[Note: This is a literary book , a book for lovers of language and wordplay; my influences include Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Philip Roth, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor. Others may not fully appreciate or understand this book. ]
I strongly suggest amending the American Constitution to require Presidents and Secretaries of Defense to undergo lingam or yoni massages twice every week in the interests of world peace.
I would look forward to the moment during each massage when I would ask her [the Southeast Asian masseuse] to unclip her long, gloriously thick and silky head of hair. Why? She would ask, almost as if playing with a child: “Why, why my hair?” she would continue to ask as she unclipped her hair and let its lush fullness fall on my naked body. And then, as she drew her hair up and down the length of my body, especially circling it around my nipples and then, after I had turned over, over my tingling back and quivering bottom, she kept asking, in the singsong tone of voice she would have used if she were talking to a baby, Why? Why? Why my hair? And all the while, she looked like a woman empowered, excited
Man and masseuse became one flesh; one loving bundle of throbbing, excited flesh, with a number of connection points, including the most intimate one
A Korean woman at a New York City Penn Station spa who had just (or on a previous occasion) given me a massage passed me in the Men’s Locker Room where I was toweling myself dry after a shower. And with a “Hi” and an affectionate smile, she simply touched my penis lightly as she passed. That was it. It might have been a handshake, but since my penis was out and also available and my hands busy with the towel, it seemed more proper and respectful to say “Hi” to my more essential and dominant part.
The Thai masseuse rested her left hand on my right buttock for support, her fingers hovering around the entrance to . . . . This is one of the most comforting, trusting, and touching gestures a human being can receive from another being: a gesture which says: Your body is like my body, I have ceased to feel any difference or separation of identities between us, and I can use parts of you for support without asking for your permission. It is a beautiful and intimate and warm gesture.
Why are nipples, and sometimes the one-inch area surrounding them, left meticulously untouched by many Western or Western-influenced masseuses, who steer clear of them the way American convoys in Iraq regard Improvised Explosive Devices?
"Discrimination!" my nipples scream, and launch into a brief adaptation of Shylock’s speech in The Merchant of Venice. "Why leave us out? What harm have we done to you? Is it our fault that we are nipples, and not toes? Don't we also need touch, warmth, love, friends?"
One of the most delightful experiences you will ever have, one that is included in the price of some Eastern massages, is being soaped, bathed, and toweled dry by your masseuse.
In any case, I have no doubt that sexual frustration and bad marriages (or periodically stormy marriages like mine), which like death and taxes will probably always be with us, are part of the reason why people need massages.
There is a direct relationship between discomfort with the naked human body and bad massages, which is why a month in a nudist colony should be an essential part of every masseuse’s training.
I tongue-kissed anyone who would let me kiss them, sometimes perfect strangers—so long as they unambiguously belonged to the female sex,
Western psychiatrists don’t tell you this, because they want repeat business from you, and get no business if their patients get cured. But I have conclusively discovered that, for a man, the most effective antidepressant is a loving woman’s arms, and her soulful mouth-to-mouth kisses, followed by sex.
a woman, usually Southeast Asian, offered me her breast to suck, yes, right in the middle of the massage. Where in the entire boring New York State Massage law is there a provision for such a thing, and where in the next million years will there ever be one (dream on, you patriots and cheerleaders for the American Way)
I wanted to run as far away from New York State Law as I could, I wanted to be in a land where kindness and tenderness were not regulated, not measured or doled out in coffee spoons, prices regulated and subject naturally to New York State sales or service tax . . .
The penis was never to her an object of dread, but simply another democratic member of the physical world, like a lamp, or a tree, or a rock, or a pencil, except that this was a thicker pencil covered with skin and topped by a brown-pink hat. There was no need to inconvenience herself or me simply because of a piece of elongated flesh called a penis, an object of variable length
A good massage makes sure that no part of the body is left untouched. Bar none, except, perhaps, the staff of life and its two supporting actors.
