Confessions of an Erotic Masseuse: A Memoir

by Alexa Salinger

  “That’s mean,” I say. “And I don’t think you’d do that.”

  “Oh, loosen up. Tonight’s your night. It’s now or never. And you have nothing to lose. More fish in the sea.”

  “I doubt it,” I say, as I go into my bedroom to find an Aubree-approved outfit.

  She follows me and opens my closet, crouching down and pulls out a pair of ankle boots. “Here you go, for starters.”

  I take them from her and step back as she pulls out dresses from my closet. I hate dresses, mostly because I’m always cold when the sun goes down, even in the summer. I’ve been told I should show off my legs more, but I’m more comfortable in jeans, even skinny jeans are better than bare legs in forty-degree weather.

  “Wear this,” she says as she tosses a cranberry-colored Piperlime dress onto the bed.

  “Fine.” I pout. At least this belted dress goes to my knees and has a measure of class. I know that hose are totally out, so I just suck it up and push my feet into the boots.

  Aubree stands back and smiles. “Perfect. Sexy, but not too slutty.”

  “Thanks,” I say sarcastically.

  ***

  “I think it’s a loose nut in the trap,” Cole says from under the sink. “I have no idea how that would’ve happened, but I just need to get a part from the truck and I’ll be right back.”

  After Cole leaves, I give Aubree a what-now look.

  She goes to the counter and pours a new glass of wine. When Cole steps inside with hands full, she holds it out to him.

  “Care for a drink?” she says.

  “Oh, thanks, you can put it over there.” He nods toward the counter.

  “Alexa and I are going to Lucky Joe’s, wanna come? It’s her treat for fixing the sink.”

  “I have to meet up with someone later.” His voice echoes into the under-the-sink cabinet. Metal clatters against the pipe.

  I give Aubree an I-told-you-so expression. That person is probably his new girlfriend and the thought of it makes me cringe.

  “And Alexa doesn’t have to buy me a drink. This is my responsibility.” His perfectly toned ass is sticking out and I can’t stop staring at it. Thank God there isn’t a mirror underneath the sink.

  Aubree might be right: this is my last chance and what do I have to lose? It’s unlikely that he would kick me out of the carriage house for having a crush on him. Awkward, yes, but what the hell, it would be even more awkward seeing him with his new girlfriend.

  “So is that a yes?” she asks. “Just one drink,”

  “I guess I can go,” he says, looking at his watch. “You made it seem like a huge plumbing disaster so I thought it’d take longer.”

  “We’ll get you back in time,” I say.

  Aubree hands him his glass of wine. “Let’s toast.”

  “To?” he says.

  “Alexa’s new place,” she says, giving me a wink.

  We clink glasses and Aubree fills up Cole’s again even though he’s only had a sip.

  “Whoa,” he says. “I’m good.”

  “Let’s finish up and go,” she says.

  Cole and I nod and he gives me a puzzled expression.

  “I’ll be the designated driver,” Aubree sings as she grabs her coat and fishes keys out of her purse.

  In an instant, she’s out the door, leaving Cole and I standing inside. The Hummer roars.

  “How’re you?” he asks, touching me on the shoulder. “I feel like we haven’t talked much since last time.”

  “I’m well,” I say with a shrug. I want to lean in and hug him, but I don’t.

  “Are you meeting up with your girlfriend later?” I ask.

  The space between his eyes crinkles into an eleven. “She’s not really my girlfriend,” he says.

  “Oh.”

  He cocks his head. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you calling her my girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I’m confused,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Let’s go. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

  “Who cares? How do you even know her?”

  “You’ve met her before,” I say.

  “Oh right, at the strip club.”

  “And Home Depot,” I say, a little too eagerly as if that should take precedence over the strip club, which is ancient history.

  “Let’s talk later, okay?”

  I nod.

  “I’m serious,” he says. “There’s obviously something up.”

  I hate being bitchy, which even I know is not the best way to win a guy. I’d never be like this to a client. But with those guys, my feelings aren’t involved. I’m in much deeper with Cole.

