we all.’
‘She had a tennis injury. I used the hot stones.’
‘Did you, now. I’m glad to hear it. It’s a fine thing when you have a customer leave with a big Cheshire cat grin on her face.’
I did two more massages that morning and took a twenty-minute swim before lunch. I had a piece of quiche with salad, a banana and Greek yoghurt. People don’t realise, but massage is strenuous and demanding. When you tease out the tightness balled up inside your clients, some of the tension enters the masseur. You have to be strong and pace yourself.
Over the coming weeks, I swam almost every day. I used the running, rowing and cross-country machines in the gym. I did the occasional skill swap with Vladimir, the tennis pro, thirty minutes on the courts for thirty minutes on the massage table. Jacqui, the hairdresser, trimmed my hair so it was always the same length. Dawn gave me the occasional manicure.
For a masseur, your hands are your livelihood. After several hours a day rubbing and firming fatigued muscles, my palms burned with pressure sores. Before I went to bed, I moisturised with QV Intensive Ointment and gave my hands a reflexology treatment. First, you relax your hands by shaking them and wriggling your fingers. You loosen your wrist the same way, then pinch the fingers and thumbs of each hand with enough force to be firm, not painful. Finally, with the thumb of one hand, you knead the palm and the undersides of your fingers.
Kelly made fun of this nightly ritual. She thought I was ‘mollycoddling’ myself because I worked at a ‘fancy’ spa, but the treatment was necessary now that I was giving as many as ten massages a day. Semi-clad bodies passed through the room like it was a conveyor belt. I saw so many beautiful women naked I stopped seeing them at all. My schedule was always full. Repeat bookings became the norm, which pleased Bethany Bolter and irritated Denny Doyle. For the moment, I was the blue-eyed boy, the flavour of the month.
What I soon learned was that some clients were only interested in what they called ‘extras.’ With those ladies, I put less effort into the massage, saving myself for the rigours of oral sex and intercourse. When men turned over on the table with an erection and the expectation that I would do something to relieve this condition, I left the room for a few minutes. I returned with two cups of water and spoke in my best Broad Norfolk, the language
of the fishermen.
‘You all right there, mate?’
They immediately got the message and I continued as if nothing had happened. I was more than happy to massage men. It offered a different challenge. Men have harder muscles and often suffer sports injuries that require serious therapy. ‘Extras’ were not, and never would be, on the itinerary.
That afternoon, on the first day, I did four more massages and had sex once more, with a middle-aged French woman who whispered oo la la in my ear. It was the first time she’d had sex in three years, she told me. She gave me £50, bringing the total that day to more than £200 in tips. It was, in fact, a modest day. The money grew over the weeks and months. I had so much cash, screwed up notes and folded in envelopes, every time I was in Twickenham, I deposited the money in our joint account at Nationwide.
Instead of emptying my pockets of small change for Kelly to feed the family, she now marched into the bank and drew out whatever she needed. We had lived from hand to mouth, mending, making do, going without. There had been days when Kelly and I went hungry so there was always food for the kids. Poverty grinds you down. It rips out your self-confidence. It turns you into a different person. I reminded myself of that every time I heard the word ‘extras.’
As I drove home from the spa, Napoleon Hill’s words on a loop, I would catch a glimpse of my eyes in the rear-view mirror and talk to myself: Ben Foster, you fuck women for money. What do you think about that? You’re a sex worker. A prostitute. Are you proud of yourself? Ashamed of yourself?
Why are you doing this?
I am doing this because it is a means to an end. We lived in poverty. Now we don’t. I was going nowhere. Now I’m going somewhere.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
I was on a merry-go-round. Every day, the money rolled in. Normally, when you look at your bank statement, there is always less than you thought. For Kelly, it was the reverse. Every week when she went to the bank, there was at least £1,000 more in the account than there had been the week before. She bought new clothes for herself and the children. We started to replace the worn out old furniture that had belonged to Gran and Kelly’s parents, often the cause of quarrels.
Kelly liked frilly, fancy things. My tastes had become more Zen, stark, simple, minimalist. We weren’t growing apart. But I was viewing the world from a different angle. I had moved on and Kelly made me realise that if you wanted to make the most of yourself, moving on is fundamental. It was stereotypically English to accept that we are born with a fixed ‘station’ in life. It’s what keeps the poor downtrodden. If Rudy Johnson could break the cycle, so could I. So could anyone.
Money had always been a problem. We’d never had enough. Now, Kelly thought we had too much. She was convinced I was doing something dishonest, that I was a drug dealer, or I passed secret information to terrorists. I told her a million times that the money came solely from tips for giving great massages. It was normal for rich people. They like service, I told her, and pay extra to make sure they get it. I don’t know that she was ever fully persuaded that the generosity was inspired by massage alone, but I kept to my line. She never saw my shaved genitals and she never knew that there were many occasions when it wasn’t only my hands that were damaged with pressure sores.
I had sex every day, twice a day, three times a day. Once, five times in one day. I remember that particular day because I made a remarkable discovery. I went for a swim when my shift was over. After my shower, I sat in the changing room eating a banana and Greek yogurt. Bananas give you a quick sugar boost. The yogurt was creamy, soothing. The changing room was empty. I stepped back into the shower, dipped into the tub and smoothed yogurt over the sides and around the inflamed tip of my penis. Yogurt calms thrush, or yeast, infections, in the vagina. For cock pains, Greek yogurt is the panacea.
