Gigolo

by Ben Foster

  She was also the rudest woman I had ever met. Maddy had booked a massage with me a couple of days after my experience with Zara Swift. I suspected that Zara had told her some terrible story, that I’d seduced her or attacked her. Had Maddy Page come to wreak revenge? Was I being paranoid again? I wasn’t sure, but the moment I locked the door in the massage room, I had a feeling it was going to end badly.

  Maddy was beautiful, of course. She was one of the most beautiful women in the country. But she had a hardness about her, like a shell, a stiff set to her lips and a gaze that could turn you to stone. When she stretched out on the table, I asked her to hold her breath and she replied: ‘Shush. Just get on with it.’

  It is normal during massage to say comforting words and ask clients if they feel okay. When I spoke to Maddy, she either didn’t reply, or said ‘Be quiet.’ When she turned over – that rare vision, a woman more beautiful than her photograph – she stared into my eyes as if she was trying to read my thoughts. I spent more time massaging her face and head than her torso and legs. I applied soft, circumspect strokes with open palms, and she remained frosty throughout the session. She didn’t say thank you and didn’t tip.

  Was Maddy Page bi-polar?

  It’s hard to say. Having being so impolite at Southley, she couldn’t have been nicer that afternoon with Vivienne. The girls were different in almost every way, yet similar in that they were fantasy women, untouchable, as if they belonged to an alien species, eyes deep but distant like tunnels or black holes. They clearly enjoyed each other’s company and made me feel as they moved around me as if I were one of the sculptures in the studio, an object merely of interest for aesthetic reasons.

  Vivienne gave Big Ben a shave. I then positioned myself on a plastic sheet on the studio floor, naked, my knee bandaged, as if posing for one of the hard core photographs on the wall. Maddy mixed plaster of Paris with warm water in a bowl and stirred the mixture until it was as thick as cream. She then produced a square of cardboard and cut a hole in the centre. Vivienne sucked my cock until the blood ran hot through the veins and the flesh was hard.

  Maddy then did an incredible trick with a condom. She removed it from the foil packet, held the rubber in a ring between her lips and unrolled it down the length of my cock.

  ‘That’s amazing, where did you learn that?’ Vivienne said.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ she replied.

  Maddy threaded my cock through the hole in the cardboard, then slid the sheet down to the base to form a platform. There is a loose bulb at the top of a condom. Vivienne snipped it off with nail scissors, leaving just the eye in the tip of my penis exposed. She coated the sheath in baby oil before Maddy caked my cock in warm plaster, smoothing the mixture around the column with her fingers. Vivienne squeezed my balls to make sure I didn’t become limp. Not that it was necessary. The plaster contracted as it dried.

  Now came the hard part. I had to remain motionless and erect for thirty minutes while the plaster set. To achieve this, while I remained propped up on my elbows with the beehive shaped mound of plaster rising like some terrible growth above my groin, Vivienne and Maddy kissed each other in a way that was far more sensual than any kiss you will see between a man and a woman.

  It is not easy to keep an erection going for half an hour and I was growing soft when Maddy removed the mould. She eased it slowly up and down until it slid off, the hollow image of my cock captured inside. Vivienne unrolled the condom and used some oil to clean off the flecks of plaster stuck in the narrow seam at the top of my penis.

  ‘Christmas presents,’ she said, and the girls burst out in laughter.

  In bed, they bathed Big Ben with their little pink tongues and I was home in time to read the children a story at bedtime.

  It wasn’t easy to concentrate.

  A ménage à trois with Vivienne Raynott and Maddy Page. It was unbelievable. A fairy tale. Hallucinogenic. It was like I had put a pinprick in space and strange, alien things had come tumbling into my life. Vivienne had said I was a highwire walker and that was so clever, so true. I was moving across the void on an invisible thread.

  ‘Why me?’ I kept asking myself.

  I had no idea then. And I have no idea now.

  There were not enough hours in the day to give all the massages that were required and it annoyed Bethany when clients were turned away. Southley was on the lookout for a third masseur. Men were more popular and, truth be told, being stronger, were better at massage.

