Part 1

I called a massage parlour in Richmond one afternoon, believing proximity to home to be very important.  Auralie drove me there the next day.  I had chosen a place called Rendezvous Massage, a dilapidated and poorly carpeted establishment in a block of what appeared to be sweatshops.  It was on the second floor and one had to pass down a hall of rooms of furiously sewing Asians.  I mounted the stairs and rang the bell.

A forty year old Asian woman answered.  She was thin and pockmarked, wearing running shoes and a parka.  It turned out that she rarely strayed from her coat, shedding it only when she had a client.  She had told me on the phone that we would just have a meeting that day.  I wore tight pants and a low-cut pink shirt to impress her but soon realized that it didn't matter.  Within 15 minutes of my arrival she told me to pick a name for myself and made me greet two clients.  In a halting and horrifying moment of panic with the first client, I introduced myself as Andrea.  I regretted it instantly.  The clients didn't stay.

Amy owned Rendezvous Massage and had made several decorating mistakes.  The first was the choice of grey, mouldy carpet.  The second was the thinness of the massage tables in the two work rooms.  The third was the framed Disney pictures hung around the studio.  The pictures were perhaps meant to allude to the youth and innocence of the girls working there but instead lent the studio an air of pedophilia.  Men like young women, but perhaps not Disney-aged young women.  I couldn't understand how Amy made any money from the business but it soon became clear that men looking for sex are not deterred by sad interior decorating.  They are not deterred by anything.

Late into my first shift I got a client.  He was East Indian or Pakistani.  Amy arranged the whole encounter and the next thing I knew I was massaging the fat, stinking man.  He said, get on the table and let's have sex.  I said, sex is not part of the deal.  He said, YES, it is FULL SERVICE.  I thought he was making a joke about gas stations.  I left the room and ran to Amy, babbling incoherently about full service.  She told me full service meant sex.  I hobbled back to the room, got on the table and let the man fuck me.  I let him fuck me.  I called Auralie immediately afterward and told her that I'd fucked a man for money.  Neither she nor I had truly understood before then that escorting meant selling your body for money.  I could sense her shock, and I was so terrified and nauseous.  I asked her, "are you ashamed of me?" It was the only question I could think of.  She said no.  I loved her so fiercely right then I thought I would cry.  I had made $100, and when I got home we went out for sushi and I felt rich.