Was I ever unable to perform? Sometimes I had to close my eyes and imagine Vivienne naked in her sculpture gallery. But, as a rule, Big Ben never let me down. Sex is addictive. The more you have, the more you want, the more you can. The penis is like a muscle. It grows stronger from use. More important, I learned how to control the environment. The massage room was my temple. I was the alchemist I had always wanted to be.
When women asked for ‘extras,’ it was obvious what they ‘wanted to achieve’ from the treatment. Some women showed through their body language that they had come for a massage. Nothing more. Between these two points, women who booked a session with open minds, almost without exception, succumbed to their subconscious fantasies and let themselves go with desires so wanton it surprised them that they could be so wild and uninhibited.
Why did so many women feel the desire to have sex with a stranger? I didn’t kid myself that I was special. It was a combination of the seductive aura of the massage room, the touch of caring hands sliding over their naked body. But there were other factors. A lot of women were married to powerful alpha males. Betraying them was a form of revenge. For others, it was payback because they knew their husband was having an affair. Some women lived with men who were abusive and controlling. In my temple, their wishes were my command. Some were in marriages that had grown stale. Others lived with men who treated them as virgins when they wanted to explore the whore who lived inside them. Older women felt flattered.
Women want to feel desired. They relish foreplay and afterplay. For many men, sex is like exercise, something to get over and done with. A lot of the women who came to Southley had partners who had gone to top public schools and a lot of those men seemed more comfortable with their chums than with women. They weren’t necessarily gay, but often came from households where their mother was distant, their sisters spoiled, the maids servile, and they had never learned how to treat women.
It is said that every woman is a potential prostitute. I stood the maxim on its head. Those women I turned on, often against their will, were the most thankful and gave the largest tips.
At the end of the month, a little over £5,000 had accumulated in the Nationwide account. I had a plan.
18
SPOILED CHILDREN
I received a call from a man with a chopped, military accent.
‘Ben Foster?’
‘That’s me.’
‘You know Zara Swift?’
‘We’ve met, yes.’
‘She wants to see you.’
‘For a massage?’
There was a pause on the line. ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘A massage.’
We arranged a time and met the following day at the Knightsbridge entrance to the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner.
When I told Kelly I was going to massage the Zara Swift, she wasn’t impressed.
‘Just make sure she pays.’
I gave her a hug. In the shifting sands of my life, Kelly at least was a fixed point; an oasis.
Zara Swift was one of the women I had met in the Great Hall at Lady Catherine’s house that day when I was ‘interviewed’ by the Committee. She was an actress more famous for being famous than for her roles. She had full lips, a husky voice and a shapely figure continually on the verge of falling out of the dresses she wore at parties and premieres photographed by the tabloid press.
Her fixer was just what I had expected, but six inches taller with shoulders so wide I imagined he had to move sideways like a crab when he entered a door. He was waiting, spine straight, hands behind his back as I climbed the hotel steps with my massage table and bag of oils.
‘Ben Foster?’
I nodded and followed him to a waiting car, a black Range Rover, obviously. He turned into Knightsbridge. In ten minutes, we arrived at an apartment building with two uniformed porters and chandeliers in the polished hall. No one spoke. We rode up in the lift to the second floor and he led me along the corridor with its wine red carpet and paintings on the walls. He knocked three times, then unlocked the door for me.
Before I entered, he showed me his mobile phone.
>
‘I won’t be far away,’ he said. ‘And one more thing, her name’s Gemma. Call her by her proper name.’
She was waiting in the drawing room smoking a cigarette which she stamped out when I entered.
‘Filthy habit,’ she said. ‘I hope Arnie didn’t bully you.’
‘No, not at all.’
‘So, where do you want me?’
I glanced around the room. It was crowded with furniture, paintings, famous people boxed up in silver frames, chinaware and ornaments judiciously placed and shiny with the hand of a cleaner.
‘I’ll have to be able to get around the table,’ I explained.
She stood and retied the black silk dressing gown she was wearing. She looked at me, as if she wasn’t quite sure why I was there, and looked about the room as if it was unfamiliar to her.
‘In here,’ she said.
She led the way into a bedroom with an expanse of pink carpet between the bed and an alcove with latticed windows. She watched as I lowered the blinds. I erected the table, lit candles and she was amenable to the wind chime music I chose. She wanted the Swedish massage she had ‘heard so much about.’
‘That takes about forty minutes. I charge £50. Is that okay?’
‘Yes, terrific.’
She gave a little shrug as she removed her gown and spread out face down on the table. Zara Swift naked. It was unbelievable. Everything about her was erotic, her body, her voice, her carved hipbones and collarbones. I warmed some jojoba oil in my palms, began with skimming, effleurage strokes and avoided the provocative moves I practised at the spa. Zara had given no hint that she wanted anything more than a massage and there was a gorilla outside with a mobile phone.
Denny Doyle called clients ‘fresh meat’ and the massage table the ‘butcher’s block.’ I made myself think of Zara Swift in that way, just a body that would age and decay and turn to dust. Like us all. She was relaxed to begin with. She purred when I unravelled the knots in her shoulders. But as the session progressed, I could feel tension rising into my hands.