  Rachel, the second masseuse, never returned from holiday. Apparently, that happened when girls went to Ibiza. Not that I knew this from personal experience. I had never been out of England. Rachel was replaced by Diane Dunham, Dee-Dee, a willowy girl of twenty-three with sharp features, short blonde hair and a taste for dark carmine lipstick. She was from a background not unlike my own.

  Just as Denny had showed me the ropes, I did the same for Dee-Dee. On the afternoon of her first day, I found her sobbing in massage room 2. A guy had tried to put his erection in her hand and she had frozen in fear. The session had ended with the guy stalking out and Dee-Dee in tears.

  ‘What if he complains?’ she cried.

  ‘What’s he going to say? I wanted to sexually harass your masseuse and she wouldn’t let me?’

  ‘He might.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  I told her what I did when those occasions arose. I went out and got two cups of water, then continued breezily as if nothing had happened.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t happen with women clients,’ she said

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  ‘I didn’t realise . . . ’

  ‘Grateful people give large tips. In the end, that’s what it’s all about.’

  ‘Making money?’

  ‘What plays in the massage room stays in the massage room. Not!’ She smiled. She was learning. ‘We are in the service industry. You give whatever service you feel comfortable with. Just do what feels right.’

  ‘Are you saying, you know, that you do it with the clients?’

  ‘Every day.’

  Dee-Dee’s dark lips fell open.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  That was Monday morning on her first day. On Thursday, she did a line of coke with a soap star. She gave him a blowjob. He gave her £200. On Friday, she saw on her schedule ‘a very well-known name,’ another member of the cast. I watched as they entered the massage room. He must have said something funny and Dee-Dee was laughing. When they left the room forty-five minutes later, her eyes were glassy and bright. He kissed her cheek before strolling down the corridor in his robe back to his room.

  Dee-Dee still looked as if she was on a high when we had a few minutes alone later that day. She blurted out that she had once dreamed of ‘copping off’ with that particular actor and couldn’t believe the dream had become reality.

  I remembered when I had first got together with Maggs and Vivienne that I had been dying to tell someone, not to boast, exactly, but to share the sheer incredulity of it. That’s how Dee-Dee felt. She had wept the first time a man put his cock in her hand. The uncertainty vanished with the £1,000 she started to put in the bank every week from tips.

  Sex is not the obvious and only outcome of massage. Physiotherapists with the NHS provide therapies to reduce blood pressure, muscle pain, tension, insomnia. In cancer patient, massage alleviates nausea, anxiety and depression. Sports massage strengthens muscles to prevent injures, restores mobility to damaged tissue, and quickens the healing of sprains and strains. It was a field that interested me and I planned to go for more training when I had the time.

  In the massage rooms, the smell of exotic oils in the half-light and the repetitive sound of running water lent itself to sensuality. The American architect who had designed Southley had created an erotic temple to the senses. The touch of warm hands on bare flesh quickened the libido of the most introverted and repressed. Sex was the very air we breathed. I had never wanted to be a gigolo. Dee-Dee never thought when she was st
udying massage that she would become a sex worker. You take the money once and it is easier the second time. After the second time you are what you do and there seems to be no way back.

  According to Bethany, Mr Vijayakumar was the ‘richest man in India.’ He was the owner of steel smelting plants all over the world, a man in his mid-sixties, short and muscular with a heavy moustache and thick dark hair.

  He had just married Lakshmi, a girl in her twenties, the perfect representation of the Hindu goddess of prosperity, after whom she had been named. She was slender, inscrutable, with a haunted expression and creamy, cappuccino-coloured skin. There was something about her green and gold eyes that made me think of a rare animal being hunted to extinction.

  Mr Vijayakumar was like a lot of men who came to Southley. They ruined their health working to get rich and, once they were rich, they married beautiful young women and spent their money trying to get their health back. While he played tennis with Vladimir, he had booked Lakshmi for the Ayurvedic massage, a full-body treatment developed thousands of years ago in India and with which, I assumed, she was familiar.

