The Liberal Art of Massage

This all started because I decided, against all advice, to major in religious studies in college. I know, it sounds like a dumb choice, but it's what I was interested in and I decided to follow my grandmother's advice to pursue my passion rather than the practical choices everyone else thought I should make. Of course, my gram couldn't have anticipated the Great Recession, which made it all but impossible for anyone my age to find a job, much less someone with a degree that had no specific job preparation other than the "critical thinking skills" American educators love to prattle on about. I did enjoy my studies. I learned a lot and made almost straight A's.

But I had the bad timing to graduate from college in 2005, just before the economy melted down. I had actually gotten a job at a law firm doing paralegal work and was making progress on my life when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Law firms were among the hardest hit in the general collapse and let me tell you, if I wasn't the first person let go by my firm, I was in the first five. They gave me a check for two weeks pay and a box to put my office stuff in and out the door I went.

One thing I was determined to not do and that was to move home like so many of my friends. First of all, it would be an admission of defeat. But more to the point, my mother was a nut case who had driven me crazy most of my life. No way I was moving back into her house.

So I waited tables two nights a week, unloaded trucks at a Target three mornings a week, and traded with a local gym who let me work out and use the showers for free if I would sweep, mop, and clean the bathrooms after closing. The upside of all this was that I lost a bunch of weight due to the short rations I was on and packed on muscles I'd never had before by working out seven days a week. The downside was I was poor as dirt and could barely afford a sixpack of beer, much less to spend time hanging out with friends. But at least I wasn't back home in my old bedroom.

No matter what anyone might tell you about the nobility of the poor, that's bullshit. Being poor just sucks.

Three years ago I was on the bus home from my job at the Target and saw a sign for a massage school. For just $600 I could get licensed as a massage therapist and be my own boss. Did I have $600? No. But did I want to be my own boss? Yes. Yes, I did. And I knew something about massage because when I was in college I'd pulled a muscle in my back and had several months of physical therapy and massage. I'd loved it and now the idea that I might make a living doing what the massage therapists I saw had done for me sounded pretty damned inviting.

So, against my better judgment, I put the tuition on my not yet maxed out credit card and went back to school. The classes were really fun and harder than I'd expected. For the first time I actually learned how the human body worked and by the end could name all the major muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones in the body. And my instructor told me I had a knack for massage. In fact, she was sufficiently impressed that she recommended me to a chiropractor she knew who hired me part time. The year and a half I spent working for him was really great because as my hours increased I was able to ditch the waiter gig, which I'd always resented. And I learned a lot about working with clients of all types, shapes, and sizes.

After that first year I was constantly getting questions from people I worked with about whether I offered massages outside the chiropractor's office, largely because they thought he was charging too much, and, of course, because they thought I was good. I always, always said no because I really liked me job and knew he'd probably fire me on the spot if he ever found out I was soliciting business in his offices.

But the questions kept making me think. After all, that ad on the bus had promised me I could be my own boss. And I wasn't. Yet. But why the hell not? After all, I was working three jobs, all part time, and wasn't really getting ahead at all.

Well, it was my gram who came to my rescue. Unfortunately, by dying. She left me $10,000 in her will and the wise course probably would have been to pay down my credit cards and catch up on a couple of missed student loan payments. Instead, I decided to lease a shared massage studio two nights a week, which required a $2,500 deposit, and to spend close to $500 more on advertising and promotion. And, voila, I was my own boss. At least on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

There were five therapists who shared the space I was in, all of us on a part time schedule. I rarely saw any of them except the woman who worked Tuesday and Wednesday during the day. Every once in a while she was still there when I showed up and we'd chat about the business. Like me, she was hanging on by her fingernails. Unlike me, she was in her late 40s and had two masters degrees. That was depressing.

