“Be my boyfriend.” She leant forward enticingly. “Be my boyfriend,” she wheedled again, pressing her body against mine. I leant back, but Concepcion moved further forward until she lay on top of me, her face still close to mine. She came off as much more confident with her clothes on. I found her urging appealing and instinctively wanted to protect her from her past mistakes and present predicament, but afterwards, my natural impulse to incorporate her into my life wore off. Her insistence might have indicated some stronger need for money for drugs than for her children. This thought made me wary of entering into a relationship because I was new to the guild of massage women like her and could not easily judge how stable or controlled they were. In any event, she lived in Sabah and I in Singapore, and my romantic urge to be involved with her soon faded in the pragmatic light of day outside the centre.
And so I entered into the world of the massage women-a twilight, windowless world, not of the extremes of eroticism but of the fumbling accommodation of desire with commerce… and sometime intimacy, however awkward and confused.
This world was not, of course, the centre of my existence, as I had loves, work and interests outside the twilight. But it was much of their world. My experience in it was maybe five, at most ten per-cent of my life, if such things may be quantified. But it was significantly more emotionally, for I liked the massage women very much and saw in them as pleasant a division of my fellow human beings as any. Since I inevitably preferred some of the massage women much more over others and spent my time mostly with this preferred subset, my overall impression of them is no doubt a little slanted and rose-tinted, just as their experience of men was skewed towards the sensual and the strayer… with not a few of the inadequate. Still, I felt soft towards them all and forgiving of their frailties, more forgiving than I would have been of people in other occupations.
On my return to Singapore after my encounter with Concepcion, I set about visiting the local ‘health centres’ and massage parlours , the first time I had ever set out on a campaign of exploratory promiscuity. Initially, I was a little wary of these twilight women, expecting drug-dependency, perhaps a parasitic or clinging tendency, or-worse-hell-cat behaviour and thievery.
However, the first local centre that I visited was very reassuring. Situated in the middle of a big hotel, it was much better appointed than the car-park den in Kota Kinabalu (as behoved this clean and clinical Republic). It had its own shower with an expensively tiled floor and was pleasantly decorated, looking organized and neat with stacked towels, a high massage bed and almost no cigarette holes in the carpet. All this bespoke an almost domestic respectability, an efficient, business-like atmosphere with a faintly medical flavour because of the stacked towels and the general emphasis on hygiene.
While I was in the shower, a female entered the room and offered me a drink. I could not see her because of the frosting on the shower-cubicle door. She disappeared again while I lay down on the massage mattress. My masseuse appeared and started talking at once, firing off questions and setting to work on my back. She announced herself as Honey or Pussy or some such absurd professional name, but eventually, after a little pressing, admitted to being Caroline.
She was, as far as I could tell peering back over my shoulder, an ethnic Chinese woman in her thirties. I did not want to swivel round to stare at her rudely, as if assessing the quality of the goods I might consume. Caroline herself was quite formal in her interrogation, asking me at the beginning how she should address me and taking it on from there. Thus, we were both careful to preserve the ordinary decencies of social intercourse.
In time, I got to know Caroline a little, although my acquaintance with her was not as deep as with subsequent lovers in this particular twilight zone.
She possessed a nondescript face but a pleasing figure and radiated sexual energy.
Caroline, as loquacious as Concepcion had been reserved and as experienced as the latter had been relatively innocent, gave me a rapid, light massage over my back and legs, accompanied by a lot of slapping as well as continuous chatter of interrogation. After less than ten minutes of this process, she ran her fingers and thumbs like a pair of five-legged spiders over my rear and inner thighs, circling my anus and tickling my testicles before kneading them slightly while groping for my penis.
“Do you want to turn over?” said the spider-lady. “That’s a very quick massage,” I said, though I was not complaining at the way proceedings were developing, just commenting on her directness. “Oh no,” said Caroline,
“there’s more to come.”
“Your approach is different,” I noted.
“Oh no,” she persisted, “I do not have an approach, I just do whatever is necessary. What do you want me to do?” Since she already had a proprietary grasp on my erect member, this was a polite but rhetorical question. So I asked her for full sex without a condom. She looked at me surprised. This was a test that I applied to the twilight women in my early days to see how sensible they were. Later, I dropped this insult to their intelligence and sense of responsibility.
“Oh no,” said Caroline, not haggling and thus passing the test with flying colours, “you must wear a condom.” She withdrew her hand. I explained my purpose. She congratulated me on my intelligence and responsibility.
We praised each other for being so sensible. In the course of this mutual admiration session, Caroline reinstated her right hand on my penis and added the other, as one might when wishing to convey strong fellow-feeling on comforting the bereaved.
After a short pause, she produced a condom from somewhere about her person. “Come,” said Caroline. She applied the condom, stripped off a garment or two and we engaged immediately. “Slowly,” she cautioned, although she herself was hurrying the process, “I am small.” She eased me in, making slight gasping noises-whether genuine or for effect, I could not tell. Whatever the case, she came rapidly to a climax, her legs and arms clasped tightly over my back. “Wait,” she said, and slowed my movements, bringing down her legs and closing them under me. “Come on then,” she commanded, and appeared to have another orgasm. “Do what you like now,” she then conceded and so, having pleasured her, I took my own pleasure and concluded our commercial “act of love”.
Caroline rinsed and dressed, then recommenced massaging me; much more vigorously this second time round, as if stimulated by the intercourse.
“How good is business?” I asked. “Alright,” she replied, and rattled away cheerfully about customers and tips. “The desk takes most of my fee as protection money,” she said, “so I depend on tips.” I assumed that she meant the woman at the reception desk would not allocate her clients unless she got a cut in advance.
“Most men are generous,” she carried on, “even if I do not give them a special, they give me a tip.” She named a sum about the equivalent of twenty American dollars. “For specials, of course, the usual.” Caroline’s ‘specials’
were not very special at all-almost the rule, it seemed. Most massage women were coy about how much full sex they had, but Caroline more or less admitted to a norm of at least a couple a day, assuming that she was getting her fair share of customers in good times.
Caroline was frank about earning most of her money through her amiable and often enthusiastic prostitution. She commented just as explicitly on the range of masculine virility and the size and consistency of organs . Fat men tended to have small penises, while those smaller or comparatively athletic were more generously endowed. A long penis when flaccid might promise much (including alarm to its intended recipient), but often the owner failed to erect it beyond a certain soft engorgement. Small penises, on the other hand, could expand disproportionately into relatively large, hard organs, she noted.