  We went through the booking process and she lowered her eyes as she gave one word answers to my queries. I opened the door to treatment room 3, my favourite refuge, and she watched blankly as I shot the bolt. She removed her robe and gave it to me to hang up. I had learned that wealthy Asian clients came from households with scores of servants and were not expected to do anything for themselves.

  Lakshmi kept the towel wrapped about herself as she climbed up on to the table. She hesitated for a beat when I asked her to lift up so I could remove it. I folded the towel and placed it over her lower back and bottom.

  ‘Take deep breaths. Relax. Tell me if you need anything.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied.

  I lit fresh juniper candles, said to promote self-assurance, and chose jasmine oil, reputedly an aphrodisiac. I turned the temperature up a notch and played Tantra Trance with strings, a sitar, drums and distant voices that call to the inner ear.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She nodded and I removed the towel. She grew tense but slowly relaxed. She was aware suddenly of her nakedness, aware that she was alone with an unknown man in a locked room, aware of the music drumming hypnotically inside her skull.

  ‘Empty your mind. Don’t think of anything.’

  ‘That is not difficult,’ she said.

  I warmed the oil in my palms and smoothed it over her back and shoulders. I began with reverse effleurage. I moved my hands down either side of her spine, over her bottom, up the sides of her body, then back to the top. I applied more pressure for the second sweep, my hands planing over her skin like a skater on ice, every motion slow, calming, sensual. Eventually, I allowed my fingertips to glide over her rosebud. She tensed, but instantly relaxed and imperceptibly parted her legs.

  As we move across life’s sea of experience, we collect barnacles, unwanted memories, unresolved wounds that cling to our subconscious minds. Ayurvedic massage is the antidote. The treatment strengthens the nervous system, nourishes bodily tissues and promotes good health. I assumed Lakshmi already knew that. She was as smooth as a glass of milk without a knot cluster to work out of her muscles.

  During massage, electromagnetic energy passes between the therapist and the client. I felt her energy enter my hands and move through my body. I had set out to seduce the girl. Why, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps, to see if I could. Perhaps because Mr Vijayakumar was three times her age and stinking rich. I felt ashamed, but also an overwhelming desire which transferred to Lakshmi. It was a feeling of passion mixed with love; love in the sense that we love those rare beasts on the edge of extinction.

  She turned over. I coated my hands in oil and massaged her abdomen. As I slid my palms up her chest, she placed her hands over mine. Not a word was said. She looked into my eyes, tightened her grip on the backs of my hands and rolled my palms in a circular motion over her breasts. Her nipples jutted out, dark red like ripe fruit. I took the flaming teats, one after the other, and bit down gently. She sighed and squirmed. I lowered the table. She lifted her legs in an arch. My tongue tip found her clitoris and she rocked back and forth, her breath beating harder and harder.

  I stripped from my clothes. When I entered her, she began to moan, the sound growing until she reached her climax and screamed so loudly I would not have been surprised if someone had broken down the door fearing a murder was taking place. Her orgasm went on and one. It was a tsunami. Her voice echoed around the room until it sounded like a choir of voices. Only slowly did she calm down as her orgasm ebbed and faded.

  When we left the massage room, I was stunned to see Mr Vijayakumar sitting in the reception area in his tennis clothes reading The Economist. He stood, smiling, and reached for his wife’s hand.

  ‘How was it, my darling?’ he asked.

  ‘I feel better now.’

  He looked back at me. ‘She hates flying. It’s always upsetting.’

  ‘Then massage is always the answer,’ I told him.

  Next day, I was surprised to see Mr Vijayakumar’s name on my list and thought he was probably going to kill me once we were alone. Then, I had another thought. Perhaps he was gay and was expecting to get the same treatment as his wife. I was wrong on both counts. He told me he didn’t like massage. It was too static. He was a man of action, tennis, polo, cricket. But Lakshmi had made the recommendation.

  ‘I have learned two things,’ he added. ‘The old should learn from the young, and husbands should always take the advice of their wives.’