With a website up and flyers out all over, I started to pick up clients slowly but surely. First one, then two then several. And I was getting great reviews online and that started to bring in more and more business. Pretty soon, I had enough work to dump the Target job too and was trying to decide what to do about my gig at the chiropractor when he decided for me. One day he came in, sat me down, and told me he was retiring early and was closing up shop and moving to Florida. Well, that gave me license to solicit business from all my regulars and so before I knew it, I was working pretty much full time and was, indeed, my own boss.

The money was good enough, but not great. In 2010 I made $42,000 give or take, and so had moved out of my group house into a one-bedroom apartment, and was even contemplating buying a used car. And would have, if I hadn't owed so much on my student loans.

My fortunes changed one night when one of my regulars from the chiropractor days, a man in his early 50s name Stephen, was in for his regular 90 minute session. Stephen was a lawyer and came in twice a month for a long session to deal with lingering problems in his lower back and quads brought on by too much rugby as a younger man. He'd been a loyal client and was a very good tipper, so I always made sure he got a great massage.

Well, on the night that changed the direction of my career in massage, Stephen came in visibly limping.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

"Ah, I ran a half marathon on Sunday and my quads, calves, and hips are all killing me. If it's okay with you, I'd like to have the whole 90 minutes from the hips down."

"Sure thing," I said. "Go ahead and get undressed and I'll be right back."

Because he was just wearing wind pants and a t-shirt, and he knew the drill, I gave him less than five minutes to be on the table and ready for me.

"How'd you do in the race," I asked as I began to massage his legs through the drape. I always start people that way and then move to skin on skin after a few minutes of general movements to loosen them up a bit. I could tell right away his hips were very stiff.

"Beat my best time, which was great," he said. "I pushed it hard the last two miles, which is why I'm probably so beat up."

"Likely," I responded. "Well, I'll leave you in much better shape than I found you."

At that point I stopped talking. I've never been a chatty massage therapist unless the client keeps talking. Stephen wasn't a talker, and so I went to work. When someone comes in this stiff, I always begin with long flowing strokes before homing in on the specific problem areas, so I peeled back the drape from his right leg and began running my palms up and down from ankle to hip and back again. He spread his legs a bit more for me and that was the extent of our interaction for the next 45 minutes or so. I worked his hamstrings, which were like steel cables, his calves, which were only slightly less bound up, and then his glutes, which were about as bad off as his hamstrings.

"Alright," I murmured at last, "Time to roll over."

I lifted the drape on one side and he forced himself over onto his back. I could tell that even after 45 minutes on the table he was still pretty bound up.

When I dropped the drape back down, it was apparent that in addition to loosening up his muscles, my work on his glutes had resulted in him getting a hard on. This wasn't anything new, because like more than two-thirds of my male clients, Stephen almost always got a hard on during his massage, either when I'd been working his butt, or when I started in on his quads.

Hard ons are so common from my male clients that I'm generally surprised when a guy doesn't get one. If they mention it at all, I just tell them it's a sign their body is functioning normally. In the past I'd had a few hints from guys that they'd like a little more than just the standard massage, but since I refused to pick up on the hints, they always dropped it. Some of them wouldn't come back again, but that was on them. Not me.

Stephen's hard ons were always a little more distracting only because he was obviously very well endowed. So the drape always formed quite the tent when he was hard. I've never thought of myself as either gay or bi, but from time to time I would imagine what a guy's cock would look like if I pulled back the drape, especially given that I could mostly tell just from the semi-sheer nature of the fabric. I just wanted to see the whole thing once in a while. And given the size of whatever Stephen had under there, his was one I thought about more than some of the others.

Usually he deflates after a few minutes on his back, but for some reason, that night he didn't. Everything I did just seemed to keep him hard, even when I moved away from his mid-section and worked on his feet for a while. That usually brings an end to any latent excitement the client has, but Stephen's cock had a mind of it's own that night.

