When I asked why she didn’t protest, she was sincerely puzzled. “I really don’t know. I guess I was so out of it I didn’t realize… Wait. I don’t believe that. Why should I expect you to believe it?
“Massage is… intimate. You drift off. You give your body up to the therapist. Of course I knew. I didn’t stop him because, well, it felt good, damn it! I felt safe because he was a professional. It just… happened.”
She’s a fine person, my friend. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she’d been conditioned to accept an intimate and dangerous environment that real professionals-physicians, chiropractors, sports-medicine specialists-wouldn’t tolerate even if it were considered ethical. An hour alone with a naked patient?
It is a bizarre phenomenon-another reason I’d researched the subject.
The massage industry doesn’t publish data that hurts business. Newspapers do. Cases of sexual assault and prostitution are public record. An example is the “Tibetan healer,” a massage therapist licensed in California, who was expanding his practice to other states when charged with seventeen felonies, including rape and oral copulation with an unconscious person.
Because it’s rarely reported, there’s no accurate tally of the number of women assaulted after inviting “therapists” into their rooms. For sexual predators, it may be the safest of all covers. Juries aren’t sympathetic to women who willingly take off their clothes and invite a male to touch them. Why bother to report a crime that will never be prosecuted? It’s a sad capitulation to the dim-witted belief that women invite rape through their behavior.
I found a confidential poll of female massage clients and gave it to my friend to read. A startling percentage responded that on at least one occasion male therapists had touched them “inappropriately.” Only a tiny percentage reported the incidents.
“It happens,” I told my friend, echoing her own explanation.
Instead of being relieved, though, she became furious.
“What are you telling me? Oh… I get it! It’s wrong if a man massages a woman, but it’s perfectly okay for a woman to massage a man. Give him a hand job, a blow job-whatever! But never the opposite. I’ve been hammered enough with that goddamn double standard. I’m not going to take it any more-even from you, Doc!”
There wasn’t much I could say. She was right.
Sometimes life’s weird symmetry gets weirder. The same technique used to seduce my unlucky friend was now being used to entrap me.
I was naked, faceup on the table, draped with a sheet, while Norma stroked the inside of my legs, forcing blood up the thigh into the femoral triangle and genitals.
Spa literature was right. It is an ancient technique. The geishas of Japan study it; the massage prostitutes of Southeast Asia are masters. Squeegee strokes up the inner thigh affect even unwilling men and women for reasons that have more to do with hydrology than sexuality.
The clitoris and penis are the same organ but for the differentia of an X chromosome, a few inches, and thousands of years of sexual taboo. Both have spongelike regions of tissue. In the penis, the tissue is called corpus cavernosum; in the clitoris, it is glans clitoridis.
Male or female, penis or clitoris, the spongy tissue becomes engorged with blood when stimulated-or when blood is manipulated into the region. The primate brain reads the increased pressure as arousal. The body readies itself.
But my body wasn’t reacting as Norma expected. She kept at it, though, applying more oil, cupping the inside of my thigh, using strong fingers to accelerate blood through the saphenous vein, and also to stimulate the sensitive pudendal nerve, a high-voltage link between thigh and genitals.
A couple of times she pretended to slip and her fingers made contact- teasing what Tomlinson refers to as “Zamboni and the Hat Trick Twins.” No results.
It wasn’t the first time in my life I didn’t respond to a woman’s touch, but it was the first time I was ever happy about it.
Not that it was easy. Almond-scented oil… the woman’s knowing hands… sound of ocean waves rolling from the stereo… waves and the occasional caw and moan of sea birds.
I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be unaware of what the woman’s fingers were doing. I concentrated mightily on lofty topicsshark dissections… jellyfish… befouled water filters-because I was enjoying Norma’s frustration a hell of a lot more than I would’ve enjoyed what Norma was offering.
It helped knowing that this classic massage finesse had been used to hurt a friend. It also helped knowing that I was being filmed. Filmed… or, at the very least, watched on a monitor.
There was a miniature camera lens mounted over the massage table, disguised as a sprinkler head. There was another built into a smoke alarm hanging on the wall at the foot of the table. Common little minicameras-amateur spy shops sell them.
I’d located the cameras as I got undressed. The discovery wasn’t accidental. Recalling my friend’s experience had provided linkage to what should have been obvious: Shay, Beryl, and friends had been entrapped by a similar ploy using gradual sexual persuasion.
My friend’s hotel “therapist” had done it for his own amusement. .. or maybe he’d had a hidden camera, too. But Norma was doing it because she worked for a woman who profited by luring wealthy people into this orchid-scented trap.
A health spa with snob appeal on a tropical island-the perfect vehicle for someone like Isabelle Toussaint. I reminded myself of something else: Toussaint enjoyed humiliating her victims.
Of course there would be cameras hidden in the treatment rooms. In the cloisters, too. I’d already confirmed there was one in my room-a mini-lens in the clock radio. Someone had searched the place, too; expected-which is why I’d stashed my contraband gear in an overhead gallery bay outside my door.
"You got big, thick muscles, Mr. North, you sure do. And some scars here and there, more than most. That tells me you live a man’s life.” Norma had switched to the other leg and was lathering her hands with oil. She had also switched her approach.
“I feel bad now, being sharp with you earlier. Man like you deserves to be treated right. So you just… you just let go for Norma, and Norma will make you feel very fine. Sure you don’t want a drink of my herbal tonic?”
I said, “No, but I’m just about ready for a beer. Hey-take it easy.”
“Little pain’s good for the body, but I’ll be real gentle from now on.”
Norma cupped her hands around my thigh, and began forcing the blood upward. You can’t remain sexually disinterested when someone you find attractive does what she was doing. Physically, Norma was attractive-an abundance of curves in a select few places.
Focusing on sharks and jellyfish was a battle. There was also something oddly arousing about the stereo sounds of those ocean waves with birds crying in the background. Why?
It was a battle I began to lose.
“Well, well… I can see you like that. Um-huh. Yes… you like that a lot…
“… nowwwwww you’re starting to relax. Why… yes, you are. I bet you’d find it even more relaxing if I started massaging this part right here-”
There was a delay of a foggy few seconds before I put my hands under the sheet and stopped her.
“Why… what’s wrong, Mr. North? You’re enjoying what I’m doing. That’s very obvious.”
“Yeah, I am. Feels great.”
“Then why stop me?”
“Surprised, I guess. I’ve never had a doctor do that before.”
“Didn’t say I was a doctor. Said I was highly trained like one.”
“You’ve had a lot of practice, I’m convinced. But what’s the catch? You aren’t selling. You’re not the type… or are you?”
The woman pulled her hands away. “I don’t tolerate that kind of talk, mister. Why say something so nasty?”
I sat up. “Because you’ve got too much going for you to make a living giving hand jobs to strangers. There has to be another reason.”