  ***

  By the time, we get to Lucky Joes’s, after a brief, yet stilted, in-the-car small talk, I’m glad that Aubree will be the driver for the evening because I need a drink. Or two or ten. I feel frustrated that I chose sex work over trying to have a healthy relationship with someone who would be a great father to my daughter. Yet, I still feel like I had no other means to support myself, getting a $12 per hour job would not sustain us.

  “I’ll get the first round,” Aubree says, pointing toward the bar.

  “We’ll get a table,” I say.

  I move through the crowd. I feel Cole’s heat pushed up against me and in my periphery I see his arm, making a break in the crowd as if parting the sea. Protective, always protective, even though he has another girl in his life. A woman, probably. One of those feminist types that corrects a guy when he says girl. One with a college degree mounted on the wall and a sorority sweatshirt dangling in her walk-in closet. She probably even had a period of dabbling in lesbianism while pursuing her undeclared major; unlike me, she did it for kicks, rather than to pay for princess pink ballet shoes.

  Cole pulls out my chair. It’s prime time at the bar, still early enough to get the happy hour prices.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  You already did, I think smugly.

  “Of course,” I say.

  He squints as if the bar noise is hitting him in the head.

  “Are you trying to set me up with your friend?”

  “No!” I say. So this is what he thinks the night is about? Maybe he’s more clueless than I thought.

  “Oh, okay,” he says, looking around the bar. “I just thought..”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Just a sense. Like the night is being directed somehow.”

  I wonder if he can tell that the loose nut or whatever it was, was contrived. I have no idea what Aubree actually did. Or how obvious that destructive maneuver was.

  I don’t know what to say and therefore shrug. Usually in these awkward moments, I fish out a compliment....what do you do to stay in such great shape? ...my, how well endowed you are!

  Once again, though, with Cole, I’m at a loss. He’s not lying naked on my massage table, looking up at me with doleful eyes, asking if he can touch my breasts.

  “She’d not your type,” I say, leaning forward as if I’m saying something intimate.

  “True.” His face relaxes.

  “I know you’d never date an ex-stripper,” I say, forcing one of those smiles that peels back the lips from the teeth, but animates little more.

  He shakes his head vigorously. “Not necessarily, is that what you think?”

  “Then why?”

  “Well,” he says, drawing out the word and looking upward. “I guess it could have something to do with her drinking. She hasn’t stopped guzzling all night. Or pushing it on us. I think we should take a taxi home.”

  “She’s fine,” I say. “She just likes to party.”

  “Obviously.”

  “She’s moving soon.”

  “Oh, is she?”

  I catch the nastiness in his tone. It shouldn’t surprise me that Cole isn’t comfortable around Aubree, not because she’s got man-eater written all over her, but because she’s alpha, like Cole, which is proba
bly why I get along with both of them, but the reason their personalities collide.

  “By the way, I would date a stripper,” he says with a solid stare.

  “Really?” I don’t believe it.

  “An ex-stripper.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I have become a petulant child.

  “You weren’t interested,” he says, his voice louder now. His words land like an angry fist on the table.

  Aubree walks up holding all three beers easily. Like me, she’s done some time as a waitress.

  Cole and I look from out laps to the beers.

  “Why does everyone look so pissy? This isn’t a funeral; drink up,” she says, pushing the beers closer to us.

  “Hey Joe!” she says looking above my head as her hand shoots up in the air as if answering a question. “I’ll be back,” she says, taking her drink with her.

  Cole’s eyes follow Aubree as she slides off the chair and disappears into the crowd.

  “Let’s just be honest for once, Alexa.”

  I feel ill, like the first time I got onstage to strip. And I wish I had more to drink.

  “You first,” I say, pulling a thread on my mitten.

  “Okay.” Cole pushes his drink to the side. He’s no closer to me, but it’s a move that makes me think he’s trying to remove obstacles, blaze a table-top path littered with dribbles of beer and torn wet napkin bits. “Is this bitter act your way of suggesting that you want to date?”

  “Is this your way of asking me if I want to date? Because you never have before.”

  Cole looks like I just spit in his face. “Yes, I have.”

  “That was a very long time ago,” I say.

  “I think you know how to read people.”

  “You have a date tonight”

  “I can cancel it.”

  “Just tonight?”

  “Indefinitely,” he says.

  I’m smiling now, a real smile where my cheeks actually hurt and I couldn’t force a frown if I tried.