When I work on someone's hips I push the drape toward their crotch. In the case of women I just tuck it down between their legs, staying well away from any contact with their genitals, and with men I do the same thing, but have to be mindful of not uncovering anything important. That night it was going to be difficult to move the drape without forcing his rock hard cock to one side, but there wasn't anything I could do but do what I always did. So, when it was time to get to work on his hips, I used the drape to move him off to the side and to pin him down just a bit, which only made his cock jump under the sheet. But at least it was out of the way.

Now, work on the hips is always a bit fraught because it gets your hands very close to more sensual contact areas and on that particular night I was especially aware of being careful to remain away from what my original teacher had called the "danger zone." But damned if his cock didn't keep twitching under the sheet. And damned if I didn't keep noticing. And damned if it wasn't starting to affect me just a little bit too. Since I work in hospital scrub pants, if I got hard too there was going to be no hiding it, so I forced myself to look away from his cock and to just keep staring at the wall.

Did that help? Nope. Five minutes after I started willing myself to stay soft, I was almost as hard as Stephen. At least his eyes were closed and he couldn't see what was happening to me.

After a few more minutes on his left side, I moved to the right, which meant I had to use the drape to reposition his erection. Every man has a natural inclination to the right or the left and in Stephen's case, he naturally leaned to the right, which meant I got a little more resistance from his body when I tried to pin his down on the left side. And, of course, that made his cock (and then mine) jump again. But pin him down I did and then I went to work on that right hip, staring again at the wall and hoping my own reactions would end before much longer.

Whether he could sense there was something different about me that night, or maybe it was something else, but for the first time ever, Stephen gave me an indication that he would be open to more than the standard massage. As my fingers pressed into the triangular space at the top of his femur, his cock twitched again and as it did, he opened his legs just a bit more and let out a long breath, the kind you let out when you are really into what's happening with someone else. It was such a sexual combination of movement and breathing that I had to catch my own breath to avoid sighing. I was completely turned on by the situation and just hoping I could get through the last 15 minutes of his massage with nothing else happening. He wasn't helping. At all.

I had just about managed to refocus completely on what I was going to do to wrap up the massage, when he spoke.

"Mark," he said, his voice as much a sigh as anything. "I'm sorry. But I'm really turned on right now. I tried to not be, but I am. I'm really sorry."

"That's okay," I said and was surprised to hear that my voice was as low and sensual as his had been. Jesus.

"It happens sometimes," I continued, hoping he hadn't noticed how I sounded.

He had. His eyes were open now and he was looking up at me, his expression a mixture of bliss and longing.

"I know that what I'm about to say is really inappropriate, but I've got to say it anyway..."

I knew what was next and my brain had already formulated my response. Unfortunately, or, as it turned out, fortunately, my cock had other ideas.

"Is there any way, any, that you'd be willing to get me off. Just a hand job. Nothing more. I just haven't had sex in close to two months and, well, you've got me as hard as I've been in I don't know when."

I couldn't speak. My brain and my cock were fighting to the death. My cock was winning, but just barely.

"I swear I won't tell a soul. I've never done anything like this, but you can see the state I'm in."

And then he made the winning argument.

"I'll give you $300 total for the night."

While my brain was calculating what $300 instead of $150 would do for my bank balance, my cock ran up behind my brain and hit it with a baseball bat.

In answer to his question, I stopped working on his hip, okay, I had actually stopped as soon as he started talking, and pulled back the drape to expose his beautiful, and oh so big, cock. He let out a sigh of deep contentment, closed his eyes again, and relaxed. All except for that cock, which was anything but relaxed.

I stared for just a moment, mesmerized by its size and beauty, and then drizzled some oil on it, starting at the head and letting the oil run down between his very tight, and very large, balls. He sighed again, just as I would have at such a moment. And when I took him in my hand, the thought occurred to me that this might be the only time I ever gave another man a hand job, so I ought to make it a good one.

Grasping him tightly at the base of the shaft, I leaned down to his ear and whispered, "There's no one after you tonight, so we're in no rush. And I have to insist that you stay quiet. Okay?"

He nodded and that was all I needed.