  He wanted a chakra massage, a deep-relaxation therapy to still the mind and access positive feelings. The session went without incident and Lakshmi was waiting for him when it was over. It was the last day of their stay. The very, very rich have very rich lives and never stay anywhere very long.

  The following morning, before they left, Mr Vijayakumar came to see me.

  ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I wanted to thank you personally and most profoundly.’ He paused. ‘May I speak openly, man to man?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Last night, I was very relaxed. Very serene.’ He smiled and his head jiggled from side to side. ‘I finally awakened my wife’s kundalini. She had an orgasm. Her first. I am sure it is thanks to your massage.’

  He gave me a hotel envelope, thick with its contents, and we shook hands.

  When he turned away, I realised it was the first time I had seen him wearing glasses. On each arm of the frames was a silver receiver with a miniature speaker that fitted in the ear. Mr Vijayakumar was deaf.

  20

  COMEDY OF ERRORS

  In my teens, I leapt into things without looking or thinking about the consequences. With a family to support, I had largely got over that, but on occasions slipped back into my bad old ways.

  After the hottest summer on record, December felt like cosmic revenge with ice rain and freezing fog. I spoke to my mum in Lowestoft where it was -2° C and felt lucky not to be going out that morning on a fishing boat to trawl the North Sea. It was just above freezing in London. Flu had swept through the laundry. Kelly was filling in on the morning shift and I drove to Nationwide with the kids to deposit some money.

  It was the Thursday before Christmas. London Road was a blaze of lights and we hurried along with the wind biting our cheeks. The boys were wrapped up in red woolly hats and Timberland puffa coats. Claire had forgotten her gloves. I gave her mine and she walked along pretending she was a monster with giant hands.

  When we passed the travel agent’s, I stopped for a moment. Just looking at the posters of sunny beaches pasted on the windows gave me a warm glow. In July, we had complained about the heat. How quickly we forget.

  ‘I’m cold,’ Claire said.

  ‘Me, too,’ I replied. ‘Come on, let’s take a look.’

  We squirreled in and I glanced through the brochures. Two weeks in the Canary Islands in a four-star hotel with flights included would set me
back £1,990. It just so happened that in my pocket I had £2,000 in an envelope that Mr Vijayakumar had given me on his last day at the spa. I had worked a lot of extra days. I was due some holiday time. I took out the envelope and was about to start counting out the money, when a vision of Bethany with gritted teeth and an angry red face rose into my mind.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I said, and the travel agent tapped my arm as I reached for my phone.

  ‘Just let me say,’ he began. ‘I’m packing this in next year. Hard to make a go of it, what with the internet. If it’s a cash deal, I’ll give you ten per cent off.’

  He was an older guy with silver streaks in his hair and an anxious look in his eyes. He needed a massage

  ‘Sounds good to me. I just have to make a call first,’ I said.

  When I told Bethany I wanted to take two weeks off from the 3rd of January, her instinct was to say no, even though January was a quiet month. Just as the rich go to the Mediterranean in August, after Christmas they top up their tans in the Caribbean.

  Bethany spoke in her brusque, offended voice. ‘You’ve left it late, Ben, I must say. Anastasia’s not back until the sixth.’

  ‘It’s only a few days.’

  ‘Can’t you change the dates?’

  ‘It’s a fixed package.’

  ‘You’re putting me in an awkward situation. Very awkward.’ She paused. ‘You’ll have to work over the holidays and do some extra days before you go.’

  ‘I’m glad to do that, as many as you want,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate it, Beth. We’ve never been abroad before.’

  Her tone changed. ‘That’s nice. The kids will enjoy that. Where are you going?’

  ‘The Canary Islands.’

  ‘Sounds lovely. Try to get in early tomorrow.’

  She clicked off and I looked back at the agent. ‘I’ll take that ten per cent,’ I said.

  The boys watched the pile of £50 notes stack up on the desk and did a jig like soccer players when they score a goal. Claire looked confused.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she demanded and I picked up her up.