KILL YOUR INNER CHILD by Samuel Bernstein

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Happy Endings

If you talk about Marianne Williamson and Eastern religious beliefs before and after, is it still prostitution?

After my friend Pam's suicide, and once I settle in Los Angeles, seeking a new life (again) amid all the raucous, Technicolor flora, I find spiritual connection with practitioners of sensual massage and erotic release.

That's how it's worded in their ads. Or they call it a Happy Ending, which I guess is less legally suspect. The masseurs embrace a retro '70s gay-lib attitude of all things having to do with sexuality being beautiful. Death and love feel close and connected to me. Pam stays around as ghostly subtext, not a haunting, more like having someone possess me. It is far easier to seek the touch of a stranger than a Jewish exorcist.

Paid-for sensualists bring moments of contained happiness, and a new, if temporary, friendship. It's uncomplicated, perfect; a little expensive maybe, but often more reasonable than you might expect. So reasonable I sometimes feel guilty. Sensualists have to eat too. There is this one really skinny guy who does an hour and a half for $25.00. That's less than a grocery checker makes. The skinny masseur's dog sniffs around you sometimes while you're on the table, occasionally licking something private, which is a little disconcerting, but the guy is very nice. He speaks his poetry aloud while he works on me, my moans drowning out the words. (Just for the record I'm talking about moans from the deep tissue work, not from the happy ending.) After he finishes he likes to talk about writing and his spiritual journey. He believes in divine purpose. In things happening for a reason. I say I believe that too, and sometimes I do. Whatever else it is, this is not prostitution. There's also a guy in the Valley who's truly gifted at both parts of the massage. The whole thing becomes a bi-weekly ritual; the shiatsu moves, the almost-but-not-quite painful upper back work, the moment when I hear his shorts drop to the floor, the precise time for him to climb on the table and lower himself on top of me. His smile is so genuine it never fails to move me, and his blonde, blue-eyed Waspness seems exotic. He is happy. He exudes it in a way I can never imagine myself doing. A part of me gets bored by the ritualized repetition of his healing touch, but I grow to like the routine, to feel safe in knowing what I can expect and getting it every time.

Sometimes when I go to someone new I'm not always sure whether it's okay for it to go farther than the massage itself, and I don't want to insult anyone or be inappropriate, so I can feel awkward, but not once do I find someone who isn't perfectly comfortable exploring further, releasing me, finding me. They may not bring joy exactly, but it is incredibly joyful.

I don't have health insurance at the time. Paying for sex is much cheaper than going to a shrink.

The massage is almost always great, no matter who the guy is. So is the release. Sometimes I am moved to reciprocate, wanting them to feel what I feel, wanting them to like me. More than a few times men ask me not to pay, which I guess is the highest compliment a hooker can give you. That's just for cheap effect. I've already established they aren't hookers. Either that or definitions of prostitution should be widened. Actually, now that I think of it, Mary Magdalene was supposed to be sort of like these guys, cooling and healing with her ointments, showing Jesus he was still made of flesh and engorged blood, even if he was destined to be non-corporeal.

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