His cock was pulsing in my grasp, the veins standing out on the shaft, the head flaring outward, begging me to do something with it. But his stomach muscles were also contracting and I realized he was about to cum. That wouldn't do at all, because I was just getting started. So I released him and began to massage the oil into his balls instead, rolling them back and forth, enjoying their tightness. He sighed again and began to relax. Good.

It occurred to me then that probably the best way to prolong this was to give him a cock massage rather than a hand job. So, instead of stroking him the way I like to be stroked, I looked on his cock as a very tight muscle that needed relief. Moving back up from his balls, I began to massage the shaft with my fingertips, much as I would a knotted muscle in his back. There wasn't anything particularly sexual about what I was doing. I knew it felt good, how could it not, but I also suspected it wasn't moving him toward an orgasm either. Also good.

He didn't exactly get softer while I was massaging his shaft, but his breathing slowed, and I could see the tension leave his abdominals. Once that happened, I knew I could move further up to the head. I was particularly fascinated by the head of his cock, because it was so different from mine. Sure, I'd seen plenty of cocks in porn clips, but there is nothing to compare to having the cock you're interested in right there, in your hand, available for you to play with. And, where mine was broad and flat, his was more bullet shaped and thick.

So I began my assault on the head of his cock by grasping him at the base once again and straightening his shaft toward the ceiling. Then, with my very oily index finger I began slowly, oh so slowly, tracing the very edge of the rim of his cock head. This earned me a long, deep moan. I decided to stick with this little move for a while, because I knew that in my own case, I couldn't cum this way, but that it would build up an almost unbearable feeling where my finger was working. I knew I was getting somewhere when his hips began to pump upward just a bit, signaling that he wanted more of me. Very good.

Instead of doing the thing I knew he really wanted - full and long strokes - I decided to keep teasing his head just a bit longer, by running my finger up and down in the crevasse formed where the two sides of the head come together. Now, this could certainly make me cum, so I was watching his bodily reactions carefully for any sign that he was getting close. Sure enough, after a few minutes of this, his abs started to contract again. Excellent.

Cumming was not in the cards for him. Not yet anyway.

I released him and whispered, "Raise your knees up for me."

He did as I asked and I moved back to his balls, coating them with more oil, and rolling them around yet again. They were even tighter than before and as I played with them, I wondered just how much semen they held? Would he blow a large load? I hoped so. I wanted to see tangible proof that my efforts had paid off.

I continued to play with his balls with my left hand, but with my right I slid a finger down into that space between the base of his cock and his anus. I knew from a class I'd taken once that you can do an external prostate massage by pressing hard right there, so I tried that out just to see how he responded. What I felt was not his prostate, but the part of his shaft that lives below the surface, so I rubbed my finger up and down that as best I could, which he definitely enjoyed. Then I let my finger go lower, until it was right at his rosebud.

As soon as I made contact with all those nerve endings around the opening, he moaned loudly enough that I had to shsssh him.

"Sorry," he whispered, more of a croak than anything else.

So I began to trace small circles around his hole, playing with what I knew from my own body was a very, very sensitive area. I wasn't ready to penetrate him. Not tonight, anyway. But I wanted him to know that it could feel very good if I did. From the way he was moving his ass on the table, it was clear he'd gotten the message loud and clear.

Glancing back at his cock I could see precum starting to ooze from the head. So I captured it with my fingers and smeared if all around the head, making him that much more slippery.

His breathing was pretty shallow now, and a peek at the clock showed me I'd been working on him for almost 20 minutes already, so it was time for me to release him from his agony.

With my left hand I reached under his balls, grabbed the base of his cock, squeezed, and pushed his balls up against his shaft. With my right hand, I made a ring out of my thumb and index finger and began sliding that tight ring over the head of his cock and then down the shaft. Slowly. Slowly. As I did, I watched the expressions running across his face, from agony, to bliss, and then back to agony as I repeated the ring slide over his head and down his shaft. I knew the slow pace and the tightness of the ring I was making was feeling very, very good.