  He takes my hand. “Can we leave?”

  “Let’s.”

  I find Aubree playing pool in the corner, lapping up attention from a couple of fawning guys.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says and waves me off. “You owe me,” she mouths as I look back one more time.

  Unfortunately, I never saw her again after that night.

  Forty-Two

  Cole and I went back to my place and had our first no-reading-between-the-lines conversation about how we felt.

  I could go into all sorts of detail about what it felt like when he kissed me for the first time or waking up next to him, but I won’t, because that would make him like the other guys I’ve written about in this book. And Cole is different.

  As soon as I leaned in for our first kiss, I knew I couldn’t go back to work the next day. And it was over with Jack. Luckily, I had money saved and a future plan.

  I deleted my google voice number and got a job working in a library, a temporary thing until my student loans come through and then in a few short months, I’ll be in dental hygiene school.

  It was to dismantle my business. I gave my studio landlord thirty days’ notice, deleted my ads, and donated all my studio furnishings to the local thrift store. It took a day. I stood in my studio for a few minutes marinating in the empty space.

  I have no idea if Cole and I will survive as a couple. I have not shared anything of my body rub work with him, but if nothing else, I’m glad he got me out of sex work. After more than a decade of being fondled for money, I’m done and going back is no longer an option. At least I think. You see, I have this other plan, one where I wouldn’t be doing the rubs, I’d own the business—a spa like the one I used to work in. It’s just a thought. We’ll see.

  Body Rub Quiz

  1. When calling a body-rub girl ad off Backpage, the perfect opening line is:

  a) Hey sweetie! What's up, Babe? (wink, wink, eagerly amorous, I'm erect already!)

  b) Do your massages come with a happy ending? (direct, no-nonsense, but self-incriminating and slightly daft)

  c) Can you send more pictures? (she's already hung up)

  d) I'm responding to your ad and wondering if you have time for an appointment today? (ah, sweet, sensible, and intelligent)

  Answer: D

  2. When conversing with your sex worker during the rub, it's best to discuss:

  a) How likely it is that she'll fuck you for free if you buy her dinner (hopeful, fiscally-sound, but naive)

  b) Why she never went to college (she's wondering too!)

  c) How she got into "this line of work" (ahem, where else can an uneducated girl make $140.hr?)

  d) hobbies, local happenings, food, TV, weird random stories of your travels (ah, what's a guy like you doing with a girl like me?)

  e) knock-knock jokes

  Answer: D

  3. When preparing for your rub or any other sexual service, it's best to:

  a) trim or shave those wiley pubic hairs (hygienic and thoughtful)

  b) apply a hefty dose of Old Spice (masculine and overpowering in an olfactory way)

  c) don your thong and get a DARK bronze at the local Tanning Booth (even naked, she can't picture you without the banana hammock)

  d) send her naked pictures of yourself to get her excited (oh, silly me, that’s sooo obvious)

  Answer: A

  4. If you are entirely new at this, you should:

  a) call a body rub ad off backpage and ask exactly what this entails (naively efficient and self-incriminating)

  b) book a body rub and ask exactly what this entails when you show up (still self-incriminating)

  c) check her reviews (pragmatic and savy)

  d) see what happens when you get there (spontaneous but not incriminating)

  Answer: C or D

  Glossary

  Body rub—also called an erotic massage, generally involves a massage from an unlicensed person, who is often nude or topless, and finishes with a hand job.

  Body Slide—while fully nude and heavily oiled, girl slides against the naked client, lifting up just before genitals connect

  Escort—nicer term for prostitute

  FBSM—full body sensual massage, using includes a hand job

  Full service—intercourse

  Incall—client goes to provider’s place

  Jack Shack—an establishment that offers massages with a hand job (or more).

  Multiple shots on goal (MSOG)—a session where the guy comes more than once.

  Outcall—escort/provider goes to client’s location

  Provider—sex worker, most commonly escort or erotic masseuse.

  Release—hand job

  Author Bio

  Alexa Salinger lives in California with her daughter. You can reach her at http://myconfessionsasaneroticmasseuse.blogspot.com.

  Author’s Note:

  If you have feedback, both positive and negative, about this book, I’d be happy to receive it at alexasalinger86@